Post by DrGadget on Aug 4, 2008 15:15:16 GMT -5
Quite a few years ago, I owned a 1980 Thunderbird. I blew the engine going to Orlando. It still ran after that, but it would only do 25 mph and it blew smoke all over the place.
The car looked a lot like this 1982 TBird, but had a darker landau roof and matching trim. The official color of the car was “caramel”. That’s what color the roof and trim were, even though the rest of the car was yellow like the one pictured. The interior was also that caramel color.
Anyway, I needed a new engine. A coworker named Scott helped me change it out. I ordered another 302 and we actually got the thing in. Luckily the guy who ran the garage had an almost identical car. I didn’t know how to wire up the engine, and like a genius I didn’t label the wires before yanking them out. So the garage manager parked his car right next to mine and I just made all the wires look the same as what he had. And what do you know? The car actually ran!
Then about a month later, I was visiting a friend named Dave. It started getting late and I decided to go home. I got in the car and turned the key. Nothing. No “rrr-rrr-rrr”. Nothing at all. Dead car. I popped the hood. I figured it had to be something electrical, but what? Everything obvious was connected. I checked the battery terminals and stuff like that. It was all where it was supposed to be. There were a million wires under there. Any one of them, if not properly connected, could be the cause of the trouble.
I walked back to Dave’s dorm room. He was half asleep. I asked him if I could sleep on his extra bed. He mumbled OK and plopped back to sleep.
But I didn’t sleep. I was agonizing in self-pity. What do I do now? I just spent a lot of money getting this car running. Now I would have to tow it to a place and pay some guy to spend three weeks testing all the wires and drop a big fat bill on me. How would I get around for three weeks? How would I get to work in the morning? Without a car, life gets miserable fast. This was all hitting me at once and I felt about as worthless as humanly possible.
I started praying. Dumping, really. “Oh God, why am I so worthless?” and stuff like that. It was actually quite pathetic.
God said, “Stop your whining.”
So I started to explain to God all the problems I just went through, as if He didn’t already know.
Mind you, at the time, at that very moment, for some reason it didn’t seem the least bit strange that I was talking to God. It’s just something I was doing. That’s it. Kind of like in a dream, where you’re doing odd things and it seems perfectly normal at the time. I was talking to God, the same way I might talk to the teller at a convenience store or something. It was no big deal, at least not at the time. And I knew immediately it was God. He didn’t have to introduce Himself. I just knew.
God told me it was the starter solenoid. That was the problem.
My eyes were still closed when suddenly I could see the starter solenoid floating in front of me. I never got to see God (sorry), but I could see that solenoid plain as day. I was familiar with the part. I had changed it out once or twice. It’s an electrical module that bolts to the wheel well under the hood and is wired in between the battery and the starter. A bad solenoid could definitely cause a car not to start.
I finally found some half-decent pictures of a starter solenoid online, so you can see what I saw.
God said the solenoid wasn’t wired up properly.
So I mentally pointed at the big connector on the right (see blue arrow). I said, “Do You mean this connection?”
God said no, and indicated the little connection off to the side (see red arrow). He said, “This one. This one right here. This is your problem. This wire is loose. Fix it.”
And then just as suddenly, the vision was over. No “Ta-dah...”. No “The End”. None of that. It just stopped abruptly. And there I was laying in the darkness. Dave was still asleep. He hadn’t seen or heard any of it.
But did I? Did I really talk to God? Why would God talk to me anyway? Doesn’t He have more important things to do? Did all that actually happen just now?
Now it didn’t seem normal anymore. It seemed properly unusual. If you’re reading this, you’re probably wondering if this story is true. I was wondering the exact same thing. How could it be true? Nobody since the Bible times actually gets to talk to God, do they?
I have since compared the experience to this passage, where Peter was freed from prison but wasn’t sure if it was a dream or not. But then it all suddenly became real for him.
Acts 12:8-11
[8] And the angel said unto him, Gird thyself, and bind on thy sandals. And so he did. And he saith unto him, Cast thy garment about thee, and follow me.
[9] And he went out, and followed him; and wist not that it was true which was done by the angel; but thought he saw a vision.
[10] When they were past the first and the second ward, they came unto the iron gate that leadeth unto the city; which opened to them of his own accord: and they went out, and passed on through one street; and forthwith the angel departed from him.
[11] And when Peter was come to himself, he said, Now I know of a surety, that the Lord hath sent his angel, and hath delivered me out of the hand of Herod, and from all the expectation of the people of the Jews.
