1Peter 3:12

My grandfather used to work for the Texas Highway Department with a guy called Ray Alexander - a believer. Their job was to put asphalt in potholes. Ray witnessed to my grandfather and said, "Why don't you come over tonight after dinner and let me share more with you about Jesus?" So my grandfather said, 'OK.' After dinner he got up and started to leave, and my father - then aged sixteen - sasid to him, "Where are you going?" My grandfather said, "I'm going to talk to a man." My father had just gotten his driver's license and asked, "Can I drive you?" My grandfather said, "Yes, but you have to stay outside while we talk."

So they drove over; my father sat alone in the car. Finally he became a little bored, so he got out ot the car, and he went up and sat on the steps of the front porch. There was no air-conditioning back then, so the door was open. For the first time, my father heard the gospel - that Jesus was the Son of God, came to the earth and died on the cross for our sins. Ray Alexander said to my grandfather, 'Would you like to accept Jesus as your Saviour?' My grandfather said, "No. I want to think about it." Ray then said to my grandfather, "Then, if you ever decide to get saved, pray a prayer like this." And as he went through the sinner's prayer, my father, sitting on the front porch, actually prayed that prayer and got saved. He raised me in a Christian home, and I too became a Christain, then became an evangelist, did stadium crusades, preached in churches - and saw thousands of people saved.

A few years before my grandfather died at seventy-seven, forty-five years after Ray Alexander shared Christ with him, I got burdened about it. So, at a family reunion, we went into a room alone, and I shared Christ with my grandfather, and my grandfather got saved. I called Ray Alexander. Ray didn't even know that my father got saved that night forty-five years before. I said to him, "Because of you, thousands of people have come into the kingdom. And now I want you to know that my grandfather has been saved, too." Ray Alexander started to weep. "Your grandfather is the only name in the back of my Bible without a tick beside it." He told me he had prayed for my grandfather for forty-five years, but as soon as he got off the phone, he was going to put a tick beside my grandfather's name.

Everyone on his list that he had been praying for had now come to Christ.

Extract from 'Did You Think to Pray?'