Answered Prayer Stories
Grandmother’s First Bible
In 1919 my grandparents lived in Santa Fe Oklahoma while my grandfather worked in the oil field.
In those days they had to arrange to live in the best way they could, it was long before anyone could go to a new location and have access to real housing as we now know it.
They lived in a large tent, grandmother cooked on an iron stove, and she swept the hard-red clay dirt that was the floor of the large tent. They had three small children and two metal framed beds, a few pots, pans and dishes, and a wooden rocking chair.
When the wind blew hard the dry red dust would fill the air and ride the currents across the dry land.
My grandmother longed for a bible to read, but she knew few people in the area, and fewer still that had a bible. Everyday grandma would pray for a bible to read. One day a storm with wind racing down the road, made the tent flap slap furiously and the tent to sway as the wind grew into a heavy billowing gust.

Grandmother kept the children on the big metal bed, while she watched the growing storm clouds gather. She was ready to put them under the bed when it got too bad. She saw some loose paper sheets swirling around down the dust covered road. She cautioned the children to stay on the bed while she rushed out to gather some of the pages of the book. She gathered up eight pages from a Bible, and she was so happy that she now could read from the bible. That was my grandparents first Bible.
Many times, I have seen on the Internet various videos showing people from other nations who have prayed for many years for a Bible. I would see them as they rejoiced when they finally would have a box of Bibles sent to a church, and they thank the Lord for the opportunity to read the Bible. They hungered for God’s word, like people starving for much-needed food.
We need to see that desire here in America. Instead of hungering and thirsting for the amazing word of God, our people have become shut-off from being receptive to God’s truth. They first became gospel hardened, with a hardened heart toward other people, they became unkind and cruel. They became resistant to Jesus Christ by being persuaded to live with a double-minded perspective of the world system.
They have wavered from the truth, by swinging back and forth, like a pendulum. People have professed more than they possessed of God’s truth. They have tried to accept Jesus statements in the Bible, but they haven’t fully believed them to produce life-changing faith. They have been persuaded more by the unclean habits of the people of the world, than the clean habits of resting in the faith of Jesus Christ.
You can only have peace, rest and contentment in your belief in Jesus Christ when you can love others as yourself. When you can fill your mind, heart and soul with the wonderful life changing words of Jesus Christ’s truth.
Joan Jessalyn Cox
See my new video on our website, grandma’s first bible
http://www.jesusabundanthope.com