Steve, loved your fly story! http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/july2011/stevec719-1.htm I just have to share this excerpt from my unpublished manuscript: But first, I recently encountered a thick swarm of bees that was right above me in the trees and all around me as I went to my car in my rural driveway; very scary and immediately I heard the Holy Spirit direct me to pray them away. So with faith welling up in me I commanded aloud the bees in Jesus' name to depart to wherever God leads them to go and immediately they left as one in a direction away and over a hill until not one remained. I went inside to ask my wife to come and see them but they were all gone before I could return.

 

Now my other story from my manuscript (a section about prayer):

 

One day, while working at the ranch, I was on the riding mower, mowing one of the many lawns that were there. Suddenly out of the sky came one of those giant horse flies that Jack, the old caretaker had warned me about.

Jack was about as tough a man as you’d ever want to meet. He was a throwback to the days of old and reminded one of John Wayne or someone of that era. Tall and strong and lean, a rough outdoorsman, he’d spent his years on tractors and heavy equipment and was now retired except for living here at the ranch with his wife, Lily, and acting as the caretaker of this place. I mention his toughness because of the fact that there was one thing that he was afraid of and that was those horse flies. He told me that if one of them ever gets after you, don’t let it bite you because they hurt like hell. Jack wasn’t the kind to joke around or else I would have thought he was pulling my leg.

I had seen these things before and had heard that they bite but was never afraid of them too much. But I had never been bitten by one and after he told me that, I was never comfortable when one of them came around. These were not ordinary kinds of creatures either. There was something almost intelligent and sinister about them. First of all, their appearance was like something from another world. They looked something like an ordinary house fly to begin with, except that they were huge by comparison. They seemed like a creature from some secret government experiment that went horribly wrong and it grew in ferocity and size. It was darker in color, really black, and had large white or tan spots on its back. With really big fly eyes that almost seemed like it was wearing sunglasses. It was the size of a small frog or a cricket. Way too big for any fly to be. When it flew, it just scared the heck out of you and when it would land right on the front of my bigger John Deere tractor out in the field it seemed like it was sizing me up. Almost like it was challenging you and you could not ignore it. The reason that it seemed intelligent was the way it would stalk up on you. It would fly around your head and when you would shoo it away from your airspace, it would stay to the back of you knowing that you couldn’t see it back there. Then it would try and land on your back or the back of your neck so you never could relax when it came around. It was relentless too. You’d think you were finally rid of it for a minute when it would go away and then it would come back and start buzzing you again.

I’m the kind of person that judges things, sometimes, based on the experience of those who have gone ahead of me. The fact that Jack was afraid of these things is what really made me leery of them. Prior to his warning, I had never feared them. But now I had learned to have a dread of them whenever one would come around me. They required a lot of attention because of their relentless attempt to land on you so they can bite you. On hot days, I often worked without a shirt on, making me more vulnerable.

So, this particular day, I’m mowing the grass on the riding mower, like I said, and here this thing comes and it buzzed me and bothered me and scared me for about a half an hour. I could hardly mow straight. It would not leave me alone and I’d had enough. So I got God involved. I started praying out loud even though over the noise of the lawn mower only God could hear me anyway… I said,

“Dear God, please do something about this horse fly, that won’t leave me alone…” Then, remembering that God likes it when we get specific in our prayers and sensing that He was saying,

“What would you like Me to do with it?” I said,

“Well, let’s see, I just need it gone as in dead, so it can’t ever come back and get me anymore, and I’d like to see it get dead, so… I know, how about having some big lizard eat it up while I’m watching, that would be great, yeah, do that to it please Lord…”

I’m telling you the honest truth, folks… As I watched, that big, black, horse fly, buzzing around my head … I watched, as it flew over to the swimming pool house, near where I was mowing, and it landed on the roof. I stopped the riding mower, and watched in stunned amazement, as a very large lizard, came across the roof of that building… The roof was the old shake shingle type that sharply sloped upward, toward the top, center, from my vantage point, so I could see all the way up this side of it. There were always lots of lizards living around there and they loved to crawl up and down the sides of that swim house. This big lizard was in the right place at the right time, and as soon as that horse fly landed on that roof, here came this very big lizard and swooped right down on it before it could get away and the lizard grabbed it and munched it down before my startled eyes.

I about did handsprings off the back of that riding mower. I started laughing and praising God with all my might after that. It was way more than just that the mean old fly was gone. It was that God had done it for me, exactly as I had requested. He was letting me know that He was there, looking out for me, and I couldn’t have been more delighted. What a victory that was.