When God is Up to Something

Hi everybody, welcome to this edition of Ignite. I want to talk to you about the very clear point that there are no coincidences, okay? And we get our lives interrupted on a continual basis. It seems like never goes according to plan for me in particular. There's always things that interrupt my life. Why God now, you know, but when you get back and say, okay, God, what are you up to? It changes your perspective on those things. And it goes all the way back. There's a ton of scriptures, the disciples, I mean the things that happened to them and they couldn't understand why, why did they happen to Jesus? They ran from Jesus all that. I'm thinking of Paul and, you know, he's on his way to Rome and the ship goes down and they end up on Malta of all places. And he phrased God through that all. And quite frankly, the people of Malta probably would have heard the good news for a long time later, except the Paul with shipwrecked and left there. And he left a body of people there serving the Lord and whatever happened from that, whatever, until we get to heaven. But I mean, there's all kinds of those kinds of experiences out there. I mean, when you live in the fog, when you live in the favor of God, it means that everything your life is working together for good. And you would expect me to say, Romans 8, 28, it is my go to verse. But it is so true. Everything in your life works together for good. When you live in the fog, when you live for his purpose, it says, when you love me and you live for my purpose, to those who love me to those who live for my purpose, his purpose is to seek and save the loss. And when we live to seek and save the loss and move everybody, everybody closer to Jesus, there are no coincidences. It just doesn't happen that way. A couple of early on ones. I'm going back now 50 years, okay? And it was when I didn't know what I was doing. I talked my family into letting me go retail, but I didn't know anything about retail. I didn't know the faintest thing about retail. I knew how to buff a car. I knew how to do that but I knew nothing about retail. So I said, God, you're just going to have to send some people into my life that can tell me how to do this. And he did. I was, and you may remember the story. I've told it before, but I was in a waiting room with a bunch of other traveling salesman waiting to go see my buyer. And I sat next to a guy by the name of Craig Benson. And we started with an ice conversation. It was very nice. It's like 20 years by senior. And then he went to his buyer, and I went to mine. That was in Dallas, Texas. Two weeks later, I go into the same type of waiting room at another customer's location. And it is Seattle, Washington, and I walk in and here's the same guy. There's Craig Benson. Hey, I know you. And so we, we talk and we share. And I said, I really, something, God, something, something here. And he said, what are you? What's your dream? What are you working on? I said, well, it's not what I'm here today for, but it is my dream. I have the greatest car wax in the world. And I want to go retail with it. I don't know how to do it. And he proceeds to tell me that he could help me do that. He is a general partner in the largest advertising firm in the United States. I said, well, I can't help you. I mean, you can help me, I can't pay for it. I have no money. He's more than you live. He says, he says, he was really in some where I was living. We can ever connect us. I live down in Orange County and Irvine. It turns out we live about 15 minutes from each other. Okay. So there are no coincidences. I meet him in Dallas at the same time, same place we're in there. I meet him in Seattle. And then we find out we live 15 minutes from each other. And he ends up spending volumes of time for no charge. Really give me like a master's degree on marketing in to the big box stores to the to the mass market. Incredible. There was another guy that I've often told this sir about Al Atherton. And I met him at a conference up in LA and same kind of thing happened. And he was a powerful ad man. And he got intrigued with me. And he wanted to help me. And he started driving from LA down to my office once a week to talk to me and give me encouragement to tell me what I need to do. He's just amazing. It wasn't a coincidence that I met Al Atherton at a conference up in LA. I'd go back 50 years ago. But then it just keeps going. I have to tell the story. I was at this hotel and I needed to get to dinner. My friend always wants to pay the bill. So I want to get there before him so I can pay the bill. I was up in my room and I was trying to get my Uber after work and it wouldn't work. So I told Karen we got to get downstairs and get outside the hotel to get my Uber after work. So he said, okay, so we rush outside. It still doesn't work. And so Karen says, you better get that taxi. I said great idea. So I told the guy, well, the taxi is well, that taxi is spoken for. And I said, what do you mean it's spoken for? Well, the lady behind you back at the right right by the front door, that's her taxi. So I said, well, how long will it take to get another taxi? He said, what's about five o'clock? Probably about 15 minutes or so. And this is the blood is draining out of my head. No, no, I can't have this happen. But at that time I hear, sir, I listen, sir, I'll look around and it's the lady out by the front door of the hotel. She says, just take my taxi. I said, wait a minute, will we take your taxi? She said, well, my husband's upstairs, I don't know what he's doing. He made me 10 minutes. I don't know. I'll just take the next taxi. So I said, okay, so we jump in the taxi and the taxi soon begins and it takes off with skinning, skinning rubber. And the guy has has profanity from his first, from his first words, out of his mouth. Where are the blank and blank? He was out of control. So we started asking questions, you know, what's going on with that? That his wife had just passed away from agonizing cancer. They couldn't stop it. And his kids were just in rebellion and drive him out of his mind. He was at his wits end, you know? And so whenever you're in those kinds of situations, you just say, God, you know, give me the word. And he quickly came in and I said to him, you know, God says, come unto me. Oh, you, all you who are burdened and have your laden and I will give you rest. And he yelled at that same intensity as voice boy, do I need rest? So from there to the rest of it, Karen, I kept giving you scriptures and it touched the end of the tree. He said, I need to get in church. I need God. That's what I need. So we got out and I said, I tell you what, if you tell me where you live and give me your your cell number, I will find a church near you. We need to send somebody to a good church, not just any church. 