There is a difference between being in the center of your comfort zone as a Christian believer and living by faith on the brink of disaster.
Our circumstances, over our years preaching to the colonists in Canada, took Pauline and me very quickly from the safe seat in the boat to walking on water.
God HAD to perform regular miracles or we were sunk.
On one occasion, in the depth of winter, I had a call from a man called Charlie Perrault. Charlie had a log house which he would fill regularly with young people for Christian retreats. It was a hundred miles due North in the boon docks. Charlie asked me if I would come up and preach for him. He had a house full of kids and had run out of sermons. It was six-o-clock on a Sunday morning. Charlie said: "If you can find the gas money to get up here we will get you home."
All I could rustle up was one dollar and some odd change.
I put that into my gas tank on a big 350 Chevvy and set off on a hundred mile trip with less than two gallons of petrol. This old car did about 15 miles to the gallon so it was an act of insanity to think I could make it on Esso. The extra would HAVE to come from God. Thirty miles up the highway the needle was on empty and I began to pray. One hand was in the air and the other on the wheel. Every time I brought my hand down the engine began to cough. I drove 70 miles on fumes and faith before I pulled in to see my friend Des Kerr. He had a jeep and drove us the next thirty miles through the snow to Charlie's cabin. After I preached these kids gave me $80:00 to get home. I picked up my car at Des's house and asked for a can of gas to prime the engine because I knew the tank was as dry as the Gobi desert. When my friend began to pour the gas in the filler pipe it over flowed immediately. The tank was full to the brim.
I proved two things from that episode. Firstly that engines run better with NO gas at all; secondly that God, Who could feed five thousand people from five loaves and two fishes, finds no problem in filling the gas tank of a penniless preacher when He sends him to preach the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
Jubilate
Ian
