God turned to me

Almost immediately after my experience in the car in which God told me that Debbie
was cured, I started to have doubts. I never doubted God because my feelings of
certainty about His message were so complete, but I began to doubt myself. I started to
wonder if I was just being arrogant to think that God had spoken to me so directly. I
didn't exactly hear a booming voice from the sky or encounter a burning bush, I just
had a feeling of peace and well being that I can't quite explain. Maybe my experience
was just wishful thinking.

Within a few days, Debbie was in the hospital recovering from her surgery. She was a
little afraid, so I stayed with her for the entire three days that she was there. On Sunday
morning, I slipped away for an hour to attend the service in the hospital chapel. It was
an intimate setting with only a few pews and a small lectern for a pulpit, and the service
was attended by only a few patients, family members and hospital staff.

When the young minister began to speak, he read from Psalms 40:

1 I waited patiently for the LORD;

he turned to me and heard my cry.

That passage hit me like a thunderbolt, and I knew precisely what I had experienced in
the car. God had turned to me. He had heard my prayer and focused some small part of
his attention exclusively on me in order to give me His answer. I have tried to describe
it as feelings of warmth, peace, stillness, and well being, but it's really just the radiance
of God's gaze. I had felt His presence.

As the minister continued to read, the next two verses described exactly what God had
done for me at that moment.

2 He lifted me out of the slimy pit,

out of the mud and mire;

he set my feet on a rock

and gave me a firm place to stand.

3 He put a new song in my mouth,

a hymn of praise to our God.

He had pulled me from the mud and mire of my fear and placed me on solid ground.
This passage could not have been a better match for what had happened to me just a
few days earlier, and it was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment.

A skeptic might say that the choice of scripture for that service was just a coincidence
or that I would have found meaning in any passage that had been selected, but I know
that this was God's way of confirming His answer to my prayer's and removing all of
my doubts.