Surviving A Blowout

Last week on my way home from Belleville, KS I had a blowout on our Excursion. If you have ever experienced a blowout, you know how scary and dangerous of a thing it is.

I truly felt that God wanted me to give this message on surviving a blowout after I read of another blow out that occurred less than 24 hours of my blowout in Wichita. You’ll understand why after you I read to you the news report.

WICHITA, Kan. -- Two people, including a four-year-old boy, were hurt in a rollover crash Sunday morning on the Kansas Turnpike. It happened just before 11:00 near the I-135 interchange in south Wichita. The Kansas Highway Patrol confirmed Sunday that the Ford Excursion was heading north when it blew a tire. The driver overcorrected and rolled the SUV. Draven Harris, 4, of Houston, TX, was ejected from the SUV. Troopers say he was not wearing a seatbelt. Harris was taken to the hospital with critical injuries.

A 52-year-old passenger was also hospitalized. The woman driving was not hurt.

One of the northbound lanes of I-35 was shut down for about an hour.

God really spoke to me on this. The coincidences were just too much for me to ignore and this made me realize how very bless that Hazen and I are that our blowout wasn’t more severe than it was.

- Let me share with you this morning some steps about how to survive a blowout and how they can relate to us spiritually speak as well.

The first step to successfully driving with a blown tire is to realize you can survive the situation and drive your car to safety. A calm and clear head will ensure you and your car survive without becoming a traffic statistic. Do not panic and your chances of surviving the situation without mishap greatly improve.

-First of all, I believe that when a blowout occurs, you must be able to,…….

I. Recognize the problem.

A. A loud unusual sound followed by the car losing stability is a sign a tire has blown. Often drivers don’t hear anything unusual because of interior noise. If you experience difficulty controlling your car, or the car no longer drives smoothly, your tire may have blown. Decrease the noise in the car and listen for unusual sounds to confirm a problem exists.

1. I believe one of the problems that keeps us from realizing that we are headed for destruction is simply because we are too engaged in the sinful things of life and it drowns the whispers of God out of our lives.

2. Many people continue going in the same destructive direction within our lives and don’t even know that there is a problem. The real problem is that we are not paying attention and we just continue driving our lives down the HWY.

3. We must be alert; we must pay attention to many things in life. When driving we must pay attention to what we are doing and what is going on around us or else we’ll get a ticket, get in a wreck, or even miss our turn. We need to pay attention to our gages or we’ll run out of gas, oil, or could even over heat.

4. Spiritually speaking we too can get in serious trouble if we do not pay attention.

1 Peter 5:8 tells us to Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

We must always pay attention to what we’re doing. We need to realize that we are not alone in this world, that Satan is sitting back waiting for us to lose our focus.

Many times in life we find ourselves in situations that could be devastating depending on how we react to them.

- When you experience a blowout, one of the biggest things to remember is,…

II. Don’t make a sharp turn.

A. Drive your vehicle gradually toward the nearest exit or the side of the road. Don’t abruptly break your vehicle, make sharp turns or attempt to cut sharply into traffic. Work your way slowly to an exit or the side of the freeway.

1. I wonder how many times in life we choose poorly and react out of panic or don’t react at all because we simply are not paying attention to what is going on around us.

2. How many times in your life have you found yourself in a bad situation simply because of one wrong choice in which you were not thinking clearly? Making one wrong choice in life can be devastating like a domino effect.

3. It could be something small that we don’t even think much of at the time but can turn into something huge that can ultimately tear apart our lives and those around us.