By David Hobbs
[Before reading this post, please go to the archives and read the last post: "Friday Night at the Garden House." That will put this story in proper context.]
The next night, Saturday, I was eager to go back to the place of prayer in the shed and seek God again. I was still totally fired up by the revelation of the Lord from the night before. Since this was going to be my last night at the folks’ before the flight to Atlanta the following evening, if I was going to spend some serious time seeking the Lord’s face before the tradeshow, it would have to be tonight.
After getting home from dinner and watching a delayed 4th of July fireworks show with the folks, I retired to the shed, hoping to be able to spend the better part of the night in prayer. Maybe I would have another vision!
However, one universal principle in things of the Spirit is that God rarely repeats Himself. Did Jesus ever heal the same way twice? Let along twice in a row? Are any two snowflakes alike? Or any two fingerprints? Or any two people? God is the God of infinite creativity and variety, and whenever we go to Him hoping He’ll do again what He did last time… we’re looking backwards instead of forwards—longing for the past instead of anticipating the future!
I soon got into the Spirit and was having a good time praising and worshipping the Lord, but He didn’t show up as He had the night before.
Somewhere between 10 and 11 p.m. a strange sound began to impose itself on my quiet isolation—it sounded like a quad runner or maybe a dirt bike being ridden around a dirt track, full of short bursts of acceleration as if slowing down for turns and then speeding up. I ignored it for a long time. Indeed that’s one thing you have to do in prayer: learn to focus on the Lord and block out all other distractions. But it kept going on and on.
It was hard to tell how close it was; it sounded like it was right over the railroad tracks between the tracks and the lake. Our house sits on a little hill with the road on one side and the railroad tracks down the hill on the other. Past the tracks is a little-used gravel road that services a couple of houses between the tracks and a lake. The lake is about 50 acres, with quite a few houses on the other side, but just a few on our side because the lake and the tracks get closer together until there’s no room. I assumed the bike rider was from one of the few houses on our side, riding around a patch of ground between the tracks and the gravel road.
The hours passed and I was getting more and more tired. I kept trying to block the bike noise from my thinking but it was persistent—revving up, revving down, revving up, coasting, revving up, etc. Finally I began to feel convicted. Here was some poor soul--who obviously needed Jesus--that the Lord kept trying to bring into my consciousness and I kept firmly resisting. I took stock of the situation. I had no desire at all to share with this guy, I was too busy praying and seeking the Lord (just like the Levite and the priest on the road to Jerusalem who couldn’t be bothered helping the poor man who was overcome by thieves). Seeing how little I cared in my heart made me even more convicted! How can I be so uncaring and indifferent?
After battling in my heart for awhile I surrendered to the Holy Spirit. “OK Lord, if you’re not going to take this guy out of my life, I will go and try to share with him, even if it is after midnight! Stirring myself from the chair that I had almost become a part of, I made my way to the door in the darkness and eased out into the cool night air. I pushed through the brushy thicket until I was on the edge of the cut bank of the railroad tracks. Now I had a better perspective, being able to look down on the tracks and the lake beyond. I realized to my surprise that the rider was not right below me at all. The sound was coming from the direction of the lake; therefore it had to be on the other side of the lake! That was over ½ mile away as the crow flies, certainly not right on my doorstep. I was amazed at how well the sound carried, but then it was the still of the night without a breeze stirring, and it was coming over the water (and we all know how well sound carries over water!)
There was no way to carry out my plan now. I couldn’t get from this side of the lake to the other because of the swampy, brushy area at either end. I didn’t even know what road to take to get me to the other side of the lake, the railroad tracks having effectively blocked most roads in that direction . So I went back to my prayer time, praying outside in the refreshingly cool night air instead of going back to the stuffy and confined shed.
