My Godwink Chronicles

One day, while home alone, I went to my front yard in total silence and solitude, as if I was the only one alive in my neighborhood.  It felt like one of those scary movies where a man or woman wakes up in a strange nightmare where they are the only one left alive in the world...like an episode I saw once on the Twilight Zone.  I felt totally alone.  I looked for some sign that God saw me, that He acknowledged me.  A direct and personal sign.  I thought about what that would look like.  Maybe it would look like a bird that lights a few feet away from me.  Birds don't usually do that.  Or maybe a breeze as I'm feeling hot.  Something from God, to me, personally.

I'm reading "When God Winks at You:  How God Speaks Directly to You Through the Power of Coincidence."  This book focuses on what I wanted to experience that day.  Squire Russel calls coincidences God winks, personal communications from God to you and me.  I'm enjoying reading this book, having just finished the first chapter.  (Just finding the book was a God wink for me.  I was looking for a book about speaking skills, not thinking anything about coincidences.)  The first chapter ends with an encouragement to chronicle the God winks in the reader's life. I have a lot of them, and I'm sure you do too.  May mine encourage you in reading them, and may they encourage you to chronicle your own God winks.

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I wanted a ventriloquist dummy when I was about 5 years old.  I saw one advertised in a comic book for 5 dollars.  So I went into my living room, got on my knees, and prayed that God would give me 5 dollars to get the dummy.  I got up and didn't think anything more about it.  I wanted it, but not badly. I don't know how I knew to pray, or why I did.  That was that.

The next day, on my way home from school, I found one dollar on the ground as I walked.  For three more days, each day after school, while walking home, I found another dollar.  My mother asked, "Where are you getting the money?"  "I'm finding it," I told her.  On the fifth day, my little brother ran ahead of me and said, "I'm going to get the dollar today."  I raced him for it.  Then my baby sitter, who walked us home everyday, said, "I found it," and picked up the last dollar bill.  I knew God was teaching me a lesson about competition.  I was kind of mad with my brother, but again, as children do, I didn't think about it.

Years passed.  Somehow, my uncle found out that I wanted a ventriloquist dummy.  (My dad told him, now that I remember.)  Intrigued, my uncle bought me the very ventriloquist doll I wanted.  I checked out a book on ventriloquism and practiced.  I got so good at it that I asked a friend of mine to let me pull his hair with him opening his mouth with each pull.  He agreed, and I "threw my voice" into my friend Khari.  We both got in trouble and were sent to the principal...our teacher thought Khari was talking to me!

"We exist to do things that can't be done without God's special supernatural grace."  John Piper.
"Apart from me, you can do nothing."  The Lord Jesus

I want something I can't have without God:  I want every person I meet to see and know that God is with me, just like with Joseph in the book of Genesis.  But I can't make people see God in me.  And I can't make God reveal Himself through me. All I can do is ask God to do it, and live in a way that let's God do it.

How is that?

Faith.

It is written, "The just shall live by faith."  I became a Christian by faith, and I live the Christian life by faith.  More specifically, by prayer.  I prayed "the sinner's prayer," and I keep praying the saved person's prayer.  Jesus, help me, because without you, I can't do anything eternally worth doing.

I know this to be true.  I can't be a Christlike man, husband, or father without the Spirit of Jesus helping me every single moment.  This is a solid fact.  So everyday, all I can do, and all we who believe can do, is pray for God's power, and trust him to give it.