Our oldest son, Jason, was born in January of 1976. We were living in Las Vegas and the high desert can get bitterly cold. One Saturday our heat stopped working. We were poor youth pastors at the time and I knew we couldn't afford a weekend service call. I climbed up on the roof to see if I could figure out why our combination heat/AC unit had stopped working. I'm fairly handy and checked everything I knew how to check. I tried everything, took off covers, flipped the breaker off and on, wiggled the wiring, nothing. Our house had already started getting cold and Kathy and I had a new baby that we knew could not get cold. I remember sitting on that roof, shivering so badly I could hardly work and finally crying, literally, out to God for help. I told Him about our cold house, new baby and new mother, as if He didn't know. I know the Holy Spirit put the next thought into my mind. "Run your hand along the bottom of the back cover." As I did that I felt a circuit breaker. I got down on my belly and shined my flashlight to look. It was Off. I pressed the On side and the heater fired up. I will never forget that God moment.
Saturday morning I had another one. Our dishwasher had stopped working and draining properly. Since this unit is probably original to our house, 30 years old, we had talked before about replacing it. But now was not the time. Things have been tight and we're trying to save some money to fly out our Oregon kids and grandkids for Christmas. I was telling the Lord all that on Saturday. No one else was up yet and I was having a little personal "pity party." In fact I was covering a number of feel-sorry-for-myself topics with Him as I started bailing out all the water in the bottom of the dishwasher. As I was trying to figure out how to get the last of the water out, a thought came into my mind that I know the Holy Spirit put there. "Take the back screen cover off, take out the plastic screen and put your hand down in the opening." I got my tools, took out the screws and removed the 2 screens. As I reached down in the well still filled with water, I felt pieces of plastic and other yucky stuff. By the time I had cleaned it all out, I had quite a collection. I put it all back together and shut the door, ran the control around to rinse and listened for the rinse cycle to stop. Just as it stopped, I opened the door to hear this great sucking sound and all the water was disappearing just like it is supposed to. A God moment.
