I was hosting a video-based training program for the Evangelism Section of the SBC Home Mission Board in the late 1980s and I needed to interview someone who was a local church prayer coordinator.\u00a0\u00a0I was introduced to Elaine Helms, who served with the Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Georgia.\u00a0\u00a0She graciously agreed to the interview.\u00a0\u00a0Later the same day of her interview I was informed that there was a glitch in the tape that created a loss of sound of several minutes right in the middle of the interview.\u00a0\u00a0In some degree of fear, I called Elaine and asked her if she would return the next day and allow us to re-tape the missing portion of the interview.\u00a0\u00a0Then I boldly asked her to wear the same dress with the same jewelry and to fix her hair the same way, so the new video would match the previous portion.\u00a0\u00a0I was greatly relieved that she agreed. In the years to follow, I watched God use Elaine, a little-known local church prayer leader, to become a national prayer personality, an often-used speaker at prayer conferences, a fellow-member of America\u2019s National Prayer Committee, and a best-selling author, who honored me by asking me to endorse two of her books. She even graciously wrote a chapter for one of my books, often reminding me of my strange request regarding her dress, jewelry and hair. I just received the news that Elaine arrived in heaven one week ago. She taught me to treat everyone you meet as if God plans to use them in mighty ways. I am just glad I got to be a part of Elaine\u2019s journey. When you meet new people this week, treat them like they are special in God\u2019s plans. They just might be one whom, \u201cGod has chosen . . . for Himself, a special treasure\u201d (Deuteronomy 7:6).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was hosting a video-based training program for the Evangelism Section of the SBC Home Mission Board in the late 1980s and I needed to interview someone who was a local church prayer coordinator.\u00a0\u00a0I was introduced to Elaine Helms, who served with the Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Georgia.\u00a0\u00a0She graciously agreed to the interview.\u00a0\u00a0Later…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3530"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3531,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3530\/revisions\/3531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}