But now a new thought started gnawing on me: if the sound was carrying that well over the lake to me, how many other people was it bothering on his side of the lake—people trying to sleep with their windows open to catch the cool night air after the hot summer day? Finally I just prayed and asked the Lord to make the guy stop already for the sake of his neighbors. And sure enough shortly after that the guy did stop, letting the blessed peace of the night settle over us again.
I was getting more weary, and the perceived presence of the Lord was fading as my spirit man was being taken over by the natural one (“the spirit is willing but the body is weak”).
About 3:30, after a hiatus of half an hour, the engine started up again: revving up and down, up and down, around and around his makeshift track. I was beside myself. “This guy is going all night. Has he no regard for anybody else at all? If I can hear him so plainly a half mile away, how many other people are closer than that? This galvanized me out of my growing lethargy and sluggishness. I was trying not to lose my victory and the Spirit as well, but this fellow was trying me. He went on and on.
At about 4 a.m. a growing resolve started coming over my mind. It wasn’t really about me and my inconvenience. It was about the inconvenience to countless others who were suffering in silence. There was no one to speak up for them, and apparently they didn’t know how to speak up for themselves. I felt conviction settle over my heart. It was time to go on offense! As I had at other times before, I stretched out my hand toward the perpetrator and began coming against him in prayer, commanding him in my spirit to cease. After a short while I heard the engine sputter and quit! “Victory!” I exulted. But only a little while later it started up again, like he was trying to fix the problem and continue. Once more I raised my hand and began praying against him. Nothing this time. He kept going on, but I wasn’t about to give up. I must have prayed that way with outstretched arm for 5 minutes. Then once again it quit, and this time it didn’t start again.
“You don’t have to thank me,” I said in the spirit to all the people he had kept awake and bothered most of the night, “just thank the Lord for sending me here and granting me His power to do His will on earth like it is in heaven!”
Later after I returned home to Calif., the Lord gave me a preaching message out of this incident. The message was entitled “Live Ammunition.” It was based on the fact that the U.N. often sends peace-keeping forces into trouble spots of the world, but because it’s the U.N., they have guns and uniforms, etc. but no live ammunition! They are a paper tiger, an armed force in appearance only; they have no real power.
In contrast, the Lord wants to entrust us—His army—with live ammunition. The only trouble with live ammunition is that if you’re not careful, somebody could get hurt! The U.N. doesn’t have to worry about that; nobody will ever get hurt in their activities (unless they run over some poor pedestrian with a Jeep!)
The Lord gave me real power that night, and I used it for His purposes. If we want that for ourselves, we must be careful that it’s never about us, but always about Him! First I committed myself to His will, which I thought was witnessing to this guy, even when I didn’t want to. Then when it turned out His will was different, it wasn’t until I thought of all the other people he was bothering rather than myself, that I felt a conviction to go ahead and use God’s power through prayer against him.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Friday Night at the Garden House
By David Hobbs
It was Friday night, July 5, 2007 and I was at the folks’ house in Ohio, visiting for a few days before going to Atlanta for the tradeshow of the Christian Bookseller’s Convention.
Years ago, Dad had a little garden house built in the thicket behind the house. Two thirds of it was for lawn and garden equipment while the other third was a little apartment. The apartment had never been used for much until this spring, when my son Joe spent a couple of months there working on the property which had become much overgrown due to the folks’ increasing age and physical infirmity.
My son Joe had fixed up the little apartment and lived there, a space where he could be alone and live according to the dictates of his iconoclastic lifestyle. It was still sparse and bare, but he had gotten the woodstove fired up and working, had a bed frame to throw down a sleeping pad on, a wood table and chair, some candles and a kerosene lamp.
I didn’t need it to sleep in—the spare upstairs bedroom in their house was plenty adequate—but found it was perfect for my needs as a prayer closet. It was far enough away from the house that I could close myself in, and have plenty of freedom to be as loud as I wanted: to sing, to pray, to shout—however the Spirit led. And so it as there I went Friday night at bedtime to seek the Lord.
