Praise God: My Car Broke Down

"What glory is God getting from me suffering like this?"

I had just finished typing the last sentence of a rather lengthy email I was just getting ready to hit the send button on when the tow truck guy pulled up in the parking lot beside me. I sat my phone down and got out of the car.

"Hey, sorry it took me so long to get here," he apologized. "How long have you guys been waiting?"

"About an hour, but it's not a big deal. It's just the topper on my week," I said jokingly.

"I just finished cleaning crap out of my basement earlier today from sewage backing up. Water flooded in it a few days earlier. Woke up to my furnace not working again. My dog had explosive diarrhea this week - went all over his crate, the floor, the wall - took me two hours to clean it all up. Never seen anything like it! Then he crapped on the floor the next day. So you could say it's been a bit of a crappy week, but that just means something good is on it's way!"

"Well that's one way to look at it," he laughed. "So what's going on with your car?"

"I was sitting there getting ready to pick up my son and his friend from basketball practice when it just went crazy," I answered. "All the lights on the dashboard came on and it kept saying malfunction. I couldn't even get the car to shut off.

So I thought I would just drive it to the auto shop, but I got on the highway and realized the speedometer wasn't even working. So, I pulled over and called roadside service to have it towed."

"That's really strange," he said. I agreed. I explained that my friend's son was eventually able to get it to turn off.

I reached my hand out. "I'm Julie by the way."

"I'm Rocky," he said.

"That's a great name. Rocky! Are you a fighter?" I asked.

"No, but my dad was."

"My son is taking lessons from an MMA fighter right now....Khetag Pliev. He's the fighter who lost a finger in a fight and wanted to keep fighting," I interjected.

(MMA fighter Khetag Pliev)

"No way!"

Pointing to my son Hawke standing beside us, I said, "Yeah, I told him 'This is the kind of guy you need to take lessons from. Loses a finger and wants to keep fighting. That's a real fighter. He'll teach you how to be a man.' He's Russian. They make 'em different over there."

Rocky laughed. "Man!"

"Cool. So you're named after your dad?"

"Yeah, but I didn't really know him," he said.

"Oh, is he still living?" I asked.

"No"

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay," he said a bit more quiet.

"So is someone coming to get you guys?" he asked. "I don't want to just leave you here."

"That's really nice of you. Most people would just drive off. But you don't have to wait. My parents are on their way. They should be here in about 20 minutes," I answered.

I started gathering my things out of the car. I saw one of my business cards laying in the console. I grabbed it and casually handed it to him. "If you ever need some life insurance let me know. I'm a life insurance agent."

"Okay, thanks," he said looking at the card.

"I insure lives and I also insure souls," I said. "Do you have soul insurance?"

"What's that?" he asked smiling.

"It's the most important thing you can have," I responded. "Your soul is going to live forever in one of two places. That's why my car broke down. It was all for you Rocky. Just so we could be here right now to secure your soul in God's Kingdom."

"This was my last call for the night. I normally don't take calls this late," he said.

"It's cause you had a divine appointment with God tonight. That's why I'm here. I'm not playing, man. I'm serious. So do you want to insure your soul now?"

A big smile came over his face and his eyes lit up. Without hesitation he responded, "Yes."

"Well, come on. Let's do this thing!" I said.

I grabbed my son's hand and we gathered in a circle in the AMC Theatre parking lot at 10 o'clock at night, and prayed a prayer together and brought Rocky into the Kingdom of heaven.

"Whooooh! Yes!" I started celebrating.

"This is the best call I've ever been on! I got chills all over my body right now!" said Rocky.

"That's the power of God!" I exclaimed.

"This is better than any tip or amount of money I ever got," he said. "I could hang out here all night."

Me and my son gave him a big hug. "Welcome into the Kingdom buddy! We love you man!"

(Rocky and my son Hawke after we prayed the prayer of salvation.)

"This is awesome," he said beaming from ear to ear. "What church do you go to?"

"I attend Solid Rock Church," I answered.

"I know that church. My wife just met your pastor the other week," he said. "She's a server at the Cheesecake Factory and she met her there."

"Oh Darlene, yeah, she's a little fire ball," I said. "They're good people at Solid Rock. Her son's a pastor too. He used to be a professional bull rider. They're a bunch of cowboys. He wears his cowboy hat to church and he's got some good fight stories too about his dad. He was a good fighter!"

(Pastor Darlene Bishop and her son, Pastor Lawrence Bishop.)

Rocky was still beaming. His whole face was lit up.

"Look man, God's stalking you guys. He sent my pastor to get your wife, then He had my car break down to get you. You guys should come to our church," I said.

"I should. I should stop working Sundays so I can come to church," he said.

