I recently shared how we were at a friends wedding up the coast when on the way back we stopped by a campground. While taking a little ride on some bikes the Holy Spirit gave me a clear "stop and talk to this guy" word when passing by a couple. After a little conversation I found out his girlfriend had been taking him to church lately but he had never received Christ. "I am almost a Christian," he said. Well, after talking a bit and sharing the gospel with him he opened his heart and received Christ -- Praise God he is "almost" no more. Who wants to “almost” go to heaven?
That divine appointment brought back a sense of “this feels like déjà vu all over again.” Then I remembered: Yep, we had a divine appointment right in that same place a few years ago with the same kind of circumstances leading up to it:
We had been up in the exact same area a few years back at another wedding in Monterey, one of my relatives was getting married, and it had also turned into a series of divine appointments:
Back then it started off with my uncle, an intellectual agnostic type of guy, who approached us straight off and asked us to pray for him right before the wedding started.
I was taken aback, after years of seemingly fruitless witnessing to him he was asking for prayer all of sudden.
He had been diagnosed with cancer—it seems the coolness of spouting off intellectual elitism lost the cache it had at Bay Area parties while swilling that glass of wine with hip friends—now the end game was in sight and agnosticism and atheism offered him no comfort or hope whatsoever.
So we prayed for him and shared more about the Lord with him and came to find out when we saw him at his home in Hawaii a few months later—after ministering with STN—that he had started going to church, and at an evangelical church no less, down the road from his house in Poipu, Kauai. Wow!!!
Back in the wedding in Monterey, God’s presence took over our time as we just hung out a bit in the area the next day, and then we headed down the coast and stopped in Big Sur and went for a hike where we came to a fork in the trail. I remember the Spirit of God giving me a nudge to not go towards the waterfall at the moment, but to instead head up the hotter dustier part of the trail to a lookout point.
We came to the lookout point and there on the bench was a guy sitting with his head in his hands. We ended up talking with him and he started sharing struggles he was having in his life with relationships and drugs, etc. We shared Christ with him and he opened his heart and we prayed for him to receive Christ and for the Spirit of God to minister to him, which He did, Hallelujah!!!
Then a strange thing happened: all of a sudden, with a changed countenance and a big smile, he started telling me where the good and hard-to-get-to, hidden surf spots were around the area. Seemed like he had an injection of truth serum—well I guess he did since the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth—I suddenly felt like a secret CIA surfer giving Holy Ghost injections to surfers along the coast to find out the secrets of their hidden spots.
That is not the only time that has happened, we were in Northern Scotland, way up where if you go further north you will finally hit the North Pole. We were spending time for our anniversary and visiting the place of former revival. The area was known for good surf but trying to get to the right place with the right wind and swell hitting at the right time seemed beyond difficult. I was mostly hitting spots with good swell but “victory at sea” wind conditions; a fun alternative was trout fishing since they have so much trout in this area. You can fish it as much as you want without a license or limits. Well, after quite a bit of fish I was hungry for some decent surf.
I ran into this local at a gas station and started talking with him; I wasn’t very hopeful about getting info from him since other locals were quite mum about telling you info on where to surf and when in this region. However, I was just hanging out and started sharing some Holy Ghost Surf Stories with him. His heart seemed touched and he looked around to make sure no one else was listening to us, and then grabbed a map and said, “Look here, yank, if you want some great surf, go to this surf spot about an hour away right now. It will have some nice swell and a wee bit of off shore winds.”
Well the secret CIA truth serum of the Holy Ghost did it again, without even trying! We headed straight down to the indicated spot and it was going off, and I, for quite a while, was surfing completely by myself, hallelujah! Quite the experience for someone from crowded Southern California!! A Scottish crowd did finally show up a few hours later and there were a grand total of about 4 other guys in the water with plenty of waves to go around.
By that time, however, I was on my way out of the water and was frosting up as the sun was starting to go down. In the evening, the temperatures were dropping below freezing even though it was in midsummer.
I looked back as I got out and took in the view of awesome emerald waves, white sand, and jagged cliffs, and thanked God for what was surely a once-in-a-lifetime type of experience!
Praise God for that Holy Ghost truth serum too!!
Some awesome waves in Scotland obtained in
Scotland through a divine appointment.
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