I took some matches with me, and a flashlight, to get the lamp and candles fired up. Unfortunately, the candles had all burned down to stumps, and when I lit the lamp, I couldn’t get much flame out of it. The more I turned up the wick, the smaller it seemed to burn. I soon discovered why: it as out of kerosene and the little flame came from burning up the residue of fuel in the wick. Since I didn’t want to keep the flashlight burning, I had to accept total darkness as the prayer milieu of the night.
There were a couple of windows in the apartment, but since the moon was on the wane and the building was immersed in the thicket of brush and trees, the darkness was almost complete.
I sat on the chair by the little table and began to pray, calling on the Name of the Lord and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I got as loud as I felt my spirit wanted, rising to my feet and singing worship to the Lord into the darkness, sensing His presence gradually filling the room. Then, I don’t remember exactly how it all came about, but suddenly I was aware of His physical presence in the room! Now the presence of the Holy Spirit is one thing--a generalized sense of the Presence of God--when you know He is there, hearing everything you say, with you in every sense of the word. But this was different. This was the personal presence of Jesus, there with me in the total darkness. I knew exactly where He was, in the opposite corner of the room. And this was the strange thing: I could sense Him there surrounded with intense brightness, but I couldn’t see anything with my physical eyes. Even with my spiritual eyes I couldn’t see Him or the light, just sense His awesome Presence radiating glorious light.
Because I know it’s never about me, but always about Him, I asked Him trepidatiously what was on His heart, inviting Him to speak, waiting for His Word to come forth, fearful because here I was in a tiny room with the all-glorious God of the universe from whom nothing was hidden. Yet beyond the fear, somewhere deep within my “natural man,” I was wondering what one thing--out of all the things in the universe He could talk about--would be the uppermost thought in Jesus’ mind that night? Lost souls? My trip to Atlanta? The state of the church? My own state? The end times? Coming judgments…? What?
I had only a moment to wonder, as thoughts of the cross flooded my mind and soon I was engrossed in the story of the cross coming from the heart of my Lord—the suffering, the agony, the total victory it brought…. When it was over I was left thinking, “No matter how many things and how many times I’ve heard about the cross, it still is the most powerful doctrine in the church. No wonder Jesus is thinking about it this night.”
Colossians 2:13 … [God] forgave us all our sins, 14 having cancelled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
1 Corinthians 2:8 [NIV]—None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
That remains one of the greatest and most precious times Jesus has come to me. To have the Lord of the universe there in the room with me and talking to me... there really is no way to adequately describe it!
It was Friday night, July 5, 2007 and I was at the folks’ house in Ohio, visiting for a few days before going to Atlanta for the tradeshow of the Christian Bookseller’s Convention.
Years ago, Dad had a little garden house built in the thicket behind the house. Two thirds of it was for lawn and garden equipment while the other third was a little apartment. The apartment had never been used for much until this spring, when my son Joe spent a couple of months there working on the property which had become much overgrown due to the folks’ increasing age and physical infirmity.
My son Joe had fixed up the little apartment and lived there, a space where he could be alone and live according to the dictates of his iconoclastic lifestyle. It was still sparse and bare, but he had gotten the woodstove fired up and working, had a bed frame to throw down a sleeping pad on, a wood table and chair, some candles and a kerosene lamp.
I didn’t need it to sleep in—the spare upstairs bedroom in their house was plenty adequate—but found it was perfect for my needs as a prayer closet. It was far enough away from the house that I could close myself in, and have plenty of freedom to be as loud as I wanted: to sing, to pray, to shout—however the Spirit led. And so it as there I went Friday night at bedtime to seek the Lord.
I took some matches with me, and a flashlight, to get the lamp and candles fired up. Unfortunately, the candles had all burned down to stumps, and when I lit the lamp, I couldn’t get much flame out of it. The more I turned up the wick, the smaller it seemed to burn. I soon discovered why: it as out of kerosene and the little flame came from burning up the residue of fuel in the wick. Since I didn’t want to keep the flashlight burning, I had to accept total darkness as the prayer milieu of the night.
