Chapter XII The Omniscience God of the Road

I admit it – I was asleep! I had dozed but for how long, I did not know. I could have stayed asleep had I not been awaken. I did not know how long I had been asleep.

When you go to sleep behind the wheel, should you awake, you do not know how long you have been asleep or what has happened during the time you were asleep. It is a very scary moment.

In the ministry God called me to work with drivers; I have had the occasion to hear scary stories of drivers actually traveling for miles without a single memory of what just happened. Were they asleep – they might as well have been for all they knew about what transpired?

I am not happy about having to admit that I had fallen asleep. It is the cardinal sin in driving. As a professional driver this is one thing you cannot ever let happen.

You can make wrong lane changes or stop too quickly for your load. The end results of these issues do not always end in death, but they can certainly be the start of a disastrous circumstance. It can be tragic not only for the driver but for the general public as well.

Going to sleep is going to be catastrophic for someone for sure. Add the fact that you have 46 live bodies behind you who are depending on your professionalism to get them to where they are going – you have a catastrophe looking for an accident.

It magnifies the liability of going to sleep while driving. Their being asleep adds to the tremendous professional trust they put in you as a driver. The more tired you become, the more trust they place in you as a driver.

As a young driver learning how to drive, the one evaluation as a driver is that you had to reach the point your co-driver feels confident going to sleep behind you as you drive. He has to feel confident that you could handle the unit.

WOW … slowly, it started becoming surreal to me. Could I have just had an encounter with an Angel? I questioned in my mind if God does these things in the aftermath of the New Testament.

The process of elimination led me to believe that no human hand touched me to awaken me. There could be only one explanation for what happened. I now had an actual experience that I was certain was not man-oriented.

The other end result would have been the coach laying on its side on the shoulder or median. Hopefully in the process, the coach would not have encountered another vehicle. But since the coach would have been under its own control, that could have happened as well.

Bodies, luggage, and kids struggling to understand what happened would be the order of the moment. Death, tears, fears, and loss of trying to get a handle on what happened would be the consequence of my actions for having gone to sleep at the wheel.

But this was not the outcome! Instead, I had an encounter with an Angel in the very presence of God Himself. God had dispatched an Angel for the sole purpose of waking me up so that all these kids and everyone else would not face horrendous circumstances.

God, the all knowing, omnipotent, and omnipresent Being was watching over me; knew the predicament; and set in motion a solution to keep it from happening. Did I have the right to ask for this provision? NO! But in His infinite knowledge of yesterday, today, and tomorrow He gave it. Thank God He did.

Can you imagine – after careful examination – God had sent an Angel to awaken me?

I was so enamored with the action that I was still unsure how physically it could have been. My mind could not comprehend what obviously had just happened.

Let me tell you something. When you come to the realization you have just been in the presence of a Holy God, and you have been touched – you are awake!

God sent an Angel to physically wake me in a way that only a human can understand – with a touch. Your senses are soaring; your intellect is working; and fatigue has become a thing of the past.

I was alert; I acknowledged my responsibility as a driver; I acknowledged I was entrusted with the lives of those on the coach; and most of all I saw myself as God saw me – a person in need. He met that need.

All those mistakes of not reporting the truth of what was happening to the office; not getting another driver to take over; my personal expenses; and my fatigue were removed from my mind. I was concentrating on the here and now and keeping that coach safe.

Does that make what I did right in the sight of God? NO! Did I do wrong? YES! God forbid but in reality that is exactly what I did! Should I ever place God in a box and in essence force Him to respond to me or others again? NO!

What it did do was, first, plant a mile marker in my mind that God is faithful and will protect His children in accordance with His will.

Ps 91:9-12, “⁹ If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,” and you make the Most High your dwelling, ¹⁰ no harm will overtake you, no disaster will come near your tent. ¹¹ For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways …” NIV

Second, He expects us to follow Him in accordance with His Word. We are not to tempt Him directly or indirectly.

In Matthew 4, when Jesus went through the temptation experience with satan. One of the temptations was to mock Jesus by saying, “If you are the Son of God throw yourself down.” Your Father will send 10,000 angels to rescue you. Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

By my actions, I was testing God indirectly through the lives of everyone on the coach. My going to sleep could have thrown them down the side of a mountain to test God. They did not put God to the test. I did! I tempted God with their lives! Would He rescue them?

It was bad enough that I was testing God myself, but I was placing these kids and chaperons at risk as well. They were asleep and not even aware that I was indirectly testing God through my misguided judgment.

God is faithful and deserving of our trust! He proves it every day in every way and why I continue to question Him, I cannot answer. If ever I get a prayer right it would be, “Lord make me more deserving of your omniscience!”