Miracles, Science, and Modern Life: Praying in Jesus' Name

I like writing for the Lord Jesus Christ because I am both a scientist, a psychologist by lifelong calling, and a person of faith. Yet I didn't always have faith.

It started in university years, my awareness that modern life, based as it is on modern science, has little room for a life of faith in Christ, and a scathing judgment that praying in Jesus' name for a specific need is a foolish thing to do.

All of my professors in chemistry, physics, and biology were atheists. The Darwinian Bible of the evolutionary development of humanity, The Origin of Species, was drilled into me principle upon principle, as fundamental to my Bachelor of Science degree.

However, the summer of my graduation, when my own agnostic-atheistic philosophy had driven me into depressoin about the meaninglessness of life, I decided to re-read the Gospel of Christ (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) just to re-evaluate what it said.

I didn't like what I read. The whole New Testament called for a life of faith in Christ, that he died for my sins and rose for my redemption. I had no such faith. My whole perspective on life, which I'd adopted from my sophomore year forward, required empirical proofs and deductive logic to be applied to every aspect of life. If there wasn't scientific evidence for a belief, then toss it out, I reasoned, and if you couldn't make rational sense of a proposition about life, it must not be true.

How arid. How sterile. How lonely my life had become. I had analyzed myself into a corner where I could only count on these facts: that I had to pay yearly taxes to the government and that I would someday die.

An answer was about to rush into the desperate vacuum of my soul. For I went to a simple church service, like the one in which I'd originally believed in Christ at seventeen, and heard the Gospel anew. Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand...If you keep hardening your heart to God, you may well reach of PNR (a point of no return) where you never seek him again...And die in self-willed separation that brings eternal torment.

I didn't like hearing this. Not one bit. I almost walked out of the service. But then a gentle tug pulled at my heart. Perhaps the Holy Spirit? And I walked forward to the altar instead. It took an hour of struggling to pray before the Spirit descended upon me in earnest, helping me to cry my eyes out over walking away from Jesus in my university years, choosing instead a godless, faith-killing Darwinian philosophy that was driving me to despair.

The second hour at the altar was different from the first, for the Lord had heard my cry of repentance, and Christ arose within me with such force in my soul that I felt transported into heaven. I praised God with every cell in my body, tears of joy streaming down wet cheeks, until the janitor tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Good sir, can you finish talking to God on your way home, so I can start sweeping the sanctuary?"

Fast forward three months. I'm enrolled at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, where a summa cum laude degree had earned me a full scholarship. Only I had a problem. I had barely enough money for books, and no money left at all for the white lab coat we med students were required to buy.

Would Monday arrive and Dan Montgomery appear in the class of thirty-two students, the only one wearing street clothes? Time to pray, to apply my scientific background in a more creative way than before. I reasoned, If Jesus tells me to pray in his name for the things that I need, and that God the Father will answer these prayers to glorify his Son, then now would be a good time to do it.

The empirical proof would lie in whether this prayer experiment brought measurable results or evaporated into nothingness. So Saturday morning I said, "Father, I need a medical school lab jacket really bad and really fast. Can you please supply me one in Jesus' name?"

Nothing happened. So I carried on as best I could, picturing my upcoming humiliation in Monday morning classes.

Driving back to campus, I saw a Goodwill store on the left. An inner presence, much like the one I had experienced at the church altar, formed an image in my mind of me walking into the store and reaching into one of the boxes.

Shrugging my shoulders, I thought: What the heck. This experiment may have a very foolish outcome. But on the other hand, I'll never know unless I take the risk of faith.

I walked into the store and stood amidst a dozen huge boxes stuffed to the brim with clothing. I almost walked out again, but not before a presence formed an image in my mind of going to the third box and reaching deep down into it. So I did just that, my heart beating noticeably faster, since the result of the experiment was at hand.

I grabbed a piece of cloth about two-thirds of the way down, don't ask me why. My fingers simply gripped it and I yanked it out.

A white good-as-new medical school lab coat in just my size. 

I rushed to the cashier and paid the thirty-five cents it cost, then hurried to the dry cleaner next door.

In Monday morning's class thirty-two students appeared sporting bright white lab coats, Dan Montgomery among them.

I couldn't stopped smiling at the evidence I wore of the invisible Father whom science denies, yet faith affirms, providing for those who pray to him, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

God's Healing Love Is Real

I have a story to tell about the beauty of little prayers. One that happened to me as a kid when I played Little League for the Hilton Hornets - a little prayer that took 20 years for an answer.

Our neighbor, Dr. O'Connell, asked me to water his rose garden every day for three weeks that summer while he was away. His rose garden was famous in northern New Mexico. And the cash sounded good. I pictured several movies with buttered popcorn.  

We walked into his rose garden where I saw another world. Red. Orange. Yellow. Wow. A maze of trails among tiers of railroad ties. A jungle of roses, I thought. I pulled down the bill of my Little League cap to cut the sun's glare.

"Remember to fill each rose trough until it's about half full. The sun gets scorching this time of year," he told me. I fidgeted. I didn't like conversation with adults. I wanted to go break in my new baseball glove.

I watered the plants every other day for the first week, reading the labels attached to each stem through the hour ordeal. Double Delight. Queen Elizabeth. Sutter's Gold. 

The second week boredom set in. On Monday I skimped a little on each flower, and thought about the batters I'd be facing that afternoon. A day or so later, we played the Rotary Dukes. It dawned on me I'd missed watering for a couple of days. I shrugged off the worry. How thirsty could they be anyhow? 

On Monday of the third week the flowers looked sort of weak. Petals floated up on the water as I hosed each trough. I gave them an extra amount to help them out. The week passed quickly. I hurled a one-hitter, then hit a triple against the Ready Kilowatts. I forgot the roses entirely.

The following Monday I remembered Dr. O'Connell and his jungle of roses. How many days had the roses gone without water? I felt too frightened to go and check. Fingers of shame squeezed my stomach like a vice. In practice I hit two batters with wild pitches. 

   

I ached with anxiety as I rode my bike home. Mom met me on the porch. She looked awful. "Dr. O'Connell came home today," she said. "All of his roses are dead." 

I wanted to disappear from Earth and never be heard from again. She shook her head and whispered, "He was crying."   

No punishment could have been worse than those words. That night a hideous feeling squirmed in my belly, my heart bursting with remorse. Before going to sleep, I prayed to God that I might someday make amends to Dr. O'Connell, but I knew that nothing could replace the rose garden, now a rose cemetery.  

I avoided Dr. O'Connell for the next 20 years. Oh, I thought about him all right, when I saw him out walking or driving his car. But I made sure he never saw me.  

Meanwhile, I was making progress in developing more of a balanced personality.  I became a doctor of psychology and published the first version of what is now The Self Compass: Charting Your Personality in Christ.

Back in my home town one Christmas, I was out for breakfast when Mary, Dr. O'Connell's daughter, came up to my table.  She asked to join me and we chatted. Then she asked, "Did you know that Dad passed away last month?"

"I'm sorry, Mary," I said, the old guilt flip-flopping in my belly.

"It's okay. He died very peacefully -- thanks to you."

I leaned forward, unsure I'd heard her right. But Mary told me that her father, a lifelong atheist, had come across my book about how Christ works in people's personality. How he read it during the last three days of his life. And how he changed. His last day, he led the family in their first prayer over dinner. And when he died, my book was resting in his lap. 

Tears flooded my vision. Mary gave me a hug: "And Dan, his last journal entry said, 'I know Christ's love is real.'"

At that moment, 20 years of guilt and shame melted away. I'd been unable to do it on my own, but with God's help, I had at last made amends to Dr. O'Connell.