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About the Book
"ABCs of Parenting" by Gouri Dange is a practical guide for new parents, offering a comprehensive overview of the important aspects of raising a child. The book covers topics such as discipline, communication, setting boundaries, and fostering a strong parent-child relationship. With its straightforward advice and relatable anecdotes, "ABCs of Parenting" aims to help parents navigate the challenges of parenthood with confidence and compassion.
Smith Wigglesworth
Smith Wigglesworth was born in 1859 to a very poor family. His father did manual labor, for very little pay. Smith himself went to work at the age of six to help with the family income. At six he was pulling turnips and at seven he was working in a woolen mill twelve hours a day. His parents did not know God, but Smith hungered in his heart to know Him. Even as a youngster he would pray in the fields. His grandmother was the critical Christian in his life. She was a Wesleyan Methodist and would take Smith to meetings with her. At one of these meetings there was a song being sung about Jesus as the lamb and Smith came into the realization of God's love for him and his decision to believe Christ for his salvation was decided that day. He was immediately filled with the desire to evangelize and led his own mother to Christ.
Smith has various church experiences as he was growing up. He first went to an Episcopal church and then at thirteen a Wesleyan Methodist church. When he was sixteen he became involved in the Salvation Army. He felt deeply called to fast and pray for lost souls. He saw many people come to Christ. At seventeen a mentor shared with him about water baptism and he decided to be baptized. The Salvation Army was experiencing a tremendous level of the power of God in those days. He describes meetings where "many would be prostrated under the power of the Spirit, sometimes for as long as twenty-four hours at a time." They would pray and fast and cry out for the salvation of fifty or a hundred people for the week and they would see what they had prayed for.
At eighteen Smith left the factory and became a plumber. He moved to Liverpool when he was twenty and continued to work during the day and minister during his free time. He felt called to minister to young people and brought them to meetings. These were destitute and ragged children, whom he would often feed and care for. Hundreds were saved. Smith was often asked to speak in Salvation meetings and he would break down and weep under the power of God. Many would come to repentance in those meetings through this untrained man. At twenty-three he returned back Bradford and continued his work with the Salvation Army.
In Bradford Smith met Mary Jane Featherstone, known as Polly, the daughter of a temperance lecturer. She left home and went to Bradford to take a servants job. One night she was drawn to a Salvation Army meeting. She listened to the woman evangelist, Gipsy Tillie Smith, and gave her heart to Christ. Smith was in that meeting and saw her heart for God. Polly became an enthusiastic Salvationsist and was granted a commission by General Booth. They developed a friendship, but Polly went to Scotland to help with a new Salvationist work. She eventually moved back to Bradford and married Smith, who was very much in love with her.
The couple worked together to evangelize the lost. They opened a small church in a poor part of town. Polly would preach and Smith would make the altar calls. For a season, however, Smith became so busy with his plumbing work that his evangelistic fervor began to wane. Polly continued on, bringing Smith to conviction. One day while Smith was working in the town of Leeds he heard of a divine healing meeting. He shared with Polly about it. She needed healing and so they went to a meeting, and Polly was healed.
Smith struggled with the reality of healing, while being ill himself. He decided to give up the medicine that he was taking and trust God. He was healed. They had five children, a girl and four boys. One morning two of the boys were sick. The power of God came and they prayed for the boys and they were instantly healed. Smith struggled with the idea that God would use him to heal the sick in general. He would gather up a group of people and drive them to get prayer in Leeds. The leaders of the meeting were going to a convention and left Smith in charge. He was horrified. How could he lead a meeting about divine healing? He tried to pass it off to someone else but could not. Finally he led the meeting and several people were healed. That was it. From then on Smith began to pray for people for healing.
Smith had another leap to make. He had heard about the Pentecostals who were being baptized in the Holy Spirit. He went to meetings and was so hungry for God he created a disturbance and church members asked him to stop. He went to prayer and prayed for four days. Finally he was getting ready to head home and the vicar's wife prayed for him and he fell under the power of God and spoke in tongues. Everything changed after that. He would walk by people and they would come under the conviction of the Holy Spirit and be saved. He began to see miracles and healings and the glory of God would fall when he prayed and preached.