I wasn’t thinking of that passage of Scripture at the time, but that’s the closest thing I can compare it to now. It was kinda like that.
At the time, I was still trying to figure out if I had actually talked to God. Was it all just my imagination? I knew for a fact that I had never fallen asleep. I wasn’t even sleepy, although I was tired and weary. It was cold outside, and it was nice and cozy in that dorm room. Do I really want to go out in the cold and look at a starter solenoid? Can’t it wait until morning?
All this analyzing lasted maybe a minute, tops. I finally decided that if God actually had spoken to me, I shouldn’t wait for the morning. If He went to the effort of talking to me, I need to make the effort and go do what He said. To ignore the whole thing would be an absurdly idiotic lack of faith. I didn’t want to be that guy – the guy who got a special message from God and decided it wasn’t important enough to bother with. I didn’t want to get God mad at me.
So I suited up and went out to the parking lot. It was dark and cold outside. The toasty warmness of that bed wore off fast. I popped the hood. There just happened to be a streetlight right there. I looked at the starter solenoid. There was a thin wire connected to that electrode, just like it should be. I remember thinking to myself, “That wire’s not loose!”
And then I touched the wire. It was loose. It didn’t look loose at all but when I touched it, there was far too much wiggle. I pulled the wire off the electrode and looked at it more closely.
At the end of the wire was a rubber boot. Inside the boot was a cylindrical C-clamp type friction contact. The “C” was open too far. I bent over and bit into the rubber boot, causing the C-clamp to crimp. I then shoved the wire back onto the post. It fit snugly this time. I got in the car and turned the key. It started right up!
I know for a fact I would never have found that by my own reasoning. Even when looking directly at the wire, it looked perfectly fine to me. God had given me a direct answer to my immediate problem.
I went back up to the dorm room to tell Dave I was gone. I didn’t want him waking up and wondering what happened.
On the drive home, I kept thanking God over and over. It didn’t even cost me anything. It was about as simple a fix as you could ask for. I never had any more problems with that starter solenoid, or the wiring. I kept the car for another 8 years. It was a pretty dependable car.
So if you ask me if I think God is real, how else can I answer? He revealed Himself to me that day. I know He’s real. And that was a long time ago. Since then He has shown me many other things, much more important than a loose wire connected to a starter solenoid.
If you ask, you will receive. If you knock, it will be answered. If you seek, you will find.
Jeremiah 33:3
[3] Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.
The car looked a lot like this 1982 TBird, but had a darker landau roof and matching trim. The official color of the car was “caramel”. That’s what color the roof and trim were, even though the rest of the car was yellow like the one pictured. The interior was also that caramel color.
Anyway, I needed a new engine. A coworker named Scott helped me change it out. I ordered another 302 and we actually got the thing in. Luckily the guy who ran the garage had an almost identical car. I didn’t know how to wire up the engine, and like a genius I didn’t label the wires before yanking them out. So the garage manager parked his car right next to mine and I just made all the wires look the same as what he had. And what do you know? The car actually ran!
Then about a month later, I was visiting a friend named Dave. It started getting late and I decided to go home. I got in the car and turned the key. Nothing. No “rrr-rrr-rrr”. Nothing at all. Dead car. I popped the hood. I figured it had to be something electrical, but what? Everything obvious was connected. I checked the battery terminals and stuff like that. It was all where it was supposed to be. There were a million wires under there. Any one of them, if not properly connected, could be the cause of the trouble.
I walked back to Dave’s dorm room. He was half asleep. I asked him if I could sleep on his extra bed. He mumbled OK and plopped back to sleep.
But I didn’t sleep. I was agonizing in self-pity. What do I do now? I just spent a lot of money getting this car running. Now I would have to tow it to a place and pay some guy to spend three weeks testing all the wires and drop a big fat bill on me. How would I get around for three weeks? How would I get to work in the morning? Without a car, life gets miserable fast. This was all hitting me at once and I felt about as worthless as humanly possible.
I started praying. Dumping, really. “Oh God, why am I so worthless?” and stuff like that. It was actually quite pathetic.
God said, “Stop your whining.”
So I started to explain to God all the problems I just went through, as if He didn’t already know.
Mind you, at the time, at that very moment, for some reason it didn’t seem the least bit strange that I was talking to God. It’s just something I was doing. That’s it. Kind of like in a dream, where you’re doing odd things and it seems perfectly normal at the time. I was talking to God, the same way I might talk to the teller at a convenience store or something. It was no big deal, at least not at the time. And I knew immediately it was God. He didn’t have to introduce Himself. I just knew.
