John 16:13 "But when He, the Spirit of Truth, comes, He will guide you into all
truth. He will not speak on His own; He will speak only what He hears, and He
will tell you what is yet to come."
March 14, 1995 will be a date my family will never forget.
I didn't know the Lord very well in those days, though I thought I did, but when
I went to bed on the night of the 13th, I was overcome with a deep conviction
that the trip we had planned for the morrow, to Detroit, Michigan, was
completely wrong!
I tried to ignore it, but I heard a voice in my inner being: "Don't go to
Detroit. You will have a terrible accident, but no one will be hurt."
Was I becoming insane? What was that voice that I heard? Was I starting to talk
to myself? It bothered me the entire night, and in the morning, I told my wife
about it. Her response? "Oh! You're just trying to get out of the trip! You
NEVER want to go anywhere!" Well, it was partially true that I don't like
driving long distances, and her reaction helped me to convince myself that my
imagination had been working overtime.
It was about mid-afternoon when it happened. We had already covered over half of
the route and were currently just a few kilometers outside of London, Ontario,
when the words came vividly back to mind: "You will have a terrible accident,
but no one will be hurt."
"How stupid!" I mused. "It's a beautiful, sunny day. There is no way we can be
in an accident!"
But no sooner had those words been spoken that three deer emerged from the woods
to my right. I was passing a car, but having had previous experience with deer
on the road, I tried to slow down. It was too late, however, for one of them had
already darted onto the roadway. Before I knew it, it was right in front of me.
With a car to my right and a ditch to my left, changing lanes was not an option,
and I hit the deer head on. It rolled up onto the hood and banged against the
windshield, just in front of the passenger seat, where my wife had just woken up
from a nap. Then it bounced up onto the roof off the car and was gone. The
windshield was shattered, the front end of the car was completely smashed, and
the engine stopped, but our vehicle was still rolling. It was all I could do to
pull the car safely onto the left shoulder.
Having been in the driver seat, away from the full impact of the deer's body, I
was free of glass. My 2 year-old, who had been strapped into his car seat behind
the me, was screaming out of fear, and frantically rubbing his hands all over
his face. But miraculously, there wasn't any glass on him, so all of his rubbing
and screaming didn't result in any scratches. My wife and 1 month-old baby
didn't make out so well, however. My wife was covered with glass shards, which
she tried to pick off carefully so as to not be cut. The baby was covered from
head to toe with glass shards; but most notably, his little eyelids were
literally caked with them. He had been asleep when the calamity struck, and
somehow, despite all the noise and commotion, he slept on. This was a real
blessing, for had he awoken, he would surely have rubbed his little eyes and
could have seriously cut himself.
A truck stopped on the side of the road and called for help, then the driver
invited my children and my wife into his cab, where he tried to amuse my 2
year-old with pudding and treats. But what should we do about our baby? We had
taken him out of the car and although he was sleeping, he was still covered with
glass. If he woke up, he would scratch himself to death, and if we tried to
remove the glass, we would probably hurt him, and would also succeed in waking
him up, which we didn't want to do! We finally decided to follow the advice of
our "Good Samaritan" truck driver, and wait for the ambulance!
It was about half an hour before the police and ambulance arrived. The
paramedics seemed to know exactly what to do with glass shards on baby faces,
and within minutes, he was clean. Only when all the debris had been removed did
he wake up and started to cry.
In the end, neither of my boys or myself had even as much as a scratch. My wife
was the only casualty. In trying to get the glass off her face, she had managed
to scratch the surface of her skin. We had been spared from this terrible
accident. But how?
It's then that I remembered that inner voice that had spoken to me so clearly
"Don't go to Detroit. You will have a terrible accident, but no one will be
hurt." Was it possible that God had spoken to me though His Holy Spirit? My
church didn't believe in this kind of manifestations, but how else could I
explain this inner voice? We had been warned and miraculously spared.
When the police officer finished his assessment he came back to me and said
"It's a miracle anyone of you are alive!"
I stared at him innocently: "Why?"
"These kinds of accidents frequently happen on this stretch of the highway, but
they usually result in disaster," he said. "Just last week a minivan hit a deer
like you just did. Its windshield caved in under the impact of the animal, and
the deer ended up in the passenger's seat. I don't know why your windshield
didn't cave in by the force of the impact. You should have been all dead!"
Shivers ran in the back of my neck. There is no other explanation. God had
warned us through His Holy Spirit, and had come through by protecting us from
disaster that could have cost all of our lives. Why had He spared us? Did He
have special plans for us?
He sure did and He has plans for you as well. His love is unfathomable and His
guidance through His Holy Spirit is unbelievable, but true. This accident opened
my heart to the promptings of God's Holy Spirit. I had just found out that I
have a friend in Jesus.
God does speak though His Spirit. He will never contradict what is written in
His Word the Bible. He speaks to you because He loves you and hungers to have a
relationship with you. Will you let Him? The choice is yours.
Do you have a trip to make?
Rob Chaffart
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