29 Top Artists Share Their Coolest Answered Prayer Stories

Feel like you’re talking to the ceiling when you pray? Ever wonder if prayer really works? We’ve all been there. But here’s the bottom line: Even when it doesn’t feel like it, God is listening. We caught up with some of your favorite artists, and here are their coolest answered prayers. Prayer worked for them, and it’ll work for you too!

PLUMB:
A gentleman came up to me and said that he appreciated some of the words in my songs. I noticed in his face something different. He leaned down real quietly and said, “My kidneys are failing, and I just found a donor for a transplant. I don’t know if I’m gonna live.” A very kind man, who wasn’t related to him at all, was willing to donate his kidney. It reminded me of when Jesus said, “If you’ve done it unto the least of these, you’ve done it unto Me.” He told us the exact day and time he was gonna have his transplant, so we prayed for him. He e-mailed us from the hospital that it was successful, and he’s doing marvelously.

LEIGH NASH:
There are so many. It’s almost on a daily basis sometimes, just the grace that I see shown. After praying for something in particular . . . there are too many to count. I hope a lot of us can say that. The amount of grace I feel is shown to me and my loved ones is just unfathomable. He’s done a lot for me.

ALYSSA BARLOW (Barlowgirl):
When I was about 9 or 10 I asked God for a birthday gift. I wanted it to snow. My birthday is in January, so that’s pretty common in Chicago. But that year it had barely snowed at all, it wasn’t supposed to snow, and that’s my favorite thing in the world. I just love a blanket of white, going sledding, snow is so beautiful. So I prayed, “God, I don’t know if you give birthday gifts, but I would love snow for my birthday.” Everyone was like, Alyssa, that’s so stupid, you can’t ask God for that. It’s not supposed to snow. So that birthday morning when I woke up it wasn’t snowing. I was eating breakfast, and I look out the window, and it had just barely started snowing. I was like, that’s good. It’s a little powder. That’s a miracle.

It ended up snowing all day long. It just came down. That evening everybody got to go sledding. It was amazing. It’s funny, because the next year came and it started snowing again on my birthday. Every single year since then (and I’m 24) it has started snowing the morning of my birthday. And I forgot last year because we were out on the road in the south for my birthday. I got a call that day from my uncle, and he said, “Alyssa, guess what’s happening?” It was snowing in Chicago. My uncle and aunt saved me a tupperware of snow. I still cry almost every year because it’s like God’s saying, “I love you.”

REBECCA ST. JAMES:
When I first came to America my dad lost his job. We had no car, no furniture, or food. Sometimes we didn’t know where the next meal was going to come from. We’d pray about it, and then we’d see people show up at our house with groceries or furniture. Checks would come in the mail that just covered our bills. During that time my little sister was born, and still to this day we don’t know who paid the hospital bill! Another one of the neatest answers to prayer was having a best friend. I prayed for years for a best friend that I could really have a strong spiritual relationship with - someone whom I could encourage and receive encouragement from. And then God brought into my life Karleen, whom I met at church. That was such a blessing to me, ‘cause I prayed for it for so long, and she was just what God knew I needed.

TREVOR MCNEVAN (Thousand Foot Krutch):
There are so many prayers He’s answered! He’s always been so faithful. There’ve been plenty of times where I’ve wondered if He was hearing me and didn’t get a quick answer, but in most cases the answer was right in front of my face. There are a few specific prayer reports that stick out in my mind as being “Big Ones”. Here’s one of them: A while back we signed a bad record deal and seemed to be faced with every emotional and spiritual battle I could imagine. I remember so many times asking God for the strength and wisdom to get through it, and asking that whoever we would team up with from that point on would have the same heart and passion for the music and the kids that we did. It was a big mess, and no matter how many times we tried, it seemed like it went on forever. We were coming to a beyond “critical” point as far as moving on and getting new music out. It took 3 plus years and a lot of trials, but God was so faithful. We now have been blessed with an amazing team of people around us, and God couldn’t have placed us anywhere better. We’re very thankful for all the opportunities we’ve been given and want to encourage others in similar situations to hold on to God’s calling on your life, stay motivated, press in, God is BIGGER than the mountains you will face. Trust me.

JAMI SMITH:
He answered me when I called out for salvation, and that’s pretty cool. He answered me by giving me friends to go out on the road with me, which was one of my prayers. I need people to help me with this life and He brought those people.

GEOFF MOORE:
When I was young I prayed that I would meet a really awesome girl, and that God would send me the right woman in my life. I thought I met her when I was seventeen, but I was wrong! Then I thought I met her when I was eighteen, but I was wrong again! When I was nineteen I did meet her and I’ve been married to her for almost twenty-five years.

KALEL (Pillar):
After I was out of high school and my parents moved to Kansas, I decided to stay in California. I was so broke that I literally had no food. I was starving. And I prayed and I said, “God, I need some food or money, or something.” That same day some friends of mine popped out of nowhere. I wasn’t whining or complaining to nobody, but they had like four bags of groceries. They just said that God told them to come by. And a day or two later I got a birthday card from my great-grandmother, it was eight months late, with money in it.

PAUL COLMAN (Newsboys):
I’ve asked God to speak to me, and He does. He’s alive. He speaks. He’s not made of stone. He’s not dead. That’s the coolest thing! I can say, “God, you’ve gotta show me what to do. You’ve gotta speak to me. I’m dumb. I don’t know what I’m doing,” and then He does. Sometimes through a little voice, or through other people. It’s a conversation. Talk to Him, and He will talk back to you. You’ve got to still your heart. When there’s a lot of junk in your head and your heart it’s hard to hear Him, but He is talking.

