How was the idea of the three main categories of prayer answers developed?
When Karen Barber wrote her book Surprised by Prayer she collected true answers to prayer from people all over the country. When she organized the stories she included a chapter entitled “Surprised by Presence” and “Surprised by a Word.” In these chapters she analyzed the life experiences, compared them to Scripture and explored the idea of how both Presence and Word answers are powerful yet often overlooked ways God responds when we pray. While writing the book Karen also decided to try an experiment to find and record 100 personal answers to prayer. The idea of the three main categories of prayer answers Action, Presence and Word helped her succeed in her recording 100 answers in 51 days. During the experiment she numbered prayer answers in her journal and assigned each answer to one of these three categories. She kept on numbering after she reached 100 and over a six year period she recorded over 1,300 different answers to prayer. Through a wide variety of life situations she saw th
