GOD ANSWERS!—GOD STORIES
Psalm 116:1-2 NLT
I love the Lord because he hears and answers my prayers. Because He bends down and listens, I will pray as long as I have breath!
I desperately needed a place to live for my young family. Our landlords had raised the rent beyond my means to pay. For weeks and weeks I cried out to the Lord for another place to live. One day, the phone rang. I answered and a man named Dale Brons asked me if he could give me his trailer home! We would only have to pay the lot rent, of $73 a month! That was almost $200 a month less than where we were living at the time. God answered!
I desperately needed another job. Times were so hard. My wife and I were expecting our first child. For weeks I cried out to the Lord for a new job. A friend called who was a cook at a sorority. She had to leave and wanted us to come apply for the job. We did, and we became the only couple to ever be cooks, living in the Greek houses with a new baby in the sorority house with us! We got our food, utilities, a very small apartment, and a stipend every month as our pay. God answered!
I had just applied for a new job, using a friend’s car for the interview. I no longer had a car. Times were so tough. Late Friday afternoon the company called to say I got the job and would start Monday morning. I would need my own car for the sales route. I desperately cried out to the Lord for a car, as I had absolutely no way to get one. I was flat broke. All weekend I cried out to the Lord. Sunday night a lady named Marty called to say, “I have a car sitting in my garage I never use. Would you drive my car and use it?” Monday morning I had the car I needed for my new job. God answered!
I desperately wanted to be a pastor, to have God use me in great and mighty ways for his purposes. I cried out every day to the Lord for 11 years, and finally God answered and I was ordained as a Pastor. I moved 24 days later to Minnesota to start new churches to reach lost people for Christ, and train and ignite Christians in their faith. I desperately cried out to the Lord, use me Lord, provide a place for a new church. In those days, no one was allowed to use public school auditoriums for a church service. God answered and provided Oak Grove school. Over the next several years, hundreds and then thousands of people began to attend Evergreen Church. Hundreds accepted Christ. Over and over I cried out to the Lord, eventually starting 4 more churches. Hundreds came to know the Lord. Thousands heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Thousands were trained in their Christian faith. God answered!
As a young man of 19, I desperately wanted God to use me for his purposes and His glory. I cried out over and over and over again for decades, “God use me! Use me to build your kingdom, to impact and change lives for eternity. Let me preach and teach your Word to thousands.” God answered and allowed me to preach at over 200 Christian Conferences. Over 650,000 messages have been downloaded all over the world. People from hundreds of places all over the world listen to messages of God’s truth on Strongdisciple.com and now thousands read God’s profound wisdom and insights in the weekly Thoughts Provoking articles. God answered!
I desperately needed a new roof on our house, and new plumbing. I did not have the money for them. I cried out to the Lord over and over again, “God, please bring a massive hail storm and destroy my roof. Then give me enough money through insurance to put on a new roof, with funds left over for new plumbing throughout the house.” God answered and brought a tremendous hail storm, and destroyed my roof. All the funds needed came through for both a new roof and new plumbing.
My daughter was extremely sick. On and on it went. Month after month, then year after year. I desperately cried out to God to provide the tens of thousands of dollars we needed for her care. I had no idea how to get all the extra money needed. So I prayed, “God, multiply our money like you did the widow’s oil during Elijah’s ministry!” Soon, money gifts began to show up in my mail. Over the course of those 7 years that she was sick, almost $100,000 came to us this miraculous way. After crying out in desperation for 7 years, God began to heal my daughter and restore her health. God answered!
Early one morning, I raised my garage door to begin my early morning prayer walk. To my shock and dismay, my beloved Honda Civic was gone. I was stunned, my feet frozen in place, exclaiming out loud, “Where is my car? What happened to my car!?” Turns out it was stolen and destroyed. I was so angry and dismayed. I needed that car badly. I desperately cried out to the Lord, “ Please provide another wonderful, reliable car for me.” For weeks and weeks I cried out. Finally I found a 2004 Toyota Corolla, in great condition, but needed the money to buy it, as insurance gave me hardly anything for my beloved Civic. Lo and behold, within days, the money for that car came in the mail from several people who said they felt prompted by the Lord to send a special gift my way. God answered!
