Answer to Prayer

As God was touching my heart about doing something more for Him, He also taught me a very valuable lesson on how to pray with more intensity and the amazing thing, is that He did this using a little kitty that we adopted and named “Hokie”. Just a word on how we came to have “Hokie” in our family. Last April on the first Sunday after the horrible shootings at Virginia Tech, I wanted to go to Blacksburg to see if I could help by handing out cold drinks and just seeing if I could pray with anyone. I felt God blessed my time and did allow me to pray with a few people but as I drove back to Roanoke I almost felt sort of numb. When I reached my home I felt so heavy hearted that after going inside to let my wife Ginny know I was home, I just wanted to sit out in the front yard for awhile and think and pray. As I prayed, I ask God to bring comfort to those people I had just talked with at Virginia Tech because they seemed so hurt, so sad, and so in need of answers and comfort. Then I said “and God I could use some comfort as well, just a touch from you to let me know everything is ok.” As I prayed this prayer, I looked around and a small grey kitty came into our yard and came over to me. And though I had never seen him before he still trusted me enough to come over and let me pick him up.
To shorten this story, we brought “Hokie” into our home only to find out in the fall that he has severe asthma. We ended up keeping him in our room every night and watching him carefully because of his almost constant coughing, but even at this, “Hokie” almost died one morning, as we raced to the emergency vet to try and save his life. Through the next few weeks God taught me to take pray to a new level and to pray with intensity and power as I prayed for God to heal “Hokie” and to keep him alive. On more than one night both Ginny and I prayed to ask God to keep “Hokie” alive through the night and to keep him from coughing. With little sleep, and kneeling with our heads to the floor, we spent several anxious nights talking to God and trying to help “Hokie”.
Although we did have to make many trips to the vet, with two trips even to the Virginia Tech veterinarian school of medicine, we still saw God save “Hokie” for us. Now we give him medicine every day and keep the inhaler close by, but he hasn’t coughed in months after almost dying coughing that morning. So God used a kitty to teach me or remind me to pray with all my heart and to expect God to work for the best, and with power, all the while being patient as I waited on Him to do it in His own time. God has proven Himself mighty and every time I walk into the house and see “Hokie” walking around, I see an answer to prayer and a testimony of how good God is and how He answers the desires of our heart when we pray with all of our heart.