When Prayers are Heard, Answers Come: Finding Peace in Times of Crisis

From the Desk of Chuck Fuller

“Our prayers, sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered”

Many years ago, I led a task force responding to a series of tornados that devastated parts of eastern North Carolina. In our early discussions, we debated how many people needed to be impacted for us to implement a “disaster protocol.” 

Someone spoke up and said, “A crisis is what you are facing individually.” When the right solution is presented as an answer, it can feel like something so obvious, so clearly true, that you wonder why you even asked the question in the first place.

We wrote the policy around one home or person.

The same thing is true today. Whether your candidate didn’t win this time, or your home was devastated by a hurricane, or you’re dealing with the loss of a loved one or a serious health matter in your family – a “crisis” is what is happening to you individually, regardless of how many others might experience the same. 

It seems that all around us, crises are overwhelming us, individually and collectively. Just last week, I was having breakfast with some good friends. One of the guys received a call from his wife. She had just been given the news that she may have cancer. There it was again – crisis!

Two weeks ago, I shared in TRC Nexus a quote from Benjamin Franklin regarding America’s divine opportunity. This opportunity rests with each one of us now as it did 250 years ago – no matter what crisis you are facing:

We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running all about in search of it. In this situation of this assembly, groping, as it were, in the dark, to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for the divine protection. Our prayers, sir, were heard; and they were graciously answered.


Could it be, no matter our individual circumstances, “that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the father of lights to illuminate our understandings?”

This isn’t supposed to sound like some sort of self-help column. I’m sharing my thoughts with you, as I have the privilege of doing on most holidays, because I get the sense more people than usual feel a certain unease right now. I get that sense based on personal conversations, stories others relate to me, and just having a certain gauge after being in this world for as long as I’ve been.

I’ve faced my own crises. What I know doesn’t help is being told how to get through it. So today, I’m sharing with you how I find my own personal peace. It’s no secret I see all of my circumstances from a faith perspective, so much of what follows will have faith-based undertones. But that’s me. Perhaps sharing how I find some solitude in this very noisy time can spark something in you, either personally or that you can share with others – especially at this time of the year when we focus on “thanks.”

Rick Warren is the retired pastor of Saddleback Church in California. Over the past month, I’ve been studying his series on Daniel and his messages on what to do when you are facing a crisis. 

Daniel faced constant challenges in his life. He was removed from his home at an early age to serve a conquering king. His life was threatened with execution – limb by limb – if he could not tell the king what the king dreamed and what it meant. He was thrown into a den of lions. Those are some real crises!

When in crisis, what am I to do? My first move is to look to God – like Benjamin Franklin did.

After that Rick Warren teaches us to “ask for time to create a solution”: 

If your boss comes in and says, ‘I need this done,’ and you go, ‘it’s impossible,’ you need to ask for time to create a solution. Now the reason why you want to ask for time instead of just immediately get to work on it is because in a crisis, the greatest temptation you have is to be impulsive.

If you’re in a car accident, when you get out of that car, you’re not thinking logically, you’re not thinking rationally. You’re in a car accident, you’re thinking emotionally, and you want to make an impulsive decision, you want to make it fast. It’s more important to make the right decision than to make a fast decision.

The wrong decision is the wrong decision no matter how fast or slow you make it. And so, when you’re facing an impossible situation, take a little time, step back, take a deep breath, phew, calm down, talk to God. Daniel is asking for some time.
What seems impossible to me, is not impossible to God.

Rick Warren then shows us when facing the impossible, Daniel praised God for who He is, honored Him for what He does, and thanked God for helping him.

Rick Warren continues:

There is a God in heaven. Your dream may be on the skids, but there is a God in heaven. You may be up to your eyeballs in alligators, but there is a God in heaven.

You may be going down for the last time, and the weeds are pulling you down, and you’re in deep guacamole. But there is a God in heaven. And that is what gives the world hope.

Because God can do what none of us can do. None of these people could solve your problem, King. But there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries.

It’s taken me a long time in my life to learn the skill of just stepping back for a moment – of taking a beat, really thinking about what’s going on around me, and removing myself from the immediate circumstances.

The way I’ve learned to do that is through prayer, but this lesson is still applicable if you remove the religion from it.

Times of crisis are, by nature, overwhelming. Everything seems so pressurized, like a submarine bearing the weight of the ocean. That feeling can create the false impression that what’s happening around us can never be fixed.

But that’s almost never the case. A little space, a little thought or prayer, and a little time clarifies the world before us, like wiping your glasses clean.

As Franklin said, “In the beginning of [our crisis] the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for the divine protection. Our prayers, sir, were heard; and they were graciously answered.”

And ours can be answered too.

May you and your family enjoy a wonderful, blessed Thanksgiving.


Chuck Fuller is the Founder and CEO of The Results Company, he can be reached at cfuller@theresultscompany.com.