Windows of heaven

I had a timely experience that was a little different this week.The other night I picked up four guys from a bar down in Salt Lake City. They’d been drinking but they weren’t drunk and they had multiple stops in their ride. We dropped one guy off and headed to the other stop and I took a survey of the diversity in the car.

We had just about every race represented and it was interesting to hear the viewpoint coming from everyone. They were talking about the perception and or reality of being treated differently based on how they looked.

I chimed in with my experience from my mission of being held at machine gun point and the struggles we had during the Falklands war. I was held at gunpoint 11 times in one month. They were riveted while I told the story and enjoyed it.

The largest person in the group was the guy sitting right behind me. He had a booming voice and he was the one that was most agitated about how he had been treated. When I finished my story his agitation seem to change course and focus on me. Where he was the leader the rest of the car turned on me as well.

He shouted, are you still a Mormon? He said it in an antagonistic tone and with much force. I said in the most cheerful happy and powerful voice I could, yes! Absolutely 100%

He said, I have a question for you Mormon. I started to say a silent prayer asking for help on this one. He said, do you pay tithing to that church? I said yes. He protested saying how could you pay tithing when you know that your church uses that money poorly and hides it from the government? How could you pay tithing when they have that much money and you don’t know how it’s being spent?

Given that this guy was huge, angry, right behind me, agitated to begin with and focused on me I needed all the help my heavenly father could give me. The thing to say came to my heart. I heard or felt the words teach him and testify.

I felt the power of the spirit buoy me up and I spoke clearly, firmly and with the spirit. I could feel the spirit as I said these words, “Oh, I don’t pay driving because the church needs the money, The church doesn’t need my money, it’s insignificant andI I really couldn’t care less what the church does with the money I paid. The reason I pay is because God has commanded us to pay tithing.”

I told him that the Bible asks if we have robbed God. It says that we are supposed to pay our tithes and offerings and that in return the Lord will open the windows of heaven and give us blessings that is are so great that we can not receive them all. I told him, I won’t rob God

I told him that I had lost my job during Covid but had still paid my tithing and have been blessed by the Lord. I told him that we had never missed a meal and that we were being blessed because we play tithing. I testified that the reason why we were blessed is because we were paying tithing. The power of that testimony sunk in and I felt him being disarmed. I felt the animosity leave the car. A reverence and the spirit settled over the car. I told him that I didn’t know how we would’ve done it if we hadn’t paid tithing and received blessings from God.

He reached up and grabbed my shoulders and said that’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever felt in my life. That’s awesome. Thank you for teaching me. All of the guys in the car repeated what he said and mentioned that they had been touched and that they now understood. We were at the place they were going and they got out of the car.

I rolled down the windows as I often do to air out the car between rides and I heard him say to his friends, oh my goodness, that was awesome, did you feel that? The other guys in the car said yeah, that was so cool.

I was driving off and I don’t know how that ended but I know that the Lord gave me the words to say and that it made a difference that night.

This all happened two days after the media ran amok with the story of the church being fined for its accounting and investment practices. These guys thought they had me. They thought I would defend, argue and get down in the dirt to fight with them but that’s not what the Lord had me do. I thought about trying to avoid the conversation altogether but sometimes avoiding the conversation is not what the Lord would have us do either

That night I found that if you put your faith in God and listen for his will, he will fill your heart with the words he would have you say and even touch the hearts of those who would persecute you. Their hearts can be touched and changed. If you want to talk about miracles, to me, that was a miracle