A woman drove into a seminary parking lot with her brother slumped in the backseat — eight months in a coma after a car accident, every resource gone. She found the dean, opened the door, and said four words: "I'd like you to heal him." When he told her he didn't have the gift of healing, she climbed behind the wheel and asked a question that never left him:

Guest speaker Pastor Vernon Adams brings that question to Paris Church of the Nazarene — and answers it with five things drawn straight from Acts 3 and the New Testament. It's not a complicated answer. But it's a demanding one.

Pastor Adams opens by sharing a story from a book he picked up years ago at the Cane Ridge meeting house — a collection of stories by Fred Kratic, a minister and professor in the Christian church. For a brief period Kratic was acting dean at Philip Seminary, and one afternoon his secretary told him there was a woman who wanted him to come out to the parking lot.

When he got there, a woman opened the back door of her car. Her brother was slumped in the seat — a senior at the University of Oklahoma who had been in a bad car wreck and had spent the last eight months in a coma. She had quit her job as a schoolteacher to care for him. Every resource was gone. She looked at Kratic and said simply:

The woman"I'd like for you to heal him."

Kratic told her he could pray for her and with her, but that he didn't have the gift of healing. She got behind the wheel and drove away — but not before she turned and asked:

The woman"Then what in the world do you do?"

She didn't give him the chance to pray. She drove off. And that question stayed with Kratic — and has stayed with Pastor Adams — for years. Because it's the same question people passing any church building are silently asking all the time.

That's the question God would ask us as individuals. That's the question God would ask us as a church. And we should have an answer.

The first answer to "What in the world do you do?" is prayer — and Pastor Adams is quick to add that prayer and praise belong together. You cannot separate them. You should not separate them.

James 5:16 calls it the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man — not just prayer, but prayer with heat and weight behind it. And it avails much. The example given is Elijah — a man, the scripture notes carefully, subject to like passions as we are. Not superhuman. Not elevated above us. A man who prayed and the rain stopped for three years and six months. A man who prayed again and the earth brought forth fruit.

Pastor Adams tells of two people who shaped his understanding of prayer. First, his grandmother — who had regular, private times alone with God in the front parlor room, a room the family didn't otherwise use. As a young boy he would go looking for her, not find her in the kitchen or garden, and know exactly where she was. He would stop at the door when he heard her voice.

Second, Pal Whitlock — the pastor at Clintonville Church of the Nazarene, who also worked at General Electric. Every evening after coming home from work, he would walk down to the church and pray. Pastor Adams and his wife Sue lived in the house next door when they were first married, and they could hear him — through two walls.

Pastor Adams"After a while his volume would lift and he was in prayer. We knew that he was there praying."

Who would want to attend a church that does not pray? That takes no requests and cares nothing about the needs of its people?

There is no point talking to God if we don't believe he can answer. Prayer without faith is an empty exercise. The two are inseparable — and that's the point Peter makes in Acts 3 when the crowd gathers around the healed man and stares at him in wonder.

Acts 3:16"His name through faith in his name hath made this man strong — yea, the faith which is by him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all."

Three scriptures frame this point:

Mark 11:22 — Jesus said simply: "Have faith in God." Trust him. Have confidence. Believe in him.

Hebrews 11:6 — "Without faith it is impossible to please God." Not difficult. Not unlikely. Impossible. For he that comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

James 1 — Ask in faith, nothing wavering. For the one who wavers is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed. Let not that man think he shall receive anything of the Lord.

The third answer is the shortest one. Just two letters. A commandment, not a suggestion.

Mark 16:15"Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature."

Going starts right here. Paris is a part of the world. Jesus told a parable about a man who made a great supper and sent his servants out to fill the seats — first into the streets and lanes of the city, then into the highways and hedges, compelling them to come in that my house may be filled.

The same pattern applies to the church. Go into your neighborhood. Go into your city. Go into your county. Keep expanding — all the way to the farthest regions of the world, so that every creature may hear the gospel.

Pastor Adams notes that he's already heard about it happening here: Pastor Curtis and his wife are already out in the community, already involved in local activities, already visiting among the people of Clintonville before coming to Paris each Sunday morning. That's what going looks like in real life.

When the lame man at the gate Beautiful held out his cup, he expected to receive something. You can't pass people by and pretend not to see them. Peter didn't. He looked the man in the eye and said:

Acts 3:6"Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazarene, rise up and walk."

He gave what he had. That's the model — give your time, give your talents, give your treasures. A giving church is a healthy church.

Pastor Adams's stepfather, Jake Jones — an elder at Central Baptist Church — interjected something into a casual conversation one day that stopped Adams cold:

Jake Jones"Don't talk to me about tithing if the church is not going to tithe."

He meant it plainly: if the church is going to ask its members to tithe, the church itself ought to give at least 10% of its income to missions. That's how the Church of the Nazarene is set up — each congregation is expected to give a percentage to support world evangelism and the missionaries God has called and placed on the field.

The fifth answer is the one Jesus closed his final prayer with. In John 17, the whole chapter is the Lord's prayer to his Father — and the last two verses land on one subject.

John 17:26"I have declared unto them your name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."

The distinguishing characteristic and true real evidence that we are Christians — the thing that tells the world we belong to God — is not our theology, not our attendance, not our programs. It's love.

John 13:34–35"A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another as I have loved you. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples — if you have love one to another."

First Corinthians 13 devotes an entire chapter to this one subject, and sums it up in two lines: Love never fails. And now abides faith, hope, and love — but the greatest of these is love.

And this love doesn't stop at the church doors. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount: love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. That you may be the children of your Father in heaven.