One Sunday after Bible class, a brother told me his car had broken down and that he needed a new engine.
For the next couple days, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I started doing some research and making phone calls. In doing so, I felt this conviction to fix the problem as if it was my own. I found an engine in Alabama, a state away, and scheduled to pick it up on the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend.
During church service the day before, our pastor gave us some history about Dixie Hwy and how the road was laid at a perfect time during the growth of Georgia. This would lead into his sermon about God’s timing and why Jesus came at the perfect time in human history.
Monday morning, the first major highway I had to travel on was Dixie Hwy. I arrived at my destination in Muscadine, Alabama. When I walked into the office, a man was on the phone, sitting behind a high desk. While standing there waiting, I saw a large wooden cross on the wall with vines growing up from the base and wrapping upwards.
I started thinking about the story our pastor shared and how I ended up driving on the same road. I’m now in Muscadine, Alabama. Muscadines grow on vines, and I'm looking at a cross with vines wrapped around it.
He hung up the phone and took me out to the shop to look at the engine. During our conversation, I mentioned what I did for a living and the company I worked for. He perked up and told me he used to be the lead machinist of research and development for a company that has contracts with mine. He devised repairs and got them approved. To this day, that company still uses his repairs that I am currently reviewing, which he developed 20 years ago.
We went back into the office so I could pay up and get the engine loaded onto my trailer. He had to answer the phone again, and while he was on the phone, I found myself staring at the wall thinking about “coincidences” and how God works in us. Our flesh, the world, and the devil will blind you to the opening of doors and the straight path.
When he hung up the phone, I had to share my journey and the path that led me there. It was the path I was sent down… unaware. All I knew was that I was trying to help a brother in need. A brother in Christ is no different than my family under the roof of my own house.
1 Corinthians 13:1–13
Colossians 3:12–14
Galatians 6:2
James 2:14–20
I told him my story of how I ended up there and all the “coincidences.” He stands up and gestures for us to go outside. The phone starts ringing again, but he ignores it, and we head out into the parking lot. He tells me there is a higher power and that’s the commonality with all religions. As if to say all religions point to one or the same god. I know this thinking is incorrect. Taking no offense, I responded with, ‘Pick a road to go down, different religions or philosophy, as I have. You’ll find every road circles back to Jesus Christ. There is only one God, the Father, but only through Jesus may we come to Him.’
John 14:6
We started walking slowly across the lot. He starts telling me of his baptism years ago. Seeming to abandon his first proclamation that all religions point to the same god, he shares his life of struggles that most of us can relate to or have personally experienced. Death, divorce, addiction, joblessness, starting over, and living on his mother’s couch… Rock bottom.
He says it’s great that I’m helping out someone from my church. He tells me the man who owns the salvage yard donates 20% of the yearly business profits to local churches. He has paid adoption fees for Christian couples that couldn’t bear children of their own and donated cars to churches for families in need.
Then I felt it… the urge to fully witness.
I had been witnessing the whole time, just not really conscious that I was. Up until this moment, it was just an awesome organic conversation that I was having with a stranger.
I shared with him how Jesus changed my life. One day I was one way, the next day I wasn’t. I was a new creature. I fought alcoholism for 25 years, then one day I woke up and it was gone. Like I had never had a sip. I no longer swear. The foulness was taken out of me because my heart was renewed. I’m now in discipleship training that was offered to me by an elder at my church, and it’s great because now I have direction. I didn’t know what to do with this great thing that happened to me.
I looked up to the sky and with a loud voice I said,
‘I’ve found the best thing in the world!… The greatest news!’
The Gospel
While waiting for the mechanic to bring the engine out, he started sharing another great story about the local churches. While he was talking, I thought to myself that I was going to ask him to join me in a prayer. I started feeling nervous because I have never asked someone if I could pray for them.
My nerves, or my flesh, got the best of me, and I changed my mind. I wasn’t going to pray. While he was continuing with his story, the thought to pray entered my mind again. Every 2–3 seconds I thought…
Pray… pray… pray.
Then I realized something.
They weren’t my thoughts.
When we think of things, we do so in silence, or we articulate it with speech out loud to ourselves or others. It wasn’t even the sound of my own voice or the man’s. It was a voice that couldn’t be made by human vocal cords. A voice that I could hear all around me and inside of me at the same time. Every 2–3 seconds, telling me to pray.
I was standing there listening to this man’s story, feeling a great inner peace, at the same time trembling. I was completely aware and in tune with his words, my thoughts, and a heavenly omnipresent voice at the same time. I decided to pray again, then the voice stopped.
While the man was still talking, the mechanic brought the engine out and started strapping it down to the trailer I had brought. Again, I decided I wasn’t going to pray. As soon as the thought drifted away, the voice came back. Every 2–3 seconds…
Pray… pray… pray.
I didn’t realize this at the time, but looking back, I now truly know the meaning of ‘the flesh is enmity towards God’ and how Peter could deny Jesus three times.
Again, I decided I was going to pray, then the voice stopped.
As the man was finishing his story, the mechanic walked over and joined us. We three were standing in the middle of an empty lot, in the midday, under a clear blue sky. I asked them if I could say a prayer. The man I had been witnessing to said ‘Sure!’ in a delightful way, while the other man kind of half-smiled and shrugged his shoulders. The three of us bowed our heads, and I prayed. The first time I had prayed openly to anyone, and they were complete strangers.
After we shook hands and parted ways, I yelled back at him and said,
‘Remember, sometimes your worst day is someone else’s best day.’
I don’t remember his reply, but he smiled and nodded in agreement.
Shortly after, while driving down the road, a sensation hit me. I felt weightless, as if I was going to float up out of my car. It felt like a waterfall flowing in reverse inside of me. Cool and warm at the same time. I was overcome with an unimaginable joy. My smile was so big it hurt my face, and I couldn’t stop.
I yelled out, ‘Yes!... Yes!... More!... More!’
This feeling hit me several times as I was driving down the road. Wave after wave after wave.
John 7:38
Living in this moment and enjoying the wonderful gifts I had received, I looked off to the right side of the road. Back in the trees, there was a sign about 20 ft off the ground. A giant white sign with large black letters that read…
Trust God
Amen
And to answer the question that may be burning inside your heart.
What did the voice sound like?
Imagine what it would sound like… if the wind could speak.