Deliverance
Stories
Sharing Visions
Divine Revelations, Angels, And Holy Coincidences
There was a time when my husband and I were very poor. We had three young children and a home to pay for, car payments ... and I was trying to stay at home with our children and did not contribute to our income at all. All around us it seemed that everyone had more than we had. Our cars were junky and I shopped at St. Vincent's for our clothes. I was constantly, though maybe not consciously, comparing my life with my friends' and feeling frustrated and even angry with them for having more than I had.
At one particularly bad time, it seemed we were even about to lose our house, and I had to ask my parents for food money. I didn't think I was a money waster. I had always been proud of the way I saved my family money by shopping at secondhand stores, garage sales, and estate sales. I had gone to a secondhand store that day and had bought a very cheap basket to hang on our wall. We hadn't lived in our house for very long, and we were still trying to decorate and make it a "home." I knew I shouldn't have spent even the dollar it took to buy the basket, as we had just asked my parents for money. I felt so guilty and upset by our situation. Even worse, I came home and hung the basket up and I liked it ... but it needed something. I needed some dried weeds ... possibly some German statice to put in it. I got even angrier. "See," I thought to myself, "you are never happy ... want, want, want!" My husband came home and we ended up having a fight about it. He could not understand my need for that basket at all and was angry that I spent the money. It was such a stupid little thing ... but so big.
I prayed to God fiercely that night. I didn't feel God was near. I was scared about all we could lose and about all I felt we didn't, and might never, have. I prayed, if we could never have more money, then could God please take away my desires for material things and help me to be happy and feel blessed with whatever I had instead of always wanting more. I also prayed that something would happen to help us financially, as well as something happening in my heart. I prayed this with many tears. I had had it! I was very run down with worrying about money all the time.
That night was our monthly meeting of Mothers of Preschoolers at a local church. I had been attending for years and I always enjoyed the meetings, but this evening I didn't feel like going. I was not in the mood to socialize and be receptive to anything, but I dragged myself there anyway. I pulled into the parking lot and noticed that every car but mine was a mini-van. "Look at all of these yuppies! See, everyone but us has money for a mini-van and here I pull up in my ratty car." I had three children and I could really use a mini-van! I walked into the church and found out that the topic of the evening was "Living within your means." My eyebrows went up. I wondered if God was involved in this conspiracy. The longer that meeting went on, the angrier I got! We talked in small groups about how we saved money. The other ladies talked about how they had forfeited their trip to Cancun this year! I got angrier ... and about how they kept Christmas spending to (a ridiculous amount of money) ... I got angrier. When it came time for me to speak, the tears just came down, and I shared that I honestly didn't have money for food that week. They all just looked at me like I was such a poor, pitiful thing. I was so sorry I had come and shared. I felt so out of place. I wanted to leave, but the meeting was almost over anyway, and I would have had to walk past too many with tears in my eyes. A lady stood up tentatively and said, "I have no idea why I did this, but before coming here tonight, I went out into my garden and brought a whole table full of German statice. Maybe no one is interested, but if you are, please take all you would like." Talk about tears coming down!
I drove home and carefully placed my weeds from God in my basket. Wow! He does listen to me. God gives me weeds!
Shortly thereafter, my husband got a raise and I started a job in ministry working with youth. God knows my every need, and even my every desire. I do not need to worry.
David Eaton
I grew up on a farm in southern Minnesota. In 1962, my father and uncle shared several farm implements, so we would help each other out. On an October Saturday, I was helping my Dad pick corn on Uncle Jerry's farm. The day was getting late, but Dad wanted to finish so he could take the equipment back to our farm to get started picking corn on Monday. (We never did farm work on Sunday, for that was the Lord's Day and a day of rest.) By the time we finished picking corn, it was dusk and our farm was over two miles away. Neither tractor had lights so we were in a hurry to get home. With instructions to follow Dad, I drove a tractor and wagon. I was probably 1,500 feet behind his equipment (tractor, corn picker, and wagon). It was getting very dark, but we were nearing the home place.
