“Look What God Did!”
— By Tim Keesee
On Tuesday mornings the Frontline staff gathers to pray, and we’ve been doing this week after week, year after year. We chose Tuesday because that day worked best for those of us who were in churches on Sunday, since Monday was usually the day to travel home after a weekend of meetings—and often one or more of us would be heading out again at the end of the week for another weekend of circuit-riding preaching.
So as usual, we met to pray on the first Tuesday of the new year. Ben went around the table and asked each of us for a prayer request, and Ronny’s answer at the inaugural prayer meeting for 2026 still brings me much joy and expectation. He said:
Let’s ask God to do something this year that is totally beyond what we can do or even plan to do, so that we can look back in astonishment and say, “Look what God did! We never saw that coming!”
This wasn’t just big talk. It is big praying to our big God who is “able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20). We have seen such sovereign surprises in the past, and many times God has answered prayer by going far beyond what we asked or even imagined. Samuel Zwemer, one of my missionary heroes, said:
The history of missions is the history of answered prayer.
Borrowing from Zwemer, I can say that for more than thirty years now, the history of Frontline Missions is the history of answered prayer. I could write a book on this, but let me share three stories of such answers to prayer that the only explanation is that God did it.
The first is our home office in Taylors, South Carolina. In the early years of Frontline, we rented a small house, which we soon outgrew. We needed more space and noticed that an old school district office building on an acre of land in a great location had come up for sale. We could hardly dream of having such a place for what we could afford, so we didn’t do anything at first. But as it remained unsold, we decided to make the best offer we could, which was well below asking price—and to our surprise, it was accepted! But it turned out that wasn’t the biggest part of the surprise. I think God wanted to remind us that He did this, because when I went to the closing, the representative from the school district was clearly flabbergasted over the deal. She said during the months the property was up for sale, there wasn’t a single offer except ours. And our bid (unbeknownst to us) was the lowest they were allowed to accept. Then she added, “After we accepted your offer, we were covered up with other offers—many higher than yours.” We couldn’t go any higher, they couldn’t go any lower; but look what God did in providing us a standalone office that has been our base of worldwide operation for nearly twenty years. Hardly a day goes by when I’m in the office that I don’t look around me and smile and think, “Who is like the Lord our God?” (Psalm 113:5).
Ronny and John
Another look-what-God-did answer to prayer was when John Hutcheson joined the staff of Frontline. In the early years of Frontline, I knew I needed help to build the work, so I reached out to John, who was living out in Missouri, to ask if he would join Frontline to present the ministry to churches and oversee our ministry in Ukraine, Russia, and Central Asia. I knew John was in a time of ministry change and already had several offers of places to serve and that we had little to offer him but hard work, so I wasn’t surprised when he politely declined.
Well, I tried, John said no, and that was the end of the story. Only it wasn’t. Three weeks later John called and said that since we talked, both in times of prayer and in reading the Word, he felt the Lord impress upon him to serve with Frontline. So, if the offer still stood, he’d like to accept. Look what God did!
John and I went on to serve together for twenty years, and the impact he had on me personally, in churches across America, by his wide and effective advocacy for the Persecuted Church, and with his teaching and mentoring all across the former Soviet empire is immeasurable. “This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes” (Psalm 118:23).
With Pete, southern Arabia 2016
The third such surprising answer to prayer—beyond what we could ask or think—was the Dispatches from the Front documentaries. It was just a “two men and a camera” operation with Pete Hansen filming and me scribbling in my journal as the days unfolded in some Forward Operating Base of the Kingdom. We never imagined the impact these stories would have by blessing the Church and enriching our lives with so many new friends we made along the way.
I could keep going by telling how God opened up unexpected doors of ministry in China, Indonesia, Central Asia, and North Africa, but out of respect and gratitude for your perseverance, I’ll save those stories for another time. We praise God that for over thirty years, Frontline has witnessed how faithful, believing prayer is offered up and how God provides—and sometimes even surprises us—to remind us of His power, mercy, and love!
You, too, are part of the Big Story and of Frontline’s story. Thank you so very much! Please keep us on your prayer list this year because we are in this together to glorify Christ more and more and to spread His fame to the ends of the earth! I’m eager to see how God answers Ronny’s request so that at the end of 2026 we can say with jaw-dropping awe, “Look what God did!”
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