Episode Transcript
It is too often said that there are no miracles performed these days. Well, I'd like to challenge this idea with my story of praying for a particular colour more than once. Welcome to Miracles in the 21st Century. I'm Paul Livingston. When I was a little boy, my dad went off to buy a car for our family. The one we were currently using was no longer suitable. And I decided I'd like a blue car, so I prayed for a blue car. Would you believe it, when Dad came home from the auctions, we had a brand new, or secondhand, blue car. And I was delighted. But that car, after a time, became no longer suitable and Dad went off to buy another car. And this time I prayed for a yellow car. Well, Dad came home with a silver car and I said to Mum, "Hey, I like the silver car colour better than the yellow that I was praying for." Now fast forward to when I was an adult. I was living at home at the time and Dad went off to the auctions to buy a car. And I prayed, just on a whim. I don't know why I did, but I was just thinking that Dad was going to buy a car and I decided I wanted a deep red color car or maroon color. And so I prayed, "Lord, please may Dad come home with a maroon coloured car." And then I thought, "But they're not as safe as the light colored cars because people can't see them on the road as easily." But I added to my prayer. I said, "And please may it be a safe car." And would you believe it? Dad came home with a deep red maroon colored car. And we had that car for about 12 years. After that time, it started to get old and needed replacing, but Dad wanted to give it one more go, and his mechanic friend took it to his house to try and fix the current problem. Well, I was headed home from my grandma's house where I lived— by this time I'd left home— and I noticed our red car all smashed up on the side of the road, and I was a bit worried. Anyway, it turned out that nobody was hurt, that the insurance paid for the accident, and that Dad got another silver car. And that's a story too, which I'll include a little detail now. The silver car, the lady who owned the silver car before we did, she rang Mum up, but Mum wasn't at the phone and she didn't hear it ring. And she rang up about 6:30 in the afternoon, about 5 hours after the red one got smashed up. And when she rang at that time, she said, "Would you like to buy a car?" or "Would you like a car?" or something like that. And Mum choked up. She couldn't say a word. And then she said, "Well, actually, we do need a car. Our car just was written off this afternoon, early this afternoon." And so she said, "Well, come over and have a look and I'm happy to give it to you at a very good price." And unbeknownst to us, she'd actually been praying, "Who can I give this car to at a good price?" because she didn't want to have to go through the rigmarole of selling it to somebody who would rip her off. Anyway, so the mechanic friend who was driving the red one that got written off, he offered to go with Mum and Dad to check this new one out. And it ticked all the boxes. And so they had that car for quite a number of years. Dad passed away and then Mum still had the silver Camry. And Mum said, "I'm buying a new car." And I said, "What color do you want?" And she said, "White." And so I prayed, I don't know how many times, maybe 3 or 4 times at the most. Maybe only twice. I can't remember now. That she would come home with a white-coloured car. I was— I'd left home. I had my own four-wheel drive at this point. I was paying it off. Anyway, um, she, um, said to me, she said, "Oh, your brother has helped me buy a little automatic Corolla." I said, "Great, what colour was it?" She said, "White." And I thought, wow. I thought, this is amazing. This is about the fourth car that I prayed for and it's either been the very car that I prayed for or something better. And then my brother also had a white Corolla at the time. So we've got two white Corollas at my mum's granny flat. One belongs to my brother and one belongs to mum. The white Corolla that belonged to my brother used to belong to me. I'd like to encourage you all in your prayers to pray to God as though he's actually hearing every word you say, to put in that detail that makes it much more meaningful when he says yes. Thank you for listening.