As I came around a corner, going full throttle (18 mph) on the John Deere B, (nine-year-olds love going full throttle), I met a vehicle coming from the other direction. Its headlights were on high beam and it had stopped on its side of the road in front of me. The light blinded me and suddenly, right in front of me, was the back of the wagon connected to the tractor my dad was driving, stopped on his side (and mine) of the road! My older brother had come looking for us and had stopped to talk with Dad. Dad didn't realize I could not see his stopped equipment.
I had just enough time to make one hard attempt to disengage the hand clutch -- but it wouldn't disengage. I was standing behind the steering wheel -- much like a ship's captain -- when I felt the tractor being steered through my arms. My tractor and wagon entered the ditch, missing the stationary wagon by a foot, drove parallel to the wagon, corn picker, and tractor, and came up out of the ditch, missing the front of my dad's tractor by a foot! After returning to the roadway, I once again attempted to disengage the hand clutch, and this time it released easily. My dad came running and, with frantic tears in his voice, cried out, "Are you all right?" Can you imagine what had gone through his mind and heart through all of this? Calmly, I assured him that I was fine, but had lost my cap in the process.
Upon further review, some very interesting facts turned up. It was understandable to just miss the back of the stationary wagon when I entered the ditch, because I had reacted as immediately as I could. But why did I miss the front of the tractor by only a foot when coming out of the ditch? That question wasn't answered until the next morning when my dad went back to look over the scene in the daylight. Had I stayed in the ditch one second longer, I would have hit a field road culvert, connecting a farmer's field with the road, and certainly would have flipped the tractor over. He also discovered a barbed-wired fence on the field side of the ditch that could have caused me injury or worse if my tractor had veered too far to the right. And, it would have taken a professional stunt driver to have entered and left the steep ditch at just the right angle to avoid tipping over.
Anyone investigating this scene would have been foolish to suggest that it was skill, or even luck, for a nine-year-old boy to have maneuvered a tractor at full throttle through all of this while standing up! I knew that, through the power of God, Someone else had driven that tractor into and then out of that ditch, though through my hands and arms.
My mother was the first to interpret that God had a special plan and purpose for my life. He had preserved me in a special way and I had profoundly experienced his presence. Maybe that was the day, way back forty years ago, that I first began moving away from being a farmer and toward becoming a minister....
At one particularly bad time, it seemed we were even about to lose our house, and I had to ask my parents for food money. I didn't think I was a money waster. I had always been proud of the way I saved my family money by shopping at secondhand stores, garage sales, and estate sales. I had gone to a secondhand store that day and had bought a very cheap basket to hang on our wall. We hadn't lived in our house for very long, and we were still trying to decorate and make it a "home." I knew I shouldn't have spent even the dollar it took to buy the basket, as we had just asked my parents for money. I felt so guilty and upset by our situation. Even worse, I came home and hung the basket up and I liked it ... but it needed something. I needed some dried weeds ... possibly some German statice to put in it. I got even angrier. "See," I thought to myself, "you are never happy ... want, want, want!" My husband came home and we ended up having a fight about it. He could not understand my need for that basket at all and was angry that I spent the money. It was such a stupid little thing ... but so big.
I prayed to God fiercely that night. I didn't feel God was near. I was scared about all we could lose and about all I felt we didn't, and might never, have. I prayed, if we could never have more money, then could God please take away my desires for material things and help me to be happy and feel blessed with whatever I had instead of always wanting more. I also prayed that something would happen to help us financially, as well as something happening in my heart. I prayed this with many tears. I had had it! I was very run down with worrying about money all the time.