There were a couple of windows in the apartment, but since the moon was on the wane and the building was immersed in the thicket of brush and trees, the darkness was almost complete.
I sat on the chair by the little table and began to pray, calling on the Name of the Lord and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I got as loud as I felt my spirit wanted, rising to my feet and singing worship to the Lord into the darkness, sensing His presence gradually filling the room. Then, I don’t remember exactly how it all came about, but suddenly I was aware of His physical presence in the room! Now the presence of the Holy Spirit is one thing--a generalized sense of the Presence of God--when you know He is there, hearing everything you say, with you in every sense of the word. But this was different. This was the personal presence of Jesus, there with me in the total darkness. I knew exactly where He was, in the opposite corner of the room. And this was the strange thing: I could sense Him there surrounded with intense brightness, but I couldn’t see anything with my physical eyes. Even with my spiritual eyes I couldn’t see Him or the light, just sense His awesome Presence radiating glorious light.
Because I know it’s never about me, but always about Him, I asked Him trepidatiously what was on His heart, inviting Him to speak, waiting for His Word to come forth, fearful because here I was in a tiny room with the all-glorious God of the universe from whom nothing was hidden. Yet beyond the fear, somewhere deep within my “natural man,” I was wondering what one thing--out of all the things in the universe He could talk about--would be the uppermost thought in Jesus’ mind that night? Lost souls? My trip to Atlanta? The state of the church? My own state? The end times? Coming judgments…? What?
I had only a moment to wonder, as thoughts of the cross flooded my mind and soon I was engrossed in the story of the cross coming from the heart of my Lord—the suffering, the agony, the total victory it brought…. When it was over I was left thinking, “No matter how many things and how many times I’ve heard about the cross, it still is the most powerful doctrine in the church. No wonder Jesus is thinking about it this night.”
Colossians 2:13 … [God] forgave us all our sins, 14 having cancelled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
1 Corinthians 2:8 [NIV]—None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
That remains one of the greatest and most precious times Jesus has come to me. To have the Lord of the universe there in the room with me and talking to me... there really is no way to adequately describe it!
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Spirit-led Rescue Around the Lake
By David Hobbs
One summer we joined some of the church families going up to Little Grass Valley Reservoir beyond LaPorte to camp for the weekend at one of the campgrounds. Saturday afternoon the weather was beautiful and people from our group were fishing, swimming, or loafing around their campsites. I decided to take a hike and spend some time with the Lord.
The campground was on a finger of the lake where a stream flowed in. I made my way down the shore until I reached the tip of the finger. Luckily I was able to cross the stream on the bridge the access road used as it wound around the lake going from campground to campground. Once on the other side of the inlet I continued working my way along the shore, soon finding and following a horse trail, all the time praising the Lord, singing, and meditating on Him, things that I knew would draw the Holy Spirit close. All the time I felt His presence, and it was wonderful: a glorious day and a precious time with my God.
About a half mile down the other side of the lake I left the trail and made my way to the lake shore, having to slide down a rocky slope to get there. Once in this secluded and beautiful spot I pulled out my pocket Bible, found a passage, and began to read God’s word aloud (another way I’ve found to bring the felt-presence of the Lord—the Anointing).
Some time later my reverie was abruptly broken when I heard a sharp sound and a strange looking man suddenly appeared, clambering over the rocks in the opposite direction I had been heading. He was wearing a rubber wetsuit top, shorts, and some kind of rubber, flip-flop shoes. His face was flushed, sweat glistened on his brow, and he was panting from exertion. He didn’t look like a happy camper.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I broke the startled silence. He seemed almost as surprised to see me as I was to see him.
“Blankety-blank boat broke down around the point.” He made a vague waving gesture toward the way he had just come. “Say, you don’t have a boat here, do you?” he asked anxiously, his countenance perking up at the thought.
