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Give Thanks When It Seems Impossible
Giving thanks is difficult to do when you’re in the middle of a storm. Three years ago when I was in Africa, I found myself in a taxi with a completely stranger riding through Johannesburg, South Africa. That was a terrifying experience for many reasons. Not only was that my first time in Africa and the first time I ever got left the United States, but I didn’t have any backup plan just in case the stranger who was helping me had ulterior motives.
The reason I was in that taxi riding with the stranger was that that stranger was a woman I met at the airport who promised to help me to get to Mozambique. When my plane landed in Mozambique, I missed my flight from Johannesburg South Africa to Pemba, Mozambique, and the flight attendants told me that the next flight to Pemba wouldn’t be for another seven days.
That was a huge problem because the reason I was traveling to Mozambique was that I was going on a two-week mission trip. Lots of time would be wasted if I decided to wait for seven days to get there, so trusting a stranger at the airport seemed like my only realistic option at that time. During the taxi ride through Johannesburg, I started to question the motives of my new female friend I met at the airport.
“What if she’s not actually going to help me, and I end up on the news? I could already see the headlines… ‘Unexperienced American flyer decides to ride in a taxi through Johannesburg with a stranger, and the situation takes a turn for the worst.’” I remember the taxi passing by a Shell gas station, which was one thing that kind of reminded me of my home in California, about 10,000 miles away. The only problem with the Shell gas station was that there a huge black hole in the roof.
It seemed as though there might have been some type of bomb or war that caused the black burned looking hole in the roof, but the people who pumped gas in their cars didn’t seem to care about the huge hole in the roof which I’m sure is a safety concern. When I saw that, I came to the realization that I was definitely not in America.
If all that wasn’t terrifying enough, I remember the taxi driving through almost every stop light, and that’s when I really freaked out! At a certain point, I asked the woman who was helping me why the taxi was driving through all the stop lights. The woman told me that if we stop at the stop lights, we would get robbed. That sounded like a good reason to not stop!
I finally got to the point to where I decided to pray silently. I really didn’t know if I would live another day, but for some reason, at that moment during the taxi ride, I felt the peace of the Lord that surpasses understanding. Then, I felt an impression really strong in my spirit that I needed to start thanking God in advance for the testimony that I would share with others in regards to my deliverance from my current situation.
Somehow in my spirit, I knew that God was going to work out something miraculous and that I would make it to Mozambique way faster than seven days. And it happened. Later that day, the woman from the taxi ride let me borrow her phone so that I could call the ministry I was working with. When I called the ministry, my leader on the other end of the phone miraculously found a flight to Pemba, Mozambique for the very next day!
Giving Thanks on Thanksgiving Day
It’s easy to give thanks when you’re sitting around a table hangout with your family, but it’s not easy to give thanks when it feels like your world is spinning out of control. I believe that Thanksgiving should be a day where we don’t just mindlessly give thanks for things we don’t really care about, but we need to remember what God brought us through so that we can be ready for where God will take us to.
Being thankful for what you have isn’t an excuse to be complacent or selfish and never move forward, but it’s a gasoline that increases the fire of revival burning in our hearts for change in the world. Before change happens around us, it needs to be ignited within us. Happy Thanksgiving!
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