It is my honor to disciple a number of guys who have a genuine heart for God and want to grow in their relationship (not "religion") with Him. One of these is Aurora (Colorado) PD Officer
Matt Springer. Matt's "
Jacob's Well" posts on Facebook make for interesting reading/study and the Holy Spirit has pressed me to share this one with you. Open your Bibles, pray, and seek the Holy Spirit for what God would have for you in this powerful message that has application to all believers in general and for cops in particular. Matt didn't add a title to his message, and I had to pray for leading on this subject (titles are not my forte), but "
Being Used By God" seems to be what God gave me, along with two main passages of Scripture that are most appropriate here:
John 5:16 (above) and
Isaiah 6:8 --
And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Then I said, "Here I am! Send me." Brethren, are you prayerfully seeking to be
used by God and to go where He sends you, both on and off duty?
Earlier this week, I wrote a post (
The Wake Up Call) concerning contact with God and how He worked to bring a suicidal kid off the wrong side of a bridge through Divine intervention and prayer. But as the late
Paul Harvey used to report, here is "The Rest of the Story."
I opened that first message with a verse from the Gospel of John and I will reiterate it here because it has become even more meaningful in this story:
"The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from or where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit" -- John 3:8
Jesus said these words to a prominent member of the Sanhedrin in Nicodemus. Although the verse in English uses the word "wind," it is important to understand that, in the original Greek, "wind" as used here does not mean "a moving breeze." Rather, the
Greek word used in this case is the word "
pneuma
" which means a "life giving spirit." Here Jesus is referring to the Holy Spirit, and His ability to move to and fro in a believer's life and make things happen in concert with God's will.
I reported one such moving of the Spirit (in me) on Jacob's well several days ago: How the Spirit lead me, through divine providence, to the area of an intense standoff between rescue personnel and a suicidal teenager who had made the initial decision to jump off a bridge. There He had led me to pray for the boy and his father, until the boy finally stepped over the handrail to his friend and to safety.
I had initially said that, as a police officer, I felt like I was there to "fix the problem" and I was initially skeptical of the ambulance driver who had made initial contact with the boy. I asked for direction from the Lord on the issue but He held me back to keep the boy's father from interfering.
I quickly realized, against my prideful flesh, that the Lord only needed me to pray and that He had ALL THE REST COVERED.
The skepticism I initially had changed quickly when the ambulance driver was able to talk the kid off the bridge. But my understanding of God's will in the situation brought praise and honor to God when, several days later, I got "the rest of the story."
I was prompted by the Spirit to send my
post to the supervisor who had been on scene and who was also the incident commander. I knew he believed in God and I thought it would bring him some encouragement to know that the Lord had been working behind the scenes (through His Spirit) to bring the incident to a beautiful conclusion. I did not expect that the post would allow him to put two and two together and it led him to call me back with some other facts I did not know:
Earlier in that shift, while I was investigating the domestic dispute that originally lead me to the area of the incident, my Lieutenant had been on scene at a traffic accident up around I-70 and Pena Boulevard. This accident backed up traffic all the way to Colfax Avenue.
At that same time, a South Denver ambulance crew had been on northbound I-225 transporting a Flight for Life nurse to Denver International Airport so she could catch a flight there. That ambulance pulled up on the traffic snarl on the highway, created by the accident, and they decided to get off on 17th Avenue in an attempt to avoid the delay. The ambulance crossed over 17th to find a teenager hanging on for dear life on the bridge. The crew stopped and the paramedic opened dialogue with the despondent boy.
At the same time, a local university police officer was crossing over the bridge, saw that something didn't look right with the ambulance and pulled over to investigate. I learned that it is deeply frowned upon for those officers to get involved with anything "off campus" but being a veteran officer, he stopped. It was this officer who allowed clear radio traffic from the scene to Aurora police dispatch because the ambulance didn't have our radio channels.
So at this point, the Lord placed an ambulance who had no reason to be in that area, and a police officer who was not to be off campus, both in the right place at the right time. S
hortly after that, the Lord placed me, way out of my patrol district, in the area as well.
But wait -- this story gets better!
Earlier, I had learned that the child was adopted from an Asian adoption agency in the Denver area. The boy's friend who arrived on scene at the end was the adoption agent who had facilitated the whole adoption with his parents -- the man and woman I had been praying with.
As the Lord apparently planned it out, the adoption agent had a relationship with the ambulance driver because, at some point in the past, the ambulance driver had adopted two Asian children through the same agency and through the same "friend."
The Lord had orchestrated a man with way more rapport than I could have ever built to talk to this kid, and to keep him from ending his life.
It all made sense now, and yes, God truly had it all covered.
In retrospect, If the Lord doesn't ask me to fix the problem, there is probably a very good reason for that, and I have to take a humble backseat to the action. Scripture supports this:
In
1 Kings 19, Elijah, a man of God, ran for his life into a cave to escape a queen who was desperately out to kill him. When God asked him what he was doing, Elijah said the following:
"So he (Elijah) said, "I have been very zealous for the LORD God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I ALONE AM LEFT; and they seek to take my life." (added emphasis mine)
After God tells Elijah not to fear and to go back and do His will (verse 18):
"Yet I have reserved seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him."
God has people you will never know about, waiting to be used, just like you. It is not your burden to bare. It is only for you to be obedient in whatever HE asks you to do. He has a purpose for all people involved and so the pressure is not on you alone.
As revealed in my opening Scripture, the Spirit (wind) moves where He wants too, and you will not know where He is going or where He is coming from. You will, however become cognizant of Him and His impact.
Friends, the Lord
works all things together for those who love Him... (
Romans 8:28). Do you love Him? Are you listening for His prompting? Can you say that you live a life so close to Jesus that you can see His hand in everything that happens around you?
These are all promises in the Bible for someone who has a relationship with Jesus that is grounded in faith and repentance, and rooted in Him (He loves you more that you love yourself). Do you know Him? Are you being used for His Kingdom? Do you want to (see below for "how")? B
y the way, aren't you just amazed how the Lord orchestrates the people of this earth, through His providence, to show His power and glory to all His creation.?
All praises and honor to Jesus Christ our Lord!