“No, I walked around from the other side. Are you camped over there?” I pointed across the finger. The campground was probably 600 yards distance across the open water, but a mile or more around the way I had come.
“Yeah, and there’s nobody to come and get me. I guess I’ll have to walk all the way around.” That thought dispirited him again and his briefly-energized countenance collapsed. It was obvious he wasn’t dressed for walking, with his bulky wetsuit top, bare legs, and flimsy footwear.
“Sorry, wish there was some way I could help you. Do you want me to hike back over there and get somebody to come get you?”
“Not unless you know someone who has a boat. My buddy’s off up the lake somewhere in his boat; no telling when he’ll be back.”
I shrugged, not knowing anyone at camp with a boat either.
After catching his breath he left, stumbling over the rocks and breaking through the brush along the lake shore. “This guy is definitely not ‘George of the Jungle’,” I thought as I listened to his thrashing recede in the distance.
I kept wishing there was something I could do for the guy. Then it occurred to me to pray. “Lord,” I said, “please send this poor man some help.”
After finishing my prayer I turned and looked out over the lake and was startled to see a boat with two men in it coming on a bee-line across the lake toward me, as if it had appeared out of nowhere! As it got closer, it veered a little to the side in the direction the man had taken. “Well I’ll be!” I could hardly believe my eyes. The boat kept coming closer and closer, then, about 100 feet from shore it turned and started up the shoreline toward me. About this time the stranded man must have seen the boat and he began shouting from down the shore. “This is going to be great,” I thought, “a rescue right before my eyes.”
But instead of stopping, the boat kept on up the shoreline, now getting farther away from the hapless boater, whose frantic shouts I could barely hear in the distance. About the time the boat got opposite me the men seemed to notice the cries and cut the engine. Then they saw me sitting there on a rock. “Is there a problem?” one of them shouted in to me.
“Yeah this guy’s boat broke down and he’s stranded over here.”
“Where’s his boat?”
“His boat’s around the point, but he’s back down that way,” I pointed in the direction the man had gone.
The men conferred with one another. Finally they seemed to take my word for it. “We’ll go back and get him,” one of them said.
Sure enough they turned the boat around and headed back along the shoreline until they met the man scrambling desperately towards them. The man was so excited to be rescued he was practically babbling in his joy. They found a place they could put the boat in next to a rock and he half stepped and half slid from the rock into the boat. Then they headed out across the lake toward camp.
I kind of wished I had asked them to take me too, to spare me that long walk back around the lake, but before I knew it they were gone out into the lake.
“Your work here is done; you can go back now,” the Holy Spirit seemed to whisper to my heart.
Then I realized the whole thing had been a setup! God had positioned me right here to be the necessary factor in this unknown man’s rescue—from praying in the boat to being the go-between for him and his rescuers. I was the necessary element but none of the men would ever realize the part that God and I His servant had played in the rescue.
“How many times must God do this:” I thought on the long walk back, “intervene in people’s lives using men or even angels without them being aware of, let alone thankful for, His mercy and help. And how many more times would God use me in this way if I was only more available to Him?”
Back at the camp I tried to share with my wife and others the divine drama I had just been part of, but they didn’t seem to get it either. “Well, good for you,” and “Praise the Lord,” were about the best responses I could get out of them.
But it didn’t matter. It was still exciting working for Him, even if nobody but Him ever knew or cared.
One summer we joined some of the church families going up to Little Grass Valley Reservoir beyond LaPorte to camp for the weekend at one of the campgrounds. Saturday afternoon the weather was beautiful and people from our group were fishing, swimming, or loafing around their campsites. I decided to take a hike and spend some time with the Lord.
