Surprising Victory from Total Defeat

By David Hobbs

Not long ago I awoke early in the morning to go out to the church to pray. I was tired and would have preferred going back to bed. But I really wanted to meet with the Lord so I pushed through that, got dressed, and made my way out to the church, a 15 minute drive away.

Once at the church, things didn’t get much better. I sat and waited on the Lord for awhile, invited the Holy Spirit, felt His presence come to a certain degree, enjoyed what measure I had.... But I was still tired and couldn’t muster any energy. I didn’t have the strength to pray, sing, or even walk around. I could say there was a lot of spiritual oppression, but then some dear saint would correct me, “Why do you always have to make everything spiritual? Wasn’t it just plain old physical tiredness from too early in the morning?”

I have found that the enemy will take any negative condition we’re in and multiply it against us. If we’re sad about something he will try to turn it into depression. If we’re disgusted about how we’ve failed God and fallen short, he’ll turn it into condemnation. And if we’re weak or tired, he’ll multiply that into spiritual oppression.

So yes I was tired, but that wasn’t the whole story. That was just the beginning of the story. When we’re stymied in prayer, we rarely know why. We know we can’t break through, but have no idea what we’re up against because we can’t see.
Daniel didn’t know why he couldn’t break through in prayer for 21 days, even though he was fasting and doing everything right. He had no idea he was being resisted by the mighty spirit prince of Persia, until the angel Gabriel was able, with Michael’s help, to break through and tell him (Daniel 10).

So that morning I had no idea to what extent the resistance I was experiencing was from my tired flesh or from some spiritual power outside myself.

I tried as hard as I could to focus on God in my thoughts, to at least give Him my time and attention, even if I couldn’t bring forth any praise or worship. But it was a losing battle. I got up and moved to a different location, still trying, but still facing a brick wall.

Well into the second hour I started losing focus and falling asleep. Once you enter that stage, there’s little chance of recovery.

I finally gave up, turned off the lights, locked up and headed for home. I had been there an hour and a half, said nothing, sang nothing, prayed nothing did nothing. From my perspective it had been a total loss. I had not prayed any prayers, walked in the Spirit, received anything from God, experienced the anointing, or accomplished anything in the spirit realm. If I had judged my performance I would have given myself an “F” for “Total Failure.”
I went home and went back to bed.

So what’s the story? Why am I even telling this? Don’t we all fail like this in life over and over? Welcome to the real world, Hobbs!

Ah but here’s the rub. Later that morning when I started my day’s work—which this day was calling Christian school librarians about sending them a copy of my Out of the Fire book—as soon as I started calling, the heavens opened and the blessing came down! For two hours everybody I called was available and everybody I talked to was enthusiastic. I was sending out books right and left. I’d been doing this for over a year, and had never had a series of responses like that—it was off the chart. To my thinking it was a better answer from heaven than I would have expected if I had had a smashingly successful prayer time: shouting out praises and victory declarations; taking song requests from angels; falling on my knees in joyous worship... the whole nine yards.

I was greatly encouraged, and greatly humbled, to see once more that God is sovereign; He can do as He pleases. And He was pleased to bless my prayer offering that day, even though it appeared pitifully small. He does not always judge success the way we do. I was not being flaky or lazy or apathetic. I really was giving Him all I had, though it seemed pathetically weak. I imagine there might have been great, unseen forces arrayed against me that day, but who knows?

What I felt the Holy Spirit telling me through this experience was, “Pray on, my son! Pray on!

God in the Mundane--"Hey, Get Your Car Serviced!"

By David Hobbs

\
I bought our ‘05 Expedition 5 years ago, back in the days when I still needed a tax write-off. It had 34,000 miles on it then, over 120,000 miles now. In all those 5 years I basically did nothing to it other than what the Jiffy Lube did: change the oil, filters, fluids checked, etc. (In the last couple of years when money’s been tight, I even quit taking it to Jiffy Lube—too expensive. Just some place cheap to change the oil.)

