Testimony.
Wednesday night. Florence is bearing down on us much like Hugo did back in 1989. We had a big mess then. 7 tornadoes tore through the little town of Great Falls SC. We had a 12 foot circumference oak tree leaning on our house like a drunk against a light pole.
Our grown children were begging us to vamos! They wanted us to bug out and head north and stay at any of their houses until the storm passed. We really did not want to do that. We are in our sixties and really don't want to leave home if we do not have to. If the catastrophe the NWS and NHC was prophesying really happened it would be weeks before we could get back in. Barb wanted to stay. So did I. So... What to do?
So I pray. "Lord, this thing appears to have our name on it. It is supposed to be here in a day or two. One hundred mile per hour winds. Over a foot of rain. I do not believe you put us here to have all our work and money spent just to have it blown away by a whirlwind. Lord... what do you want us to do?"
The response was immediate. I have found that hearing from the Lord is much like remembering a thought that you had a long time ago and it just pops back up inside you. It was almost like He was sitting with me with the answer in His mouth. just waiting for me to ask.
The first words were definitive.
"I want you to trust me."
Well, it never occurred to me that I was not trusting Him. But I did not say that. He would have known my heart anyways. So at some level within me the question welled up: "Why is He saying that to me?"
Now the little man in me that values miracles and answered prayer steps up and says "He is going to turn the storm for us!!!"
No. The storm is going exactly where it was meant to go and it will not deviate just for us.
"The storm will stop. Turn left. And head south of you. You will be relatively untouched."
We have been in the south for 43 years. Barbara was born and raised here. I do not recall a hurricane ever, after coming up from the southeast, turning left at the coast and heading south. But that is what the storm was going to do. And now we see that it is exactly what it did. It barely entered NC just north of the NC SC border, stopped for a few hours, and then turned left. Creeping along at 2 mph it changed course and passed us about 40 miles south. Winds never exceeded 40 miles an hour and we had less that 4 inches of rain.
Now like I said. He did not change the course of the storm. It went exactly where it was intended to go. But He let us know 2 days ahead of time that it would take the south turn and miss us. The southwest quadrant passed over us. The weakest quadrant. So this testimony is not about a miraculous changing of the weather.. it is about the Lord answering the question and telling us why we should not worry about it.
Thank the Lord!