After nine months of feeling like the Lord was calling me to Bethel, I was able to visit this past Sunday. It was as if God had something there for me, like to receive something, not from man but from Him. I didn't think I was going to be able to attend because all of our three vehicles had broken down in the same week, about three months ago. We had just bought one a year ago, and it had a malfunction in the engine that the warranty was not covering. Another we fixed two weeks before for $3000, and then a couch flew off another car and totaled our commuter car. It would need a couple of thousand dollars to fix.
Going to Bethel seemed impossible. To make a long story short, what should have cost us thousands of dollars to fix didn't. My husband and I prayed and believed that God would 'rebuke the devourer' over our finances. Three months later, we found the warranty would cover fixing our truck, and the insurance from the accident regarding our commuter gave us way more than we expected for our car: we bought it back and fixed it, and we were also able to fix our other car. We got a check in the mail, and instead of being thousands of dollars in debt, we were thousands of dollars in the positive, and God made a way for me to go to Bethel. What the enemy meant for bad, God turned around for good for us.
I am the women's leader here at my church, and my father-in-law has been the pastor for over 40 years. He has a healing and deliverance ministry. Over the past two years or so, the Holy Spirit has been speaking so powerfully to me about healing, so much so that I told my husband last year that I know He's calling me into that. We went to church Sunday morning. A woman started to pray, and she prayed for the things I requested. But then she thanked God for this divine appointment and for bringing us together and prayed that where there was a blockage, God would break it up and give me perspective. I never shared that with her.
On the way home on Monday, we had to drive from Redding to catch our plane in Sacramento. We stopped to put gas in our car 55 miles out of Sacramento. The rental car would not restart. My husband and a friend tried everything. We started praying. And I immediately thought of how God had intervened and made a way for us to get there, and then some, and knew He could do it again. The rental company was being difficult. And we were going to have to wait at that gas station in the middle of nowhere for three hours. There were no Ubers or taxis to get us in the area. The airline said we would be on standby and possibly get a flight the next day for a small cost of over $500. We tried to do everything we could, but we just had no control over the situation.
When the tow truck got there, we begged him to at least take one of us to get a car, but he couldn't. And then, not even five minutes after we unloaded the car, a woman came towards us, telling us she would take us wherever we needed to go. She said she was on the highway, and the Holy Spirit told her to stop at this gas station even though she didn't need gas, and when she saw us, she said she knew in her heart it was to help us. I started to quietly scan her and noticed they were wearing Bethel bracelets from the Open Heavens Conference. So we immediately started talking and knew God had sent her. On the drive to the airport, she looked in her rearview mirror and said, “I see signs, wonders, and miracles and healings being done through you. You have had a hunger and thirst for God.” She never asked for payment, and we offered but she wouldn't take it. She did ask for prayer because she had a hole in her eardrum that needed to be healed, and she asked me to pray for healing over her since God would start to use me in that way. So we prayed there in the parking lot at the car rental place. I truly believe the Lord has been so involved in all the details, as He always has been in my life. I just wanted to share because I immediately thought of the Scripture yesterday when that woman said the Holy Spirit told her to stop at the gas station when she didn't need gas, that He will do abundantly more than we could ever think or imagine! Yes, He will and He did!