The campground was on a finger of the lake where a stream flowed in. I made my way down the shore until I reached the tip of the finger. Luckily I was able to cross the stream on the bridge the access road used as it wound around the lake going from campground to campground. Once on the other side of the inlet I continued working my way along the shore, soon finding and following a horse trail, all the time praising the Lord, singing, and meditating on Him, things that I knew would draw the Holy Spirit close. All the time I felt His presence, and it was wonderful: a glorious day and a precious time with my God.
About a half mile down the other side of the lake I left the trail and made my way to the lake shore, having to slide down a rocky slope to get there. Once in this secluded and beautiful spot I pulled out my pocket Bible, found a passage, and began to read God’s word aloud (another way I’ve found to bring the felt-presence of the Lord—the Anointing).
Some time later my reverie was abruptly broken when I heard a sharp sound and a strange looking man suddenly appeared, clambering over the rocks in the opposite direction I had been heading. He was wearing a rubber wetsuit top, shorts, and some kind of rubber, flip-flop shoes. His face was flushed, sweat glistened on his brow, and he was panting from exertion. He didn’t look like a happy camper.
“Hey, what’s going on?” I broke the startled silence. He seemed almost as surprised to see me as I was to see him.
“Blankety-blank boat broke down around the point.” He made a vague waving gesture toward the way he had just come. “Say, you don’t have a boat here, do you?” he asked anxiously, his countenance perking up at the thought.
“No, I walked around from the other side. Are you camped over there?” I pointed across the finger. The campground was probably 600 yards distance across the open water, but a mile or more around the way I had come.
“Yeah, and there’s nobody to come and get me. I guess I’ll have to walk all the way around.” That thought dispirited him again and his briefly-energized countenance collapsed. It was obvious he wasn’t dressed for walking, with his bulky wetsuit top, bare legs, and flimsy footwear.
“Sorry, wish there was some way I could help you. Do you want me to hike back over there and get somebody to come get you?”
“Not unless you know someone who has a boat. My buddy’s off up the lake somewhere in his boat; no telling when he’ll be back.”
I shrugged, not knowing anyone at camp with a boat either.
After catching his breath he left, stumbling over the rocks and breaking through the brush along the lake shore. “This guy is definitely not ‘George of the Jungle’,” I thought as I listened to his thrashing recede in the distance.
I kept wishing there was something I could do for the guy. Then it occurred to me to pray. “Lord,” I said, “please send this poor man some help.”
After finishing my prayer I turned and looked out over the lake and was startled to see a boat with two men in it coming on a bee-line across the lake toward me, as if it had appeared out of nowhere! As it got closer, it veered a little to the side in the direction the man had taken. “Well I’ll be!” I could hardly believe my eyes. The boat kept coming closer and closer, then, about 100 feet from shore it turned and started up the shoreline toward me. About this time the stranded man must have seen the boat and he began shouting from down the shore. “This is going to be great,” I thought, “a rescue right before my eyes.”
But instead of stopping, the boat kept on up the shoreline, now getting farther away from the hapless boater, whose frantic shouts I could barely hear in the distance. About the time the boat got opposite me the men seemed to notice the cries and cut the engine. Then they saw me sitting there on a rock. “Is there a problem?” one of them shouted in to me.
“Yeah this guy’s boat broke down and he’s stranded over here.”
“Where’s his boat?”
“His boat’s around the point, but he’s back down that way,” I pointed in the direction the man had gone.
The men conferred with one another. Finally they seemed to take my word for it. “We’ll go back and get him,” one of them said.
Sure enough they turned the boat around and headed back along the shoreline until they met the man scrambling desperately towards them. The man was so excited to be rescued he was practically babbling in his joy. They found a place they could put the boat in next to a rock and he half stepped and half slid from the rock into the boat. Then they headed out across the lake toward camp.
I kind of wished I had asked them to take me too, to spare me that long walk back around the lake, but before I knew it they were gone out into the lake.
“Your work here is done; you can go back now,” the Holy Spirit seemed to whisper to my heart.