90% of all churches are not even sharing their faith anymore. And I'm talking about summation. So be careful with that. Anyway, he said, quote, he said, yes, of course, he wrote it all down. I said, can we pray for you? He's in, would you please? So here we are in the front of this restaurant, this wonderful restaurant, people traffic and people walking in and out in here, Karen, I in the in the wash of the floodlights of this taxi praying together, right? And having this wonderful time. I'll never forget that moment. You have these moments. I mean, you share your faith every day, but then there's these watershed moments. He just know you made a difference in somebody's life in a huge way, right? Well, think about coincidences. You know, God had to stop my, my uber app for working, right? He had to keep the lady's husband upstairs. He had to give her a man of a heart where she wanted to just hold onto that taxi. He said, oh, just go ahead and use my taxi. Think of all that. And then he had to have that taxi driver right at that place at that time for Karen, I walk into that taxi. I mean, there are no coincidences. There's not. I'll tell you one more just right quick. And these are all in my book. If you get my book Ignite Your Life, I tell lots of these stories. And everyone's amazing. We were flying to Manchester, New Hampshire for a car rally, where their friends were reaching, sharing Klein. And we got held up in Chicago. How many times have you had that happen to you? By the time we got to Manchester, we were the last flight in. And we're at the last baggage claim. And all the bags came out and ours didn't come out, right? So it's going to come. Sure. So finding the last two bags, you know, they're like, it actually stopped. And then it started to get us that our two bags down. So you know, God's up to us. So they walk out of we always have a car waiting for us at our eight stages of the game at our age. We have a car waiting for us, you know, but it wasn't waiting for this. It wasn't there. There was no car for us. So I call back to my secretary and we find out that they've been trying to find the driver. They don't know where he is. And now it's one o'clock in the morning. And they don't know what to do. So they said they would keep looking. They said, all right, so I looked around and there was two benches. I actually said to him, well, at least there's two benches here. It's a warm evening. We had a, you know, and we laughed. A carer and I laugh when things go wrong. Because when things go wrong, God is up to something every single time instead of saying, well, thanks a lot and God, there's all we need. You say, God, what are you up to? You're up to something. And we talked then about how we say just about every time there must be somebody God wants us to talk to tonight. So he's interrupted our lives. About that time they announced that the airport is now closed and look back. The lights are all off. I went to the door. It was locked. And it was only then we realized there was nobody in the airport. I mean, it was it was gone. There wasn't one taxi. There wasn't one person. It was totally deserted. I had to take a picture of it. It's a great scene. So we just left. Oh, well, you know, what do you have to God? Well, Kathy, my secretary found a guy who would take it right up to Boston and was dead heading back. And somehow she got ahold of him. And he came by and picked us up and we're driving off it. He he'd gotten the story from my secretary. So he knew what was going on. He just amazed it. All the things that couldn't have gone wrong to get us in that place. And so finally he said, so what was going through your mind? You really want to know? Yeah. Well, it went through our mind that God must have somebody he wants us to talk to about him. And he says, that's amazing. He's, oh, my life is a wreck. I mean, it's everything. Everything. Everything. It could go wrong. It's going wrong to the point where I said, I need God. I need to get back to God. I need to talk to somebody about God. And here you are. And so for the next hour, we're an hour away from our hotel. We talked nonstop with him and just had a wonderful time. I mean, and he was so so excited by our time we got out of the car. And so we gathered together and we prayed this wonderful prayer together, emotional prayer together. It was three o'clock in the morning by the time we we got into bed that night and we couldn't go to sleep. We couldn't go that we had so much fun that day that night. We cut without God. We would say, oh man, we were telling it until now. That was a nightmare night. You cannot believe all things are wrong. Sometimes just things go wrong. No, because sometimes God's in the middle of your life doing something, give you the joy of your life. People say to me all the time, why do you care and always have joy? You're always so joyful. Why is that? You want to know why? This is why. Because we're always coming off. What are these experiences? And we know another one's coming up. And that fills your life with joy. This is why. See you next time.