In 2018, after 32 years of pastoring and leading churches, my entire life was blown apart. It was deliberately burned to the ground by treacherous people, left in a giant pile of ashes and rubble. Within a matter of months, my life’s work was gone. All of my thousands of messages were deliberately ERASED from the websites of the churches I’d founded. We became outcasts and exiles overnight. At 62, I was left staring over the edge of my life, looking down at the ruins that were left. In my utter desperation and broken heart, I cried out to the Lord over and over and over again, “Save me, provide for me, call into being something that does not exist, and let me serve you Lord still, the rest of my life.” Miraculously, a wonderful, Christian attorney offered to fill out and file the extensive, complicated 501c3 non-profit paperwork, at no charge to me. Fifty two days after I’d lost everything, by God’s miraculous grace, I launched Strong Disciple as a new full time ministry. Seven months later, in spite of a government shutdown, after being told by the IRS it would take at least a year and a half before they would even look at my paperwork, I received official non-profit status. God has miraculously, financially sustained this ministry for 7 years now! Each of you, my wonderful, generous supporters, is a miraculous answer to prayer! God miraculously called Strong Disciple into being. I only have my messages today, available for everyone to hear, because a young missionary named Christina Nieman took her own personal time, after returning from the mission field, and took all the old boxes of tapes and CD’s of my messages, and organized and transferred them to mp3 files, then uploaded them to a computer. She procured all the equipment needed to do all of this work. It took her almost 2 months—working full time—time she generously donated. In fact, she called me three times asking for something to do while she had some time off. Get this—she told me, “Mark, my dad was one of the engineers on a team at 3M that developed and manufactured magnetic cassette tapes! I know exactly what to do.” Had she not done this, every message I ever gave would be gone as a result of the churches I founded erasing every message I ever gave! God has been impacting lives all over the world, using me in ways I never expected, or fully imagined. God answered!
Music has been a significant part of my Christian life for 50 years. Though my passion and calling has been to preach and teach God’s truth, music has been a balm to my soul countless times. Like King David, God has used my old Spanish guitar and songs to minister to my soul, and enrich my faith. Walking through an excruciating ordeal many years ago, God met me in the pain, giving me song after song, in a miraculous way. I wanted somehow to be able to record some of them, and use them to bless others. I began to pray, asking for God’s help. Having an older Spanish guitar with no built-in pickup for easy recording was the first problem. One night while sitting at the table with my wife, the moon shining in the window, the doorbell rang. I went to the door, but no one was there. I opened the door and saw a brand new guitar case with a bow on it. I brought it in, and opened it to find a new, nylon stringed, $1300 Taylor guitar with a built-in pickup for easy recording. An unsigned, typed note inside told me it was a gift from people who loved me. I’ve never found out who they were. I began to practice over and over, and wrote a few more songs on that guitar. In 2005, in the Ozarks of Missouri, I was doing a huge Faithwalkers conference. I had our highly-skilled sound engineer from the Rock come down to run our sound on a fantastic sound system that he’d brought down to use for the conference. All those earlier years I had ever sung or performed, it was never with great sound equipment, or with a highly-skilled sound engineer. I asked this young man if, before one of the main sessions, I could come and sit in the large empty auditorium, and just play my guitar and sing the songs I had written in the huge darkened room, using that superb sound system. He said I could and he would be glad to help. I showed up, and was able to sit alone and just relax and sing 8 of my songs. It was a wonderful experience. That night he came up to me and said, “Mark, I recorded all your songs for you as you sang, and I think they are great. Here is a CD for you.” I was shocked. Totally surprised. In fact, had he told me he was doing it, I would have been very nervous singing each song, and probably would have told him not to record them. I never like to hear myself on recordings. I went to my room and played them using headphones. It was the first time in my life I really felt I could listen to myself sing. I was moved to tears at this gift he gave me. A few months later, one of my brothers I rarely see, came for a visit. During the course of the visit my songs came up. He asked if he could go listen to them. Sometime later he came back into the room with tears in his eyes, and said, “Mark, these are really moving. Are you going to produce a CD?” I said, “David, with my daughter being so sick, I really don’t have the money.” He told me he would gladly contribute a thousand dollars to help produce an actual CD, including the cover packaging and lyric sheets. I was blown away at God’s answer to my humble prayer. I had several thousand CD’s professionally made, and gave out Medicinal Spirit, for free, to thousands of young people at the Rock and Faithwalkers conferences.
These are just some of the amazing God stories of my last 50 years. I hope these true-life God stories of answered prayers motivate and inspire you to pray and seek the Lord like never before in your life. All your requests matter to God. But will you desperately cry out to the Lord?
I give God all the glory and all the credit for each and every answer to prayer, and the miracles he performed on my behalf. He deserves all the credit! All were a gift of His incredible grace, blessing, and amazing generosity poured out on my life. God astounds me time and time again.
You faithfully answer our prayers with awesome deeds, O God our Savior! Psalm 65:5 NLT
Helping you become a Strong Disciple,
Because of Jesus,
Pastor Mark Darling