God told me it was the starter solenoid. That was the problem.
My eyes were still closed when suddenly I could see the starter solenoid floating in front of me. I never got to see God (sorry), but I could see that solenoid plain as day. I was familiar with the part. I had changed it out once or twice. It’s an electrical module that bolts to the wheel well under the hood and is wired in between the battery and the starter. A bad solenoid could definitely cause a car not to start.
I finally found some half-decent pictures of a starter solenoid online, so you can see what I saw.
God said the solenoid wasn’t wired up properly.
So I mentally pointed at the big connector on the right (see blue arrow). I said, “Do You mean this connection?”
God said no, and indicated the little connection off to the side (see red arrow). He said, “This one. This one right here. This is your problem. This wire is loose. Fix it.”
And then just as suddenly, the vision was over. No “Ta-dah...”. No “The End”. None of that. It just stopped abruptly. And there I was laying in the darkness. Dave was still asleep. He hadn’t seen or heard any of it.
But did I? Did I really talk to God? Why would God talk to me anyway? Doesn’t He have more important things to do? Did all that actually happen just now?
Now it didn’t seem normal anymore. It seemed properly unusual. If you’re reading this, you’re probably wondering if this story is true. I was wondering the exact same thing. How could it be true? Nobody since the Bible times actually gets to talk to God, do they?
I have since compared the experience to this passage, where Peter was freed from prison but wasn’t sure if it was a dream or not. But then it all suddenly became real for him.
Acts 12:8-11
[8] And the angel said unto him, Gird thyself, and bind on thy sandals. And so he did. And he saith unto him, Cast thy garment about thee, and follow me.
[9] And he went out, and followed him; and wist not that it was true which was done by the angel; but thought he saw a vision.
[10] When they were past the first and the second ward, they came unto the iron gate that leadeth unto the city; which opened to them of his own accord: and they went out, and passed on through one street; and forthwith the angel departed from him.
[11] And when Peter was come to himself, he said, Now I know of a surety, that the Lord hath sent his angel, and hath delivered me out of the hand of Herod, and from all the expectation of the people of the Jews.
I wasn’t thinking of that passage of Scripture at the time, but that’s the closest thing I can compare it to now. It was kinda like that.
At the time, I was still trying to figure out if I had actually talked to God. Was it all just my imagination? I knew for a fact that I had never fallen asleep. I wasn’t even sleepy, although I was tired and weary. It was cold outside, and it was nice and cozy in that dorm room. Do I really want to go out in the cold and look at a starter solenoid? Can’t it wait until morning?
All this analyzing lasted maybe a minute, tops. I finally decided that if God actually had spoken to me, I shouldn’t wait for the morning. If He went to the effort of talking to me, I need to make the effort and go do what He said. To ignore the whole thing would be an absurdly idiotic lack of faith. I didn’t want to be that guy – the guy who got a special message from God and decided it wasn’t important enough to bother with. I didn’t want to get God mad at me.
So I suited up and went out to the parking lot. It was dark and cold outside. The toasty warmness of that bed wore off fast. I popped the hood. There just happened to be a streetlight right there. I looked at the starter solenoid. There was a thin wire connected to that electrode, just like it should be. I remember thinking to myself, “That wire’s not loose!”
And then I touched the wire. It was loose. It didn’t look loose at all but when I touched it, there was far too much wiggle. I pulled the wire off the electrode and looked at it more closely.
At the end of the wire was a rubber boot. Inside the boot was a cylindrical C-clamp type friction contact. The “C” was open too far. I bent over and bit into the rubber boot, causing the C-clamp to crimp. I then shoved the wire back onto the post. It fit snugly this time. I got in the car and turned the key. It started right up!
I know for a fact I would never have found that by my own reasoning. Even when looking directly at the wire, it looked perfectly fine to me. God had given me a direct answer to my immediate problem.
I went back up to the dorm room to tell Dave I was gone. I didn’t want him waking up and wondering what happened.
On the drive home, I kept thanking God over and over. It didn’t even cost me anything. It was about as simple a fix as you could ask for. I never had any more problems with that starter solenoid, or the wiring. I kept the car for another 8 years. It was a pretty dependable car.
So if you ask me if I think God is real, how else can I answer? He revealed Himself to me that day. I know He’s real. And that was a long time ago. Since then He has shown me many other things, much more important than a loose wire connected to a starter solenoid.
If you ask, you will receive. If you knock, it will be answered. If you seek, you will find.
Jeremiah 33:3
[3] Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.