Smith had to respond to the many calls that came in and gave up his business for the ministry. Polly unexpectedly died in 1913, and this was a real blow to Smith. He prayed for her and commanded that death release her. She did arise but said "Smith - the Lord wants me." His heartbroken response was "If the Lord wants you, I will not hold you". She had been his light and joy for all the years of their marriage, and he grieved deeply over the loss. After his wife was buried he went to her grave, feeling like he wanted to die. When God told him to get up and go Smith told him only if you "give to me a double portion of the Spirit – my wife’s and my own – I would go and preach the Gospel. God was gracious to me and answered my request.” His daughter Alice and son-in-law James Salter began to travel with him to handle his affairs.
Smith would pray and the blind would see, and the deaf were healed, people came out of wheelchairs, and cancers were destroyed. One remarkable story is when He prayed for a woman in a hospital. While he and a friend were praying she died. He took her out of the bed stood her against the wall and said "in the name of Jesus I rebuke this death". Her whole body began to tremble. The he said "in the name of Jesus walk", and she walked. Everywhere he would go he would teach and then show the power of God. He began to receive requests from all over the world. He taught in Europe, Asia, New Zealand and many other areas. When the crowds became very large he began a "wholesale healing". He would have everyone who needed healing lay hands on themselves and then he would pray. Hundreds would be healed at one time.
Over Smith's ministry it was confirmed that 14 people were raised from the dead. Thousands were saved and healed and he impacted whole continents for Christ. Smith died on March 12, 1947 at the funeral of his dear friend Wilf Richardson. His ministry was based on four principles " First, read the Word of God. Second, consume the Word of God until it consumes you. Third believe the Word of God. Fourth, act on the Word."
God Answers Better Than We Ask
A godly king, backed into a deadly corner, teaches us a liberating truth about prayer. In one of the great tragedies in all of Scripture, David’s son Absalom has exploited his father’s love and conspired against him. Now the rebellion has grown strong, and David is left with no option but to flee Jerusalem in hopes of living to fight another day (2 Samuel 15:14). “Prayer is for turning the tide, for changing the seeming course of history.” As he retreats, weeping as he goes, barefoot, with his head covered in shame, it gets worse. He learns that his most prized advisor, Ahithophel — whose counsel “was as if one consulted the word of God” (2 Samuel 16:23) — has joined Absalom (2 Samuel 15:12). Yet in this most desperate of moments, when David could have crumbled, or wallowed in self-pity, his reflex is Godward. He breathes up a prayer: O Lord, please turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness. (2 Samuel 15:31) Unlikely Plea Admittedly, the prayer seems utterly unlikely, if not impossible, humanly speaking. None was wiser than Ahithophel. One might as well ask for the sun to stand still as to pray for Ahithophel’s wise counsel to turn into folly. Yet these are the very moments for which God has given us prayer. He opens his ear to his people. Not for calling down more comforts for an already cushy existence, but precisely for the times when life and death are at stake. Prayer is not an exercise in naming ahead of time what already seems to be the natural course of action. Prayer is not for making an educated guess out loud to God about what seems to be unfolding already. And it’s certainly not for advising God as to how things should go, as if he needed a counselor (Romans 11:33–34). Rather, prayer is for turning the tide, for changing the seeming course of history. Prayer is for desperate times and dire moments, when we’re backed in a corner — when humanly speaking, the desired outcome, and what seems to be our last chance, is painfully unlikely to unfold, and we need God. We need him to intervene. Without the interruptive fingers of Providence reaching down into the details to disturb what seems to be, from our vantage, the natural course of action, we are doomed. But if he is God, and if he is listening, and if he acts, then we have a fighting chance. Cause and effect do not carry the day. God does. So, David prays. God Does the Unthinkable No sooner has David prayed than Hushai the Archite, who is loyal to David, meets him with torn coat and dirt on his head in mourning (2 Samuel 15:32). David has prayed for Ahithophel’s counsel to turn sour, but now David also acts in faith. He sends Hushai to feign fealty to Absalom, serve as a spy, and perhaps even “defeat for me the counsel of Ahithophel” (2 Samuel 15:34). “Prayer is for desperate times and dire moments, when we’re backed in a corner.” Hushai goes, and like Ahithophel, is received into Absalom’s conspiracy. One of the first