God continued to press me to pray during the night hours. I was so offended with the continuous ordeal that I felt my heart was turning away from God, and I did not know how to stop it. One night as I was sitting in the bitterness of our plight, the Holy Spirit spoke the words from the book of Revelation in the Bible. “To him that overcomes will I grant to sit with Me on my throne.”1 I felt so forsaken. How could I think of a throne from where I was sitting? Another evening I was up praying and pleading with God, and a song came forcefully to me in my spirit that said, “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me.”2 I told the LORD, “I do not see how!” I ask a question: “If we knew that a higher purpose would follow, would we let God offend us?” We can all easily affirm, yet when we are in the midst of the offense, it is difficult to see the good that may come from it. However, in all of this, God was doing a work in us.
A particular episode emphasized the importance of obedience to the Holy Spirit’s direction, especially in prayer. We were in need of a second automobile, so I attended an auction with a friend. The night before the LORD was directing me to stay up and pray. I decided to go to bed instead. The next day I made the wrong decision in purchasing a car. The auction was in Kansas City, and I bought a dark brown Subaru. As I returned by way of the freeway, back to our apartment, I discovered that the shocks were not working. It had air shocks, and they were out! My car literally looked like a bouncing basketball going down the interstate. It was bouncing so badly that my head was being slammed into the ceiling of the car as I bounced down the interstate. My headlights looked like two kids playing with flashlights, waving them up and down the interstate.
My heart sank when I realized what had happened due to my disobedience. It added to our already enlarged day-mare of events. We all know the difference between a “nightmare and a day-mare,” a day-mare is real!! After attempting to repair it, while spending additional monies we could not afford, I realized that I had a hopeless situation. I took the car back to auction and lost a great deal of money getting rid of it. As the car was being driven through the auction line, people were inspecting it in preparation for the bid. One man walked up and pushed down on the car fender, and the car started bouncing. He gave out a shriek and laughed as he was bouncing it like a basketball. I was so upset. I hid in the crowd until the auction was over. It was so humiliating I wanted to run. If God asks you to pray, obey!