Reading the Bible At Denny’s At 5AM

Have you ever felt like you should have died?  That if God hadn’t put you in the right place at the right time, or that if even the smallest detail had been different, something would have happened to you?  Our friend Pastor Sam shares an incredible story about how God protected a member of his church through the leading of the Holy Spirit and the intuition that he needed to be at Denny’s at 5 in the morning.

I am a pastor at a church in the San Fernando Valley.  Last year we began to realize that our community valued the word of God, but not really.  Not enough to actually read it.  We began to notice that our encounters with the Holy Spirit had an undeniable shallowness.  With that much of it became man-centered.  We were led to have a season where we established bible reading in our lives.  Not sporadically but chapter by chapter, book by book.  Not to read into it but to read
what’s contained in it.  It was hard work.  Many people were not enamored with the idea but the leaders felt that this was what God was leading us to do.  So people began to meet everyday online, in cafes, and through other ways to read the Scripture everyday and for prayer.
      
I was praying at the time that our community would really value God’s word.  I was led by the Lord to pray that the people would realize the gravity of His word in our lives.  A sister at the church started a group at 5 AM in the morning at a local Denny’s.  2-3 people were there every morning.  One of our brothers thought of going to the gathering everyday but always ended up hitting the snooze button on his alarm.  Then one morning he woke up at 5 AM and for some reason couldn’t go back to bed…[click “Read More” below to continue]

After failed attempts at sleeping he reluctantly got up and went to Denny’s.  The group was surprised to see him there.  He was late but he ordered food, complained half the time, read the Scripture, and ended up feeling really blessed.

At around 7 AM he returned home.  He hopped in the shower for a few minutes.  He came out in his towel to find the LAPD all over his house.  Now, this brother rents rooms in his house out to other people.  A police officer then began to relay to him that there had been a murder at his house.  One of his renters had been dealing drugs out of his room.  He had a dispute with some gang members over a drug deal.  They planned his murder.  They then shot and killed the guy during the exact time our brother was out at Denny’s.  The officer then began to relay the fact that our brother would have been killed as well if he had been home.  They asked him, “Where were you?”  He replied, “Reading the Bible at Denny’s.”