“Keys” To Go “Vroom-Vroom!”
(By: Norm Rasmussen)
Had an interesting evening at Carson City Correctional Facility on August 11, 2003. I locked my car keys in the trunk of my car just prior to going inside the prison to minister, which was at 6:30 P.M. The message I was supposed to give the brothers was on "Trusting The Lord." Rather than waiting past 9 PM to try to get a locksmith out of either Greenville or Grand Rapids, MI at that later hour, I chose to call a towing business not far down the road. A younger gentleman came out by the name of Mike and basically said all he could do was tow me to his home-base location. That didn't look to me like much of a worthwhile option. I silently told the Lord, "If you want me in there by 7:30 to minister the message, you're going to have to give this guy a way and the DESIRE to try to get at those keys, and it's going to have to happen pretty fast, so I'm TRUSTING you to do that if it's important to You in this situation."
Mike had no tools to pop open my trunk. He was about to throw his hands up and drive off, when I asked him if we could pop off the back seat and try to get into the trunk that way. We did, only to find a heavy metal panel separating us from access to the trunk area. However, there were two small holes about four inches wide and about twelve inches high for wiring to go through. He remembered he had a long thin bar with a hook on the end in his tow truck.
I KNEW I had tossed my keys in one of my tennis shoes at the far rear. He fished with that long wire and managed to snag one tennis shoe but that wasn't the one. He fished again and managed to hook the other one! He got it up close to the hole, but getting a hand THROUGH the hole and then inside my size 16 tennis shoe to get the keys was another seemingly impossible task. Yet he squeezed his smaller hand through the hole enough to get the keys, while I pulled and pried that tennis shoe in all kind of strange contortions to get at it. Finally the Lord gave me my keys.
I processed through the prison guards and walked into the group within a couple of minutes of them being done with their half-hour worship time! They all cheered the Lord (24 guys including the volunteers (two women, [Jamaesha Gilbert; Kathleen, my wife; Al Bolhuis; Mike Vredevoogd, and myself) because they had prayed before worship that God would somehow get my keys to me on time!
I don’t know if their prayers and my trust was what God used to retrieve my keys, or whether it was just their prayers. All I know is that the odds of Mike snagging that tennis shoe was pretty slim – certainly in the time frame we were working with.
It was a great evening of ministry and we were so blessed to be used of the Lord to be a part of it.
God is so good!
Remember … faith makes all things possible -- not necessarily easy.
“All things are possible to him who believes” -- Mark 9:23
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