That night was our monthly meeting of Mothers of Preschoolers at a local church. I had been attending for years and I always enjoyed the meetings, but this evening I didn't feel like going. I was not in the mood to socialize and be receptive to anything, but I dragged myself there anyway. I pulled into the parking lot and noticed that every car but mine was a mini-van. "Look at all of these yuppies! See, everyone but us has money for a mini-van and here I pull up in my ratty car." I had three children and I could really use a mini-van! I walked into the church and found out that the topic of the evening was "Living within your means." My eyebrows went up. I wondered if God was involved in this conspiracy. The longer that meeting went on, the angrier I got! We talked in small groups about how we saved money. The other ladies talked about how they had forfeited their trip to Cancun this year! I got angrier ... and about how they kept Christmas spending to (a ridiculous amount of money) ... I got angrier. When it came time for me to speak, the tears just came down, and I shared that I honestly didn't have money for food that week. They all just looked at me like I was such a poor, pitiful thing. I was so sorry I had come and shared. I felt so out of place. I wanted to leave, but the meeting was almost over anyway, and I would have had to walk past too many with tears in my eyes. A lady stood up tentatively and said, "I have no idea why I did this, but before coming here tonight, I went out into my garden and brought a whole table full of German statice. Maybe no one is interested, but if you are, please take all you would like." Talk about tears coming down!
I drove home and carefully placed my weeds from God in my basket. Wow! He does listen to me. God gives me weeds!
Shortly thereafter, my husband got a raise and I started a job in ministry working with youth. God knows my every need, and even my every desire. I do not need to worry.
David Eaton
I grew up on a farm in southern Minnesota. In 1962, my father and uncle shared several farm implements, so we would help each other out. On an October Saturday, I was helping my Dad pick corn on Uncle Jerry's farm. The day was getting late, but Dad wanted to finish so he could take the equipment back to our farm to get started picking corn on Monday. (We never did farm work on Sunday, for that was the Lord's Day and a day of rest.) By the time we finished picking corn, it was dusk and our farm was over two miles away. Neither tractor had lights so we were in a hurry to get home. With instructions to follow Dad, I drove a tractor and wagon. I was probably 1,500 feet behind his equipment (tractor, corn picker, and wagon). It was getting very dark, but we were nearing the home place.
As I came around a corner, going full throttle (18 mph) on the John Deere B, (nine-year-olds love going full throttle), I met a vehicle coming from the other direction. Its headlights were on high beam and it had stopped on its side of the road in front of me. The light blinded me and suddenly, right in front of me, was the back of the wagon connected to the tractor my dad was driving, stopped on his side (and mine) of the road! My older brother had come looking for us and had stopped to talk with Dad. Dad didn't realize I could not see his stopped equipment.
I had just enough time to make one hard attempt to disengage the hand clutch -- but it wouldn't disengage. I was standing behind the steering wheel -- much like a ship's captain -- when I felt the tractor being steered through my arms. My tractor and wagon entered the ditch, missing the stationary wagon by a foot, drove parallel to the wagon, corn picker, and tractor, and came up out of the ditch, missing the front of my dad's tractor by a foot! After returning to the roadway, I once again attempted to disengage the hand clutch, and this time it released easily. My dad came running and, with frantic tears in his voice, cried out, "Are you all right?" Can you imagine what had gone through his mind and heart through all of this? Calmly, I assured him that I was fine, but had lost my cap in the process.
Upon further review, some very interesting facts turned up. It was understandable to just miss the back of the stationary wagon when I entered the ditch, because I had reacted as immediately as I could. But why did I miss the front of the tractor by only a foot when coming out of the ditch? That question wasn't answered until the next morning when my dad went back to look over the scene in the daylight. Had I stayed in the ditch one second longer, I would have hit a field road culvert, connecting a farmer's field with the road, and certainly would have flipped the tractor over. He also discovered a barbed-wired fence on the field side of the ditch that could have caused me injury or worse if my tractor had veered too far to the right. And, it would have taken a professional stunt driver to have entered and left the steep ditch at just the right angle to avoid tipping over.
Anyone investigating this scene would have been foolish to suggest that it was skill, or even luck, for a nine-year-old boy to have maneuvered a tractor at full throttle through all of this while standing up! I knew that, through the power of God, Someone else had driven that tractor into and then out of that ditch, though through my hands and arms.
My mother was the first to interpret that God had a special plan and purpose for my life. He had preserved me in a special way and I had profoundly experienced his presence. Maybe that was the day, way back forty years ago, that I first began moving away from being a farmer and toward becoming a minister....