Then I realized the whole thing had been a setup! God had positioned me right here to be the necessary factor in this unknown man’s rescue—from praying in the boat to being the go-between for him and his rescuers. I was the necessary element but none of the men would ever realize the part that God and I His servant had played in the rescue.
“How many times must God do this:” I thought on the long walk back, “intervene in people’s lives using men or even angels without them being aware of, let alone thankful for, His mercy and help. And how many more times would God use me in this way if I was only more available to Him?”
Back at the camp I tried to share with my wife and others the divine drama I had just been part of, but they didn’t seem to get it either. “Well, good for you,” and “Praise the Lord,” were about the best responses I could get out of them.
But it didn’t matter. It was still exciting working for Him, even if nobody but Him ever knew or cared.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Prayer and a Gallon of Milk
Unknown Author
The first story is one that came via the web. I don't have a source for it so I suppose it could be an urban legend, but it illustrates what we're talking about--walking in the Spirit.
A young man had been to Wednesday Night Bible Study. The Pastor had shared about listening to God and obeying the Lord's voice. The young man couldn’t help but wonder, "Does God still speak to people?" After service, he went out with some friends for coffee and pie and they discussed the message. Several different ones talked about how God had led them in different ways.
It was about ten o'clock when the young man started driving home. Sitting in his car, he just began to pray, "God...If you still speak to people, speak to me. I will listen. I will do my best to obey."
As he drove down the main street of his town, he had the strangest thought to stop and buy a gallon of milk. He shook his head and said out loud, "God is that you?" He didn't get a reply and started on toward home. But again, the thought, "Buy a gallon of milk." The young man thought about Samuel and how he didn't recognize the voice of God, and how little Samuel ran to Eli.
"Okay, God, in case that is you, I will buy the milk." It didn't seem like too hard a test of obedience. He could always use the milk. He stopped and purchased the gallon of milk and started off toward home.
As he passed Seventh Street, he again felt the urge, "Turn Down that street." This is crazy he thought, and drove on past the intersection. Again, he felt that he should turn down Seventh Street. At the next intersection, he turned back and headed down Seventh. Half jokingly, he said out loud, "Okay, God, I will."
He drove several blocks, when suddenly, he felt like he should stop. He pulled over to the curb and looked around. He was in a semi- commercial area of town. It wasn't the best but it wasn't the worst of neighborhoods either. The businesses were closed and most of the houses looked dark like the people were already in bed. Again, he sensed something, "Go and give the milk to the people in the house across the street."
The young man looked at the house. It was dark and it looked like the people were either gone or they were already asleep. He started to open the door and then sat back in the car seat. "Lord, this is insane. Those people are asleep and if I wake them up, they are going to be mad and I will look stupid."
Again, he felt like he should go and give the milk. Finally, he opened the door, "Okay God, if this is you, I will go to the door and I will give them the milk. If you want me to look like a crazy person, okay. I want to be obedient. I guess that will count for something, but if they don't answer right away, I am out of here."
He walked across the street and rang the bell. He could hear some noise inside. A man's voice yelled out, "Who is it? What do you want?" Then the door opened before the young man could get away. The man was standing there in his jeans and T-shirt. He looked like he just got out of bed. He had a strange look on his face and he didn't seem too happy to have some stranger standing on his doorstep. "What is it?"
The young man thrust out the gallon of milk, "Here, I brought this to you." The man took the milk and rushed down a hallway. Then from down the hall came a woman carrying the milk toward the kitchen. The man was following her holding a baby. The baby was crying. The man had tears streaming down his face.
The man began speaking and half crying, "We were just praying. We had some big bills this month and we ran out of money. We didn't have any milk for our baby. I was just praying and asking God to show me how to get some milk."
His wife in the kitchen yelled out, "I asked him to send an Angel with some. Are you an Angel?"
The young man reached into his wallet and pulled out all the money he had on him and put in the man's hand. He turned and walked back toward his car and the tears were streaming down his face. He knew that God still answers prayers.
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