GPS GLITCHES
God taught me a lesson through a non-working GPS yesterday! I had traveled to a job with Ben that was in St. Louis. As I would see later, the LORD had Ben show me the job site as soon as we got into the illustrious city. It was a building right in the heart of downtown St. Louis and was within sight of the magnificent Arch.
While Ben attended some meetings, I stayed in the hotel room soaking up some silence and reading the material that I needed to get through before Thursday. While he was solving all the problems of the world over dinner with those he needed to meet in St. Louis, I had a quiet cup of tea in the hotel restaurant and ate a bowl of their canned chili. It was actually very enjoyable.
The next day, Ben went to the job site for more meetings. The plan was that I would go pick him up after the meetings and we would head home. My real purpose in going on the trip was to “be the driver” so he could heat up his ear with his cell phone and I could share his company on the long boring ride to and from St. Louis.
When he called me to tell me the meetings were over, I left the hotel immediately. I had asked the hotel clerk for directions to the building we are replacing windows in, “Just in case”. I really felt this was overkill as we had the building already programmed into the GPS from going to it the day before. But I am a planner. Some would call it a worrier. I like to think of it as “super-prepared”.
The clerk had given me a few sketchy directions because he didn’t really know which building it was but he THOUGHT it might be near this street and that street…so the directions had about 5 streets named. My emergency-emergency plan was to ask someone once I got downtown if I needed to. But hey, I knew I wasn’t going to need to because I had the GPS!
I turned on the GPS and headed for downtown St. Louis. Contrary to popular belief (for those of you that may have never been there before), although the arch symbolizes a city in which all points of the compass converge, there are no longer any wagon train trails. In fact, the highway system is pretty complex. I felt like I was driving into downtown Boston! It was just as I merged onto a ramp which was a maze of ramps for all the highways into and out of St. Louis, that the GPS decided it was not going to guide me anymore. As my first reaction to any crisis is to hit the floor in prayer, I prayed OUT LOUD, “Lord, I need you to heal this GPS!” As I was saying this, I realized that my current direction was going taking me over a bridge and out into God’s country…out of St. Louis! So still praying over the dead GPS, I swerved into the far left lane and curled back toward the city and the arch. I had seen that arch yesterday as we went into downtown, so I figured if I headed toward the arch, I would be closer.
Again, OUT LOUD I begged the Lord to “let the GPS come back on because it had the street number of the building and if I could just see it, I would try to program the map on my phone.” The GPS remained dead and I was caught in the stream of speeding cars winging around the city. As I crested the hill of the ramp I was currently on, I saw a sign for one of the random streets that were about half-way-down the “emergency-just-in-case-directions” the hotel clerk had given me. I veered down the exit toward this street only to discover that I was immediately downtown but none of the next street names the clerk had written down are located there because I was now entering from the opposite direction, as I would have from the hotel!
Again I begged God for a working GPS…and as I uttered those words I saw a sign that indicated my lane was ending in a dead end! Again, I changed lanes, this time all the way to the right and the street that I had to then take to the right, was the very the street the building we are replacing windows in is on! And whom did I see standing on the corner, cell phone attached to his ear? MY HUSBAND!
God had taken me right down into the city directly to the building I had visited the day before! HE had set it up that I had enough information to get me there by TRIAL AND ERROR! Error in the direction I had headed over the bridge, and trial in the form of a GPS that didn’t want to work! HE had directed my path that morning to get a list of random streets so I would recognize one street, which actually had an exit ramp. HE had directed my husband to show me the building the day before so I would recognize the name of the street the building was on even though I didn’t know the street number! A “Dead End” sign was the prompting I needed to get into the far lane to turn onto the very street I needed! God had gone before me and prepared me, God stood behind me and whispered, “turn left, turn right”(Isaiah 30:21)…and led me to where I needed to go without the GPS just as though I had it!
So many times I pray for what I think I need. I really thought I needed that GPS! But God wanted to show me that HE really is my guide and HE is my PROVIDER. I wrote my Gap Sisters a laundry list of stuff they could pray for me this morning. I told them my GPS story and made the disclaimer that I may think I need those items on the laundry list…but just as God didn’t answer me with a working GPS…yet He gave me what I needed…HE knows which of the items on the list I REALLY need and His answer to those needs will be delivered exactly how I need it. I’ve heard a preacher say that GPS really stands for “God’s Positioning System”. Yesterday I found out he was right.
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Vicki Feinn was raised in a Christian home and accepted Jesus as her savior at the age of five. At the age of eleven she gave herself to the Lord to be used in any way He wanted to use her. 