"Yeah, you should," I agreed. "They also have service on Wednesday evenings and Sunday evenings." I gave him another bear hug. "I'm so excited to see what God is going to do with your family. Now you have to go home and make sure your son and wife have soul insurance."

He smiled.

Shortly after my parents pulled up.

"Man, I love your daughter," said Rocky. "She's something else." He began telling my parents about our divine encounter and my dad asked him if he'd seen the movie Jesus Revolution.

"I haven't," Rocky answered.

"That's how me and my wife used to be back in the day...a bunch of hippies radical for Jesus," my dad explained. Pointing to me he said, "We used to be crazy just like her."

"That's not crazy," Rocky said. "It's normal."

We hugged once last time. "If I don't see you again down here, I'll see you again up there and I'll say, 'I've been waiting on you Rocky,'" I said.

"Or if I get there first I'll say, 'I've been waiting on you.'"

He turned on the car to load it on the tow truck and mysteriously everything was fine. No lights. No malfunction errors. He looked at me and we both shrugged and laughed.

"Bye Rocky."

"Bye"

I never hit the send button on that email. I didn't need to. I finally had my answer.

God had started talking to me several nights before while I was on the phone with a good friend whom I'd made a pack with a couple weeks prior to go on an extended fast. During our phone call we felt like God had given us a revelatory word.

We'd both been experiencing years of unexplainable and extreme hardship, setbacks and painful circumstances. So we decided to go on this extended fast with a belief that whatever demonic strongholds had been blocking us, that God would bring breakthrough.

Well two weeks into the fast, and instead of breakthrough, all hell started breaking loose on us.

My friend had customers coming at her left and right with hateful and nasty attitudes. One become so out of control she had to call the police on them and ban them from their place of business. Then her boss began threatening her with losing her job if she didn't agree to a change in her schedule, which wasn't conducive to her second job.

And I was getting hit just as hard; I had water flooding into my basement, sewage backing up, the dog's diarrhea explosions....I also had a big altercation with some family members; a carrier I worked with erroneously charged me over $600; out of the blue a creditor called and said I owed $3,600 from an account years ago.....

God, when will this end? I cried out. Why do you keep making me suffer?

I called my friend and we exchanged stories. We both let out a deep, heavy, weary sigh. If this had just been one week we could have pushed it off as a "bad week", but this type of relentless attacks had been going on for years, and years. This just happened to be an over the top week.

We were weary and desperate for breakthrough, which is what had prompted my email to this minister I was communicating with. I thought surely he would have some type of special prayer to break off this demonic oppression I was dealing with, since he specialized in deliverance ministry and dealing with the demonic.

However, after sharing with him the details of my years of trials, instead of praying a prayer of deliverance to break off this demonic oppression (he agreed, that indeed it sounded like demonic oppression) he said my experience was "viewed as a gift from God."

"One did not do anything to open an entry point for the demonic, but God is permitting it as an opportunity for you to show your fidelity to Him," he wrote. "Examples are Job in the Old Testament and even St. Paul who speaks of the thorn in his flesh."

A gift from God! How could this be a gift from God? I questioned.

I planned to write him back and explain in further detail of what all had been happening.

I was certain this was not a gift from God, but some kind of curse from the devil that needed broken off of me.

He just needed some more convincing of how terrible things had been to realize it.

However, before I had a chance to write back, more hell started breaking loose. This is what brought me to the conversation with my friend a few nights prior. I was sharing with her about a story I heard of a man who was addicted to drugs, but eventually got saved and broke the addiction.

But then every night at 3 a.m. he would be tormented by demons that appeared to him in his bedroom. Until one night he got so sick of it, that he got out a chair and sat it in the middle of his bedroom.

"Okay, satan," he said, "You want to torment me? Then you're going to sit here and watch me worship God."

He said from that night on he never had any more demonic visitations tormenting him. Immediately my friend said, "That's it Julie. We're supposed to worship our way out of this."

"I think you're right," I said.

The day the sewage had backed up my son Hawke looked at me and said, "Think about how Job felt mom." Of which I piped back, "Well, at least Job got to get his all out of the way in a short period of time. Mine has been going on for years."

"Well, what about Joseph, mom? How do you think he felt?" he prodded again. (Don't you hate it when your kids preach to you your sermons?)

"Just say thank you Jesus," he said. I looked over at him like a little, stubborn kid who wanted to stay mad. "Say it....say thank you Jesus."

Stubbornly, I held my silence.

"Say it".

I reluctantly pushed the words out. "Thank you Jesus." He patted me on the back. "I love you mom. Thanks for taking me to basketball practice."

