• Delivering Papers In The Rain

  Contributed by Mark Eberly on Mar 23, 2009 (message contributor)

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  Scripture:  None

  Tags:  Doubt

  Denomination: Church Of God

DELIVERING PAPERS IN THE RAIN

When I was ten, my mother and I somehow had gotten involved in a bible memory course. It was all through the mail, and we didn’t go to a church anywhere, even occasionally, but we would memorize ten verses a week. During the time, the materials gave some Scriptures and talked about saying a "sinner’s prayer."

Now I didn’t have anyone really to ask questions, and everything was very private. So, sensing the need to "become a Christian," I prayed the prayer, but I wasn't sure that I done it right. I didn't feel any different.

So I asked for a sign. I asked, "Since it was supposed to rain all night and into the morning, when I got up at 5 am to deliver my papers that God keep it from raining as I delivered my papers." No selfishness on my part (Right!).

But when I got up and went out on the front porch to get the bundle of papers, it had literally just stopped raining. The water was still dripping off the leaves of the tree, and I had to step out under the cloudy sky to make sure that it wasn’t still raining. And over the next almost hour, it didn’t rain. When I was riding my bike down my block to go home having finished, it started to rain.

But later that night, I began to doubt it. Would God really make it stop raining for me? After all, the stopping of the rain effected hundreds of thousands of people. And I also knew that often (not always but often enough) that rain stops for some reason right before dawn. Did you know that? I don’t know why, and it isn’t always true, but I rarely had to deliver papers right before dawn in the rain.