When Prayers Happen… differently

A few months back we were at a house church with a bunch of our friends and had some missionaries come visit and share with us. During church they took time to pray for each one of us specifically (a great benefit of house church over big church)… but not just nice prayers. They really took time to listen to what God wanted to say to each of us.

When they prayed over Corey, they talked about a car… and God showing just how much He loves us through a car. Weird? Sure. But okay… we’ll just file that away and see what happens.

If you haven’t seen on Facebook recently, my cute little yellow car has officially kicked the bucket. We can get it fixed and keep driving it, but it has officially become more profitable to the local mechanic shop than it is to us. However… there seems to be more to this story.

You see, I was driving home from Knoxville when the car decided life was no longer worth living anymore. But when I got in the car that morning, I had this hunch that something was going to happen. Call it God, call it whatever you will… I said a prayer and was a little more cautious as I drove. And because I was a little more cautious… I recognized the moment something went wrong.

Because I immediately recognized when something went wrong, (that something being the timing belt snapped and the engine died) I was able to immediately begin pulling across the highway to the shoulder. And because I asked in my prayer that day that God would surround my car and drive with me (and because He always does… even when I don’t ask)… traffic was surprisingly clear for me to cross all 3 lanes of traffic.

And because God does things at the PERFECT time… I happened to be about 2 miles away from a towing company… and only 30 minutes away from Chattanooga where we have great friends who came to rescue me. Great friends who happen to have just had a baby 3 weeks ago that I wanted to see and happen to have lots of maternity clothes to share and dinner in the crock pot ready for us all.

And because God has surrounded us with incredible friends who pray for us and walk through all our trials together, we are surrounded with wise counsel and people who hear even God’s plan for our cars with us…

When that missionary couple prayed for us, did we expect our yellow car to die or did we expect God to drop a brand new shiny car in our driveway? But is the very thing they prayed still happening despite our expectations? Man… God is good even when it comes around a way I don’t expect…

Stay tuned as this one little prayer continues to play out in our lives!!!