We Expect the Machine. We’re Surprised by God.
There was a van. Thailand, small huts and shops passing by through the windows, my brother in Christ sitting next to me. And the Lord kept doing this thing where something we had talked about in private, just the two of us, would show up in front of us. A conversation nobody else heard. Then there it was.
It happened enough times that we started joking we’d better watch what we say. Because He was listening. He was in the van. We could feel Him enjoying us, the way you feel someone smiling at you across a room. After a while we stopped explaining it to each other. Something would happen and we’d just catch each other’s eyes and point up. That was the whole language. Eyes, then a finger toward the roof, then a grin. He’s here. He did it again.
I sat outside the hotel every morning, Cambodia and Thailand both, and I didn’t ask Him for anything. That was new for me. My prayers are usually a list of people and personal things. This was just thanks. I gave Him the day and I gave Him myself, and that was all I had to give, because I already had everything. I shouldn’t have even been on that trip. I know what I came from. And there I was, being gazed at by God on the other side of the world.
Sixty people in Cambodia and one van driver gave their life to Christ. A trip with not one incident. A testimony of a healing. And here’s what I keep turning over in my head. We were surprised.
Not in awe. We’re supposed to be in awe. We fear the Lord, and a man bowing his life before the living God should drop us to our knees every time. I’m not talking about awe. I’m talking about surprise. The little catch in your chest that says I didn’t think that would actually happen. That one. Why is that, in us at all?
Because I’ll tell you what doesn’t surprise us. You pick up your phone and expect it to turn on. You ask the AI a question and expect an answer, instantly, no flutter of doubt. We have built a quiet, total confidence in the machine. We never brace ourselves before we open the app. We just expect it to work, because it always works.
But God moves and we flinch like it’s the first time. Somewhere along the way our expectancy got handed to the wrong thing. We trust the tool to perform and we half-expect the Lord to stay quiet. That’s not humility. That’s our faith pointing backwards.
Read what Jesus said the night before the cross.
“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” John 15:4–5 (NKJV)
Abide. Stay. Live there. He doesn’t say visit Me, or call Me when the list gets long. He says the branch and the vine are one connected thing, and the fruit comes out of staying joined. Jill and I had been studying that word, abiding, for weeks before I left. I read it. I underlined it. And then in that van I think I actually lived inside it. It was like the two of us walking with one map and one thought between us. Him and me. No distance to cross.
That’s the thing about the van. None of it should have shocked me. A God who knows what two men whispered in private, a God who heals, a God who turns a van driver in Thailand to Him, that was a normal day in the book of Acts. The early church didn’t run home stunned that God showed up. They expected Him. They walked out the door already knowing He was coming with them. Signs followed them because they weren’t braced against the possibility.
We get to see this. We have to recognize it when we see it, and we have to give Him every ounce of the glory, out loud, by name. Not file it under coincidence. Not walk away surprised like He’s a stranger who did us a favor. He’s the vine. We’re the branch. He’s already in the van.
I had nothing to bring Him in Cambodia and Thailand but thanks. Turns out that was the richest my prayer life has ever been.