I had to get the air conditioner rebuilt this spring, but other than that I’ve crossed the country several times just setting it on Cruise Control, keeping the tank full, and letting it run and run. For 5 years it’s been one faithful machine, one of the best engines Ford’s ever built.
But even the modern, efficient engines need servicing some time. I thought around 100,000 miles they needed tuned up. So that was on my mind, yet another 20,000 miles had come and gone without me doing anything about it—the procrastination factor!
We were driving to Woodland for Thanksgiving when out of the blue it began missing. It only did it briefly, when I accelerated from a slowdown at a stop light. But it stuttered and the “check engine” came on briefly. Then it was back to normal.
But that was enough for me to finally get it into my mechanic, who asked me to bring all the records of what had been done to it since I bought it. He called me a day later. “This car of yours, you haven’t been keeping up with the maintenance. There’s a list of things to do at 90,000 miles, 100,000 miles, and 120,000 miles. All you’ve done is get the oil changed and changed out the fuel filter a couple of times.” Then he rattled off all the other items needing attended to: “The spark plugs need to be changed at 90,000 miles or they start building up carbon inside which makes them hard to remove. Sometimes they’ll break and pieces will fall down into the cylinder in which case you have to take the whole engine apart. You don’t want to know what that would cost you!”
The spark plugs, a couple of them, did break taking them out. But no pieces fell into the engine. We had gotten to it in time, barely.
He ended up putting about$1000.00 into the car: replacing all the fluids, spark plugs, and the many other things due and overdue for maintenance.
“Do you do much 4-wheel driving?”
“No not much.”
“Good. Your 4 wheel drive transfer case was dry.”
About the same time I was out at the church at drama practice one Sunday afternoon. When I went to start the car the battery was dead. This car, which for 5 years had never given me any trouble, wouldn’t start. But there were plenty of others around to give me a jump. Once started I drove straight to the automotive dept. of the big box store and had them put in a new battery. I got a couple of new tires as well.
It did feel good to know the car was back in good running shape. I drove it for a week around town. But on the day I drove to Sacramento and back for the capital prayer meeting: once back into Marysville I had to stop at the first stoplight. As I sat there idling, it started missing again. When the light turned green and I drove off it ran fine. But when I had to stop at a light again it began missing. “Wow, I wonder what this is? I should take it to the mechanic’s shop again. After all, it’s right on the way home. Oh but then I'll have to drop it off and leave it, find a ride home, be without it for a day....” I just didn’t want to have to deal with it right then. As I passed the mechanic’s shop, sure enough it looked like he was busy. There were a lot of cars clustered around. “That confirms it, I’ll go later,” I thought. (Once again the procrastination factor!)
But as soon as I passed the shop (without stopping), the car started going “ape” on me. It was missing all over the place; huffing and chugging and lurching; the “check engine” light came on and stayed on. It was obvious something had to be done right away. I immediately recognized the hand of the Lord. Since I hadn’t responded to His gentle prodding, He was going to make sure I didn’t miss it. “OK Lord, I get it!” I found a place to pull a U-turn and came back to the shop. I did have to leave the car, but my wife was still home, and she came out and picked me up.
“I just assumed when we did all that other work that that took care of the original problem,” the mechanic said later. “But the problem was in the third cylinder. There is this assembly above the cylinder that feeds the spark to the plug at the right time. It’s secured by a little spring. But in your case the spring was unhooked. I re-hooked it and it seems to run fine. Try it out and let me know. It’s nothing to charge you for.”
Sure enough the car ran fine from that time on.
The whole episode caused me to marvel at the working of the hand of God. He could see me procrastinating on getting the car serviced so He unhooked that little spring, causing the car to run ragged just enough to get me in to the shop. His timing at every step was perfect. It didn’t strand us or ruin our Thanksgiving outing. Even the death of the battery came at an opportune time.
Once all the work had been done, He still had to get the spring re-hooked. Again the timing was perfect—as I was returning to town after a 90 mile trip. Only when I missed His cue and decided to wait till later did He up the ante by increasing the problem enough so I had to deal with it immediately. Then it turned out to be, not another major problem, but the final touch on the old one.
Thus God watches over our lives, and helps us do what we need to do, when we need to do it. His working can be so subtle that we miss it, or attribute it to random circumstances. If you have surrendered your life to Christ, God is at work in your life as well. Pray to God that He open your eyes like He did mine, to see His work. What an exciting thing to realize that God really does love you and is busy working in your life for your good and His glory!

For those who follow this blog, I am working on writing another book, about walking in the Spirit. This blog post will be in it as one of the many stories where God has worked supernaturally in my life, as part of the chapter on "mundane things." DH