So, there in the deep, I conversed with God. God, the Lord Jesus Christ. If Jesus were not God, why did He speak to me? Was this my imagination? No. I can now say, Unequivocally not. The impressions and conversations were too lifelike. There were pregnant pauses where the pauses should be, as if I was speaking to you. Further, I even tried to continue of my own volition. I couldn’t.
I am amazed at how the Lord dealt so directly with my thoughts. Although Christians espouse faith with their mouths, when God deals directly with you, it is a peculiar sensation. I am humbled to think that God Himself actually cares so much about me that He took a few hours out on the night of September 6 to talk to me, instruct me, comfort me, encourage me and, of course, love me. Even now, months later, it almost seems too surreal, and if I did not experience it myself, I would harbor unbelief that these things were so . . . but it is all true.
There is a Bible story of a man named Elijah who was facing depression and death.
God called him out to the mouth of a cave to speak to him and show Himself to him. What Elijah saw, however, was hurricane-force winds, then he felt the ground shake with an earthquake, and then a fire consumed the sky. The story says that God was not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire, but after all these things, there was a still, small voice. This is the voice of God. When you hear it, you know it . . . undeniably. I knew to whom I was speaking. I just chose not to believe it.
But even if you cannot accept this, the evidence should lay in the miracle of the journey itself. How many things worked in my favor, while at the same time tested me to the utmost extreme? Reread if you have to. My survival and the survival of EspŽrance should be miracles enough.
What about the sheer culmination of my abilities? Work hard, practice self-discipline and remain persistent. (In a sense, exactly what John Maxwell said about luck.) I am told in the Scriptures that I was chosen before the foundation of the world. Did God know that I needed to learn and accumulate these abilities to make this journey? Indeed.