The Bike Rider

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.