New Covenant Church pastor discusses power of prayer
By DAVID LOWE Staff Writer

PHOTO BY DAVID LOWE Christians from area churches gathered at First United Methodist Church for a National Day of Prayer breakfast sponsored by the Lampasas County Ministerial Alliance. New Covenant Church Pastor Darrell Feemster spoke at the event. Those in attendance prayed for county churches, families and elected officials, and for a variety of local and national needs.

Christians from a variety of churches gathered recently at First United Methodist Church's fellowship hall to pray for God's protection and guidance for America.

Sponsored by the Lampasas County Ministerial Alliance, the prayer breakfast gave participants a chance to join with Americans across the country as part of the annual National Day of Prayer.

Darrell Feemster, pastor of New Covenant Church, spoke to those in attendance, using Jeremiah 33:3 as a call to prayer.

The scripture, in which God says, "Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know," gives believers several promises, Feemster said.

The Bible tells Christians they can approach the Lord confidently through faith in Jesus and pray about anything, the pastor said.

"In this verse, there's no condition or limit as to the subject," Feemster said.

God also promises to answer prayers, said Feemster.

"The I Am says,`I will,' and let me tell you this, when God says I will, He will," the speaker said. Through prayer believers can touch three worlds, the pastor noted.

They can lift their voices to heaven, ask for God's will on earth and declare the Lord's victory over hell, he said. "I like to shake up hell," Feemster said.

Scripture also says God answers prayers by giving revelation humans cannot attain from their own knowledge, he said.

"He will show us inaccessible things," Feemster said. "God doesn't want to hide what He's going to do."

Prayer does not make God act, but the Lord wants Christians to seek His will and declare their agreement with it, the pastor added.

To illustrate the power of prayer, Feemster recounted the capture in 2002 of shooters who had killed 10 people in the Washington, D.C. area.

Ron Lantz, a trucker who aided in the capture of John Muhammed and Lee Boyd Malvo, began praying on Oct. 16, 2002, two weeks after the attacks began, for the arrest of the shooters.

He used his CB radio to invite other truckers to meet him at a rest stop to pray together.

About 50 trucks lined up at the stop that night, as 60-70 people -- including some drivers' wives and children -- prayed for nearly an hour. Several spoke the words of the Lord's Prayer, asking God to "deliver us from evil."

A week later, when Lantz was driving his truck route, police stopped him three times, he was late delivering his cargo, and he decided to keep driving past midnight even though he usually stopped by that point in the night.

Lantz heard a radio report about the two shooters and wrote down the updated vehicle description and license plate number authorities released.

When he pulled in to a rest stop off Interstate 70, just miles from the previous week's prayer meeting, Lantz saw a blue Chevrolet Caprice with New Jersey license plate numbers matching those on the radio report.

As Muhammed and Malvo slept in the sedan, Lantz called 9-1-1, and he and another trucker moved their trucks to block the rest stop exit.

Feemster said just as God intervened as a result of the truckers' prayers, He will answer prayers offered for America and its people.

"Can you imagine what God will do with the prayers offered around this table today?" he said.