My wife and I were driving home from our son’s house in our pickup truck, a drive of about five hours. It was necessary for us to take a different route home because of highway construction. The road we were traveling had recently been resurfaced, and this made the pavement very smooth. The good road made it possible for me to hear a very faint click, click, click, made by one of the tires. I recognized the noise as uneven wear on the tire tread. I remember thinking, I must have the tires on this truck checked as soon as we get home. Because there was no place along the route we were taking to have the tires checked on a Saturday afternoon, I ignored what I recognized as a possible problem.
As things turned out, the problem was, in fact, more serious than uneven wear on the surface of the tire. Looking back on the event, I was reminded of a verse in the Bible that says, “God [speaks] once, yea twice, yet man [perceives] it not” (Job 33:1414For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not. (Job 33:14)). It is true that God speaks again and again to those who have not trusted the Lord Jesus as their Saviour. He permits things to happen in their lives that are meant to speak to their conscience and heart. It is also true that God speaks to those who have believed in their heart and have had all their sins washed away in the precious blood of Christ. God speaks once, and sometimes twice, to His children, when they are doing things that do not please Him. “God is faithful” and “His mercy [endures] forever.” In all that happens, the mercy of God is shown to us to draw us closer to Himself. He often raises red flags of warning or stop signs in our pathway when His children are not walking pleasing to Him. If we ignore these red flags or stop signs, our lives may end up with major problems like our tire problem that I ignored.
The clicking sound of the tire soon became a bang, bang, bang! We thought we had a flat tire. We pulled over and found all the rubber tread had been thrown off the tire and the steel belt of the tire was on the ground, but the tire was not flat. This permitted us to drive slowly a few miles until we came to a café with gas pumps. Stopping under the canopy in the shade, we went inside to get help.
Angie, a 19-year-old young lady, cheerfully asked if she could help us. I replied, “I doubt it, because we have tire trouble,” and I asked if there were a phone I could use to call a tow truck or someone to come change the tire. Angie very quickly said, “I’ll change that tire for you.”
With that encouragement, I lay down on the concrete driveway and began to take the spare tire off its carrier underneath the truck. Together we did get the spare on the ground and the bad tire off. But then we discovered that we had another problem. The spare, not having been used in some time, was not fully pumped up. The café did not have an air hose, and since Angie was new to the area, she did not know how far it might be to another station. We thought by driving slowly and carefully we could make it to a station where we could completely pump up the tire.
Just as God speaks to us to get our attention when we are doing what does not please Him, His help comes in many ways and just at the right time. Because we knew we would have to buy gas before we got home, we decided to fill up the truck at the café where we had been treated so nicely.
As we were filling the gas tank, another customer pulled into the station. He was a rancher and asked if he could be of help. As God often does, He provided us just the help we needed again. The rancher had a portable air compressor in his truck. In just a few minutes he had the tire fully pumped up, and we were able to go on our way, thankful for what God had done for us.
This story has a very happy ending. As we were paying for the gas, we asked Angie whether or not she had settled the matter of where she would spend eternity. She happily said she would be in heaven. We then asked her, “How can you be sure?” She answered, “Because I believe in God in my heart and have accepted the Lord Jesus as my Saviour.” What a thrill it was for us to hear this helpful young lady clearly confess that Christ was her Saviour.
Now the question comes to you boys and girls (and grown-ups too), “Have you settled where you will spend eternity?” Can you say, like Angie, that you have believed on the Lord Jesus in your heart and accepted Him as your Saviour? There is nothing you have to do to settle that question but believe, and all your sins will be washed away in the blood of the Lord Jesus shed on the cross. We hope that every one of you will do as Angie has done: “Confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and . . . believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead” (Romans 10:99That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. (Romans 10:9)). You will then have settled the very important issue of spending eternity in heaven with the Lord Jesus “who loved [you], and gave Himself for [you]” (Galatians 2:2020I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)).
ML-12/19/1999