A Yellow Tow Truck

If you have seen me in person since I got back from Bethel Church, chances are you've heard me tell my "Yellow Tow Truck" story.  Every time I tell it, I'm in awe of God's ability to use the seemingly meaningless to bring people into a beautiful revelation of His Love.

God is amazing. Here goes.

I went to Bethel Church in Redding, California for a conference at the end of June. As I ended up staying over the weekend after the conference ended, I decided to check out what the church does for outreach on Saturday afternoons. At 2pm I arrived at the church to be part of a "Treasure Hunt"; this is an activity that I had read about, freaked out about, and yet somehow decided I wanted to try, just to see if God really would show up. A Treasure Hunt is where you ask the Holy Spirit to give you "clues" (clothing, locations, illnesses, names) to put on a "Map" to find "Treasures" (people) in the community who need a specific love encounter with God through healing or prophetic words of encouragement. It sounds wacky, and it is.

There were about 25 of us gathered in the classroom to fill out our Treasure Maps, and the leader also encouraged us to draw a prophetic picture to take with us and use as well. A prophetic picture is a fancy way of saying: Ask the Holy Spirit to give you a picture in your head, or a word, and then you draw it out and trust God will lead you to person for whom the picture was intended to encourage.

Now, when they were passing out the colours for the prophetic pictures, I just decided to grab one pencil crayon. Yellow looked appealing to me, so I chose it. I then looked at the blank piece of paper in front of me, closed my eyes, and simply prayed, "Holy Spirit, what do you want me to draw?"

Instantly the words "tow truck" popped into my head. I thought, "Nawww, tow truck? Must be a random thought or just my mind generating something because I want to see this work so badly. Tow truck is not spiritual!"


I argued with myself for a little bit. The faith argument was, "No, just trust. You heard the other testimonies. God can use anything." Finally I just said, "Okay, whatever. Tow truck. Here goes."

I took my yellow pencil crayon and drew the ugliest, most not-to-scale tow truck known to man. I added a happy tow truck driver, a broken heart restored, and wrote the words "Joy" over the guy's head. It looked pretty much like the hard-to-see drawing below:

After I finished my masterpiece, I looked at it and thought, "Man alive, it looks like a 3 year old drew this. Who am I going to give this picture to?!?!" I kept it with me, though, as we divided into groups of 4 and went into the city of Redding to look for our "clues."

I was with 3 people I had never met until that day...but they were really nice, and we compared Treasure Maps and decided to try the Subway near the strip mall. We parked, walked into the Subway restaurant and looked for people who might fit some of our "clues." No one fit the bill. As we were walking out of the restaurant, I looked ahead of me and stopped.  

Not 100 feet away from us sat a giant yellow tow truck. 

"THAT'S MY TOW TRUCK!" I yelled. We watched as the tow truck driver got into the cab and backed the truck up to a nearby car. A woman was standing beside it, obviously anxious and trying to keep watch over her two children, who were running around the parking lot.

By this time, I was bursting with so much excitement that I was ready to run over and hand the prophetic picture of the yellow tow truck to the guy driving the truck...but thankfully the group I was with stopped me and said, "Actually, I think the picture might be meant for the woman whose car is getting towed."

I was happy with anything--I knew God was going to do something cool, because He was using a big yellow tow truck, for goodness' sake. We walked over to the woman, and I introduced myself. I held out the picture for her to see and said, "This may seem really weird, but today I prayed and God told me to draw this picture of a yellow tow truck and look for the person to give it to...and then we found you."

I handed her the picture, and she stared at it for a moment before looking back at our group and saying, "Are you from Bethel??" (At which point we laughed, and said yes...)

She replied, "I went to Bethel Church for the first time last night...and this (pointing to the picture) must be for me because I have been so angry with God and have no joy."

This woman was clearly our treasure. And right there in the parking lot, with the tow truck driver hooking up the car in the background and watching us with a grin, the group of us got to pray with this woman and her two kids and release blessing, strength and JOY into her family's life. It was a beautiful, beautiful moment...and we walked away so encouraged and so in awe of God's goodness.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here's the deal...if I could stress one thing that I really, honestly, deep-down feel God was teaching during my adventures at Bethel and the Jesus Culture Awakening conferences, it would be this: The same Holy Spirit that gives a girl a yellow pencil crayon and the random words, "tow truck" ...the same Holy Spirit that gives Bethel's Kris Vallotton prophetic messages...the same Holy Spirit that opens deaf ears and blind eyes through Heidi Baker's prayers...the same Holy Spirit that restores broken hearts and breaks addictions in an instant...the same Holy Spirit that caused those in the Upper Room to speak in tongues at Pentecost...the same Holy Spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead...that same spirit lives in me, and it lives in you, the born-again follower of Jesus. What is even more amazing is the revelation that that same Holy Spirit is available to us in a capacity we never dreamed imaginable. It's not just for church leaders or evangelists or Prophets or "the elite"...God is waiting to release the Holy Spirit in full measure to every follower of Jesus. He is just waiting to hear you say, "Here I am. Come, have your way with me."

And after you surrender your life over to the Holy Spirit's leading, you will find that your life gets much more interesting. It's inevitable. In this never-ending Holy Spirit Adventure School, you'll find yourself walking up to random strangers and sharing an encouraging prophetic word with them. You'll find yourself praying for a sprained ankle to heal or for a shorter leg to grow and actually seeing a miracle before your eyes. You'll find yourself reading the Bible with an unquenchable fire in your heart. You'll find yourself hearing absolutely random words like, "Tow Truck" in prayer and believing, "God is up to something amazing." And you'll find yourself talking to Jesus, face to face, and realizing He's actually the coolest friend you could ever have.

I'm so thankful the Holy Spirit used me and a goofy picture of a big yellow tow truck to bring a distraught woman and her kids the message that "He cares." God is way more fun and creative than I give Him credit for...and I can't wait to see what He has in store for me today. The Holy Spirit might give me a picture, or a word, or an impression about someone or something; or He might help me into an encounter with God where I get to climb onto Papa-God's lap for some father-daughter time. Regardless, it is good, and I am in love.

Be blessed today, wherever you are, with the knowledge that God cannot possibly love you more than He already does right now, at this moment. That's a lot of love.