It was in Wadi Rum, Jordan that I was able to give a name to this phenomenon! It is something that I have seen many times in my life, but it wasn’t until this experience I had in the desert of Wadi Rum and the accompaniment of the Word of God that this experience was highlighted to me.
So the story begins with myself and 4 other leaders that are about to check into a hostel for the weekend. We were planning on taking some time to rest after a mini debrief and also to continue training to step into the new leadership position. Well we pull up to the location and it was not what it looked like on website that advertised the place, which is not that uncommon. The stay was missing some essential components that we needed in order to finish out our training. So myself and the other male leader set out to look at one other possible location, while also looking to pull some money out just in case nothing else worked out. So we go to hail a cab and there is a truck that stops a ways down the road and starts backing up to us. The driver asks where we need to go and we return the question and ask him how much. We agreed on a price and set off with this guy to see if this other spot might work better than the one we found. On the way the driver asks why we are going to this location and we share that we were going to try and see if we could stay there. He proceeds to start telling us that he has a place on a ranch and would be willing to house us. I ask him what it would cost and it was way out of our budget and that we would like to continue pursuing this next possible location for our stay. He continues to try and negotiate, but we had a budget that we had to stick to.
So we continue driving in silence for a bit, but then I start to notice that there are less lights and we are traveling further from the city. So I ask the driver if we were still headed in the right direction. He then responds with “I thought you wanted to see my ranch?” He then persuades us to come take a look, with the promise that we would go to the correct location after we looked around his ranch. As we travel further and further out of the city my mind starts to wonder to escape plans and how I would react to any and every situation that might occur. Are we even going to a ranch?
Well we ended up at his place and it was a ranch with horses. We look around and he tells us that he would give us a deal. I ask if he would still take us to the place we had originally agreed on, just to make sure we weighed all of our options.
The driver takes us and it turns out to be a false advertisement. So we bring back the news to the rest of our leadership team and try and come up with a plan.
We decided together that we would try this ranch out and contacted the ranch owner.
As he was taking us to his place I find out that this dude isn’t even a taxi driver, he was just out picking up food to bring back to his nephews.
I stopped trying to make sense of it all and just thanked God for making a way.
It was at this guy’s stay when I also was reading in the Psalms and came across the 84th Psalm. In verse 11 it says
“For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless.”
The psalms are riddled with verses on the LORDs favor and He really sealed them in my mind through this experience.
Psalms 90:17
With that please pray for the LORD to continue to pour out His favor upon me.
Also be praying that He would build me in his LOVE, that He would increase my faith, and for the alignment of my will to His perfect will!!!
