Pray Me, Daddy!

This past weekend I was inspired, educated, and challenged.  I had the privilege of hearing Gary Young, founder of Young Living essential oils, share his heart and knowledge with those of us attending a conference in Michigan. He spoke about his dream for natural healing around the world, his work in creating the World Peace Caravan scheduled for December 2015, and his conviction that we are all loved by God the Father who delights in answering our prayers.

Gary founded Young Living after he personally experienced the powerful healing of pure plant oils. For over 34 years, he has researched and tested essential oils and his passion for and knowledge of essential oils is amazing. He opened my eyes to the complexity of the process of producing therapeutic essential oils from start to finish (or what YL calls Seed to Seal). His commitment to purity and integrity was evident.

The World Peace Caravan was inspired by a dream that Gary had and believes was a call from God. It will be a reenactment of the peace caravan taken by the Queen of Sheba to Solomon in 980 B.C.  The caravan will follow the same route, by foot or on camel, from Petra, Jordan to the Dead Sea, then on to Bethlehem and ending in Jerusalem. 

The purpose of the caravan is to unite people of different cultures and religions in a demonstration of cooperation and unity, to be a voice for the children of the world, and to raise money for schools, missions orphanages and health clinics in underprivileged countries. If you would like more information about the World Peace Caravan please visit worldpeacecaravan.org. 

While all the health information and details of the caravan were informative, inspiring and very useful, I was deeply touched by Gary’s personal sharing of his faith and his challenge to each of us to cultivate our relationship with God, taking time to pray and to simply ask for our needs in trust.  He shared stories of multiple times when he would tell God of a problem that he needed help with and God would wake him in the middle of the night with the solution or directions.

Gary and his wife, Mary, shared how they take time to pray as a family, to follow the example of Jesus and trust in the Father.  When one of the boys was seriously injured in a skiing accident, he turned to Gary and pleaded, “Pray me, daddy”.  Gary says they took a moment to simply tell God they needed His help. After this simple prayer, the obviously broken shoulder and elbow were mended, and this was documented with Xrays.

Gary also shared how God has opened doors for him to go to forbidden areas of world, like Oman and Somalia, to meet leaders in various countries, like Jordan, who are making the World Peace Caravan possible, and to discover new plant species in remote areas of the world that have remarkable healing properties.

I was challenged to take a look at my own faith and to ask myself if I have the confidence that God will lead, that God can and will heal, and that God has a unique purpose for my life and can use me to change the world.  Do you believe this for yourself?