My friend and I agreed, all of this was God letting us know our way out of this oppression was to praise God and give thanks no matter what. We made another pact. We weren't going to complain any more. No matter what happened we were going to praise God. (Just know that when you commit to something for God, the devil is going to test you. I had anticipated this. I just didn't anticipate it so soon.)

The very next morning my furnace stopped working. I called my friend and told her. "Pray for me because I don't want to say anything against what we agreed." I knew this was a test. In fact, just that week I had seen a license plate that said "Hi Test".

But despite all the signs and agreeing the night before to give praise, everything in me wanted to complain.

I wanted to scream out. Why God? Why do the attacks keep happening?

But instead I let my friend pray for me until I felt the heaviness lift and I was able to open my mouth and start praising God with her.

Later that day I got a call from another good friend who had been in the same boat. She'd been going through trial after relentless trial, and we had both felt God had brought us together in this season to carry one another across the battle field.

"Hey, I called to share something with you that I think is for us," she said. "I was watching Sean Feucht today and he was saying how God had told him to go around to all 50 states in the U.S. and worship outside the capitals. He said it's his nature to fight, but he felt the Lord told him the battles in this season wouldn't be won by fighting with natural methods, but would be won on our knees by worshiping God."

(Sean Feucht worshiping at the Nashville capital.)

I couldn't believe it. This was another confirmation.

Then to drive the message home further, my daily devotional I read that day from Elijah List was talking about the importance of worship shifting the atmosphere. And as if that wasn't enough, another friend who knew nothing of these conversations, just so happened to send me the exact video of the guy I'd watched a few days earlier who used worship to stop demons from tormenting his sleep.

All of this was getting me ready for one more test that week - my car breaking down. So as I sat in my car with all the lights coming on and the error messages saying "malfunction", I called my friend I'd made the pact with and we began praying and thanking God that something good was going to come from it.

Earlier that day I had told my friend that if I had to spend any more money on plumbing issues, (I'd just had a plumber out two months ago and spent an obscene amount on plumbing issues) then the devil was going to pay, and that when the plumber came out I was going to share the salvation of Jesus with him and get him saved.

But I didn't......

The plumbing company I'd paid two months ago came out to fix the problem, and instead of honoring their six month warranty, they told me it was going to cost more money. I felt flames shooting out of my head.

"You guys were paid almost $800, which is thievery cause it's four times more than what I've ever paid for this service, and it obviously wasn't done right because my sewage backed up two months later, and you want me to pay you more money?"

I wasn't about to pay these thieves one more dime. I called another plumber. Dished out another $180 bucks and started cleaning the raw sewage out of my basement, when I realized I didn't talk to the plumber and his trainee about Jesus.

I was so upset about all these financial attacks, chaos and disruptions that I forgot to talk to the plumber and his trainee about God when he got there.

So.......God gave me another opportunity to save a soul. And it was on its way as I sat in my car finally replying to this minister's response, who somehow thought all these years of suffering I was going through was somehow an opportunity to show my fidelity to God....and was a gift.

Imagine that, I miffed.

I had just finished meticulously typing out all of the demonic attacks that had happened to me just in the past week, (with bullet points I might add, for emphasis) so he could clearly see this stuff was in no way something good; and why he needed to help me break off this oppression so I could do God's will.

Clearly, with all these attacks I couldn't serve God the way I wanted to. He had to see this.

I finished typing my last sentence before hitting the send button: What glory is God getting from me suffering like this?.....

When I finally got my answer when Rocky showed up.

Rocky's soul is how God was getting the glory out of my suffering. He was teaching me how to praise Him through even the bad and painful stuff, and to trust that He was bringing good out of all of it.

On the way home Hawke said to me, "You're really awesome Mom. I love you. You made that look so easy."

"It is easy Hawke. It's just loving people."

It's just being normal.

As I laid in bed that night, a thought crossed my mind.

If you had gone through all the pain and suffering over all these years, just to save one eternal soul, would it have been worth it?

Yes, the answer was yes.

I realized my perspective on my suffering had been off. It had been on tangible rewards, instead of eternal rewards. And I'm not saying God doesn't give us tangible rewards, because I believe He does.

However, the thought came to me; how many other times had I missed the opportunity for eternal rewards when things had gone "wrong" because I was so focused on the problem rather than the opportunity to show my fidelity to God, as this minister mentioned?

God, help me not to miss any more opportunities in "problems" to praise you and let you get the glory. Thank you God, for allowing my car to break down to bring Rocky into the Kingdom.

If all these years of suffering were for this one soul, it will all be worth it when I see Rocky up in heaven and say, "I've been waiting on you!"

Or he says to me, "I've been waiting on you!" Whichever one of us gets there first.

- Written by Julie Nicole; Dayton, OH