It should’ve been a quiet Friday night. It was, after all, near midnight.
But unlike any other ordinary Friday night, it was the night when they should’ve all died.
It was the 17th of June 1983. Like they always did on that day of the week, the Villanuevas were on their way home after a Miracle Healing and Deliverance Service.
Bro. Eddie was carrying his sleeping daughter… his then-pregnant wife, Sis. Dory was assisting their other two children. And then it happened.
A grenade explosion. Right at their veranda.
The explosion boomed through the whole compound. It was a deafening sound. But, even louder than the booming noise was the cry of a man caught in a life and death situation:
We are covered by the blood of Jesus! We are the children of the Living God! No weapon can harm us because we are the children of God! Praise the Lord! Thank you, Jesus! Hallelujah!
A man of prayer, Bro. Eddie’s first thought was not to call curses on their attacker. Nor to question God. His was a cry of faith – a cry of prayer.
We all know what happened next: not a single shrapnel hit the Villanuevas.
Three decades have passed and still, we are awestruck by that incident. What an awesome God! What an awesome faith in the living God!
Let us continue to relish the truths from that incident that the passage of time can not erase. God is always on our side. He is forever keeping us safe in His loving arms. And, should we choose to live a life of prayer, we too, can be like that man of God, whose reaction in the midst of adversity was and still is: prayer.
So, though hard pressed on every side, persecuted, and struck down, we do not retaliate. Instead, we pray. Full of faith that if our God is on our side, no one can ever be against us.
How about you? What forces attack you, beating you down? A failed exam? Stress and fatigue at your workplace? Piled up bills? A rocky marriage? An incurable disease? A loved one’s death?
Then, stay down. NOT in despair or hopelessness. But down on your knees, in prayer. Be assured that just as God heard Bro. Eddie’s cry for help thirty years ago, He still hears. And more than hear, He answers.