orders of business is whether to chase David down and overtake him as he retreats. Ahithophel speaks first: “Pursue David tonight . . . while he is weary and discouraged” (2 Samuel 17:1–2). Per normal, this is wise counsel. “And the advice seemed right in the eyes of Absalom and all the elders of Israel” (2 Samuel 17:4). The great sage has spoken, and this looks like a done deal. And such will spell the end of David — were it not for Hushai, who then speaks. “This time the counsel that Ahithophel has given is not good,” says the mole (2 Samuel 17:7). He then paints David not as the weak and discouraged man that he is, but as mighty, enraged, and expert in war. And God does the unthinkable: he turns the hearts of Absalom and all the men of Israel to say, “The counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel.” What? This is a stunning turn of events. An impossibility, apart from God. Only God himself can turn the hearts like this. And so, 2 Samuel 17:14 adds the explanation, “For the Lord had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that the Lord might bring harm upon Absalom.” No one could have seen this coming. Even David did not at the time of his prayer. Hushai’s deceptive word carries the day, the dominoes begin to fall, and it soon means the end of Absalom, and salvation for David. He Answers Better Than We Ask So, God answered David’s prayer. Or did he? Remember how the king had prayed: “O Lord, please turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness” (2 Samuel 15:31). God had not answered that prayer. In fact, 2 Samuel 17:14 confirms that Ahithophel had given “good counsel.” Yet we find no lament from David that God didn’t answer his prayer. No complaints that the Lord hid his face, or that his ears were stopped, or that he could not see. No mourning. No frustration. No wallowing. David prayed one seemingly impossible prayer, took a modest step in faith, and trusted God to work salvation for him. And David had no sour grapes that God didn’t answer his prayer precisely as he asked. In fact, David delighted to pray to, and to praise, a God who makes a habit of answering better than we ask. No Scriptwriter Could Guess In his commentary on 2 Samuel, Dale Ralph Davis observes, No sooner does [David] pray than Yahweh begins to answer his prayer — and that in a way no scriptwriter could have guessed. Our prayers deal with the what; God’s answers deal with the what and the how and the when. And how the how can surprise us! (160) Our God delights to free us from being the author of our own stories of salvation. When we pray, it is not our job to foresee how God might bring out the rescue and lay out the details for him, even as often as it is our instinct to do precisely this. Most of us fathers would be a little annoyed, if not greatly, if our children not only asked for things but also insisted on laying out exactly how we should go about fulfilling their request. It is a father’s joy to surprise his children with the means, if not with the end. “Our God delights to free us from being the author of our own stories of salvation.” Fortunately, even as we try to counsel him, our Father in heaven is patient. He endures our folly. And he also wants to free us from feeling we need to give him directions. Not only can we not give him directions, but we can trust that his heart is far greater for the holy outcomes we want than our hearts are. And his ways of answering our prayers, according to his good pleasure, are more stunning than we can dream. He loves to answer better than we ask. Not Precisely but Substantially For those who have walked with this God for even a modest measure of time, we have seen him answer far better than we’ve asked. Which, alongside his Father’s heart (Luke 11:11–12) and the gift of his Spirit (Romans 8:26–27), gives us great incentive to pray, and keep praying. In other words, our human instincts, our ignorance, and our inability to counsel him are no disincentives to pray, but rather good reason to keep asking of him who knows how to give better than we know to ask. He knows. “Your Father knows” (Luke 12:30). We do not. “We do not know what to pray for as we ought” (Romans 8:26). His judgments are unsearchable; his ways, inscrutable (Romans 11:33) — which is all the more reason to ask him. Already Answered When Paul celebrates “him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20), he is no mindless optimist. He’s not asking us to groundlessly expect “the best is yet to come” without solid proof in the past and present. And Paul has provided it, rooting his doxology in the gospel he just rehearsed. We were dead in sins, and God made us alive together with Christ. We were separated and alienated, without hope, and God brought us near by the blood of Christ. In the gospel, our God has already answered better than we could have asked. Christ came, he died, he rose — and though we often don’t know precisely how to pray, we do know that our Father loves to hear our requests, and outdo them. Article by David Mathis
