THE POWER OF A MOTHER’S PRAYER

“At the age of 9, my parents separated and eventually got a divorce,” Joel Telis recalls. “My parents had been fighting constantly, and my sister and I felt trapped in the middle. I remember the sounds of my mother crying in her room. I had a lot of anger building inside of me, but I wasn’t entirely sure why.”

At the age of 10, God’s Holy Spirit enlightened Joel. “I was in my room alone crying as I often did, and an image from the Bible came to my mind of King Solomon taking over the kingdom from his father, and I could see him praying to God, asking for wisdom to know what to do. So, I knelt in my room and prayed for the wisdom of Solomon so that I might understand what was happening. The Holy Spirit filled me with a deep love for God, and I became the one nerdy church kid that had a Strong’s Concordance, the Smith’s Bible Dictionary, and all the Doug Batchelor books on my shelf.”

Joel’s faith kept growing. “One night at vespers, the preacher made an altar call for any young person to come forward if they felt a call to ministry. Only a few of us went up, and after the preacher finished praying for us, he made us write a note in the front of our Bibles as a reminder of the commitment we made to God that night.”

With a catch of disappointment in his voice, Joel confessed, “That was when the devil came in like a flood, and unfortunately, I fell right into his trap. At the ripe age of 15, my sister and I packed our bags and left to live with my father and his new wife. I get very sad thinking about it: my mother coming home to an empty house; there’s nothing but a note saying, ‘We’re sorry, but we’ve gone to live with Dad.’”

In their teenage minds, Joel and his twin sister were under the delusion that their mother’s rules were too strict. “We convinced ourselves that we were living under a tyrannical oppression. Our father, on the other hand, had no rules. The first thing we did was sit on the couch all summer, like potatoes, watching TV shows and movies we had been ‘deprived of’ as kids. In the fall, we went to the public school down the road; no longer in the Christian environment we had grown up in. With bad friends came the worst decisions. I started smoking and drinking and hanging out with my new friends. As the years passed, I lost touch with God. I didn’t even know where my Bible was, and I avoided talking to my mother because she always talked to me about Jesus.”

“I get very sad thinking about it: my mother coming home to an empty house; there’s nothing but a note saying, ‘We’re sorry, but we’ve gone to live with Dad.’”

To hear how Joel’s mother held onto God’s promises and the hope of seeing her son return to the LORD, you can watch hers and Joel’s compelling story on It Is Written Canada this month on the dozens of networks where It Is Written Canada is aired across Canada and around the world. Or simply go to iiw.ca or It Is Written Canada’s YouTube videos and click on the program entitled: “The Power of a Mother’s Prayer.”

Please, also join It Is Written Canada September 30 – October 7, 2023, for our Canada Wide Call to Prayer. Please, with your local church family or on your own, set aside this time to pray and fast especially for our children who have given up on God, for He has NOT given up on them.

For more information, please, go to: calltoprayer.iiw.ca

~ Mike Lemon