JOHN COOPER (Skillet):
I was at a place for many years where I'd tried to find happiness in relationships, because I was lonely. There came a point when I decided to give up those relationships. I prayed that God would show me when I met the right person, and when I was at a point in my life that I was ready to be married. God brought my wife Korey to me at just the right time.

NATHAN PICHE (Article One):
Near the end of high school, I really thought I needed more solid Christian guys in my life. I remember praying about it. At the end of that summer I went to Joy Bible Camp and met a group of guys who are still my best friends to this day. As we got to know each other more, it turned out that most of us had been praying for the same thing, and it really helped us grow in our faith.

MARK LEE (Third Day):
Several years ago we were doing a concert in Myrtle Beach. There was this family that had both of their daughters injured in a car accident a few weeks before. One was in a wheelchair, and the other was in a coma. We signed some posters for them and made a video tape for the one in a coma. We prayed with the daughter that was there, and God was faithful. A year later at a show in that area, they both ran up and hugged us, completely recovered, and said, “Hey, you remember us?” It’s not that it had anything to do with us; it’s just cool to see that God answers prayers, and He still does miracles.

ROB BECKLEY (Pillar):
We had a list of things when we very first started, basically the week after we conceived Pillar, and we were just hanging out in the livingroom. We wrote all this stuff out that we needed. We need this many cables, we need some speakers, we need this, we need that. It was less than a year and we had everything. We had like a PA, we had a bus to travel around in and throw it all in. It’s pretty much been like that for us. Every time we get together and we pray just for the things in Pillar in general, it seems like it’s always there.

MARK GRAALMAN (Sanctus Real):
I became a Christian when I was sixteen. I didn’t know anything about Christian music or the Christian music industry. I didn’t know it even existed. I remember with my church youth group I started attending concerts and stuff. I had been playing drums for four years already. I always wanted to be in a band, but I never did anything or got anywhere with it. But then I started going to see Christian bands and I was a brand new Christian and was very zealous and very “Yeah! I want to tell everybody about Jesus!” One band in particular was Johnny Q. Public. They were an awesome band. Very modern. This was back in the early nineties. Here’s this Christian band that has the same the same grunge rock modern sound that my old friends would listen to. The lead singer Dan Fritz just straight up gets on the stage and says, “The one thing we’re about is preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.” That just turned me on. I always had this desire for that. It was like a vision.

I started praying for that, you know like, “God, I want to do that. Please make that your will for my life. If it’s not your will, please make it your will.” But it didn’t happen, and it didn’t happen, and I was praying for three or four years. As the years go by you learn more about being a Christian and understanding you need to submit to God’s will. And so I started thinking, “Man, maybe God is just showing me this isn’t his plan for my life, and it’s only been a selfish thing for me.” I remember one night I completely laid it down at God’s feet saying, “Lord, whatever you want me to do, I just pray, if this is of you, show me.” And literally I open the Bible that night and start reading my devotions and I came across Psalm 37:4 which says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” It was one of those nights when you’re reading your Bible and the thing just jumps off and hits you in the head. I started crying. It was maybe a year after that when I met the guys in Sanctus Real and we started a band. Everything started falling in place. God has made it very clear He just waited for me to give it to Him. And ever since then God has always brought that verse back to confirm things for us. It’s been amazing. The first time we went to Nashville and got the first record label offer we ever got, we’re literally pulling out of the studio parking lot where we practice at and the church next door on the marquis had Psalm 37:4 written out. That same week in my devotions were on Psalm 37:4. There’s like three days in the year when I would be reading it, and that day I was reading it again. We ended up signing with Sparrow records, and the night we went down to do our showcase for Sparrow we were leading worship at Mark & Steve’s church. I went in the chapel because I forgot my symbols. Maybe the drum set has one here, I thought, and I turn around and walked out. Guess what? Written on the board is Psalm 37:4. The next day we played the showcase and half a year later ended up signing with Sparrow.

JOHN REUBEN:
I loved this girl, my wife. I spent years praying whether or not it was God's will for me to feel the way I did about her. It was a 5 year process of me really having strong feelings for her but having to continually surrender them to God and allow Him to work in both me and her. It's amazing to look back over the whole process and see how God used this period of my life not only to prepare me for marriage but to also draw me much closer to Him and trust Him and know He was in control regardless of how the scenario turned out. It was a prayer that turned into many prayers in areas that had more to do with just a life partner. Trust and faith being two. And areas of my character that needed to mature and develop. Areas of patience, areas of forgiveness . . . all of these things God revealed to me to mature me into the man He wanted me to be. Not just for my wife, but for life in general. But it started with just praying about my feelings for her. Funny how it all works.

LISA KIMMEY (Out of Eden):
One of the coolest prayers for me took place when we were younger and we lived in Virginia. We wanted to go to “Water Country”. It’s a water amusement park. There was thunder and lightning, and it was about to start raining before we left. And we were like, “God, you know, please!” We went outside and praised and worshiped and we just danced around and thanked God for good weather. The sun came out and we were able to go. That was so cool to know that God cares about the little stuff.

Tracy Darlington is a freelance writer, and her work has appeared in Brio, Breakaway, YS, CCM Magazine, Insight, Infuze Magazine, and other publications. She has interviewed countless Christian musicians including Rebecca St. James, Delirious, Newsboys, Leigh Nash, Barlowgirl, Krystal Meyers, Joy Williams, Pillar, Michelle Tumes, and many others. In her spare time she can be found listening to music and sipping a Venti 3-shot sugar-free vanilla latte.