The HEAT is what I remember first.

So I’m in Chi town it’s over a hundred degrees, and I’m running drops from the Chicago area all the way to Milwaukee. The deliveries themselves weren’t the hard part. It was everything that went with it. Traffic stacked up everywhere. Roads big trucks weren’t allowed to drive down. Docks that were tucked in places no truck was ever meant to fit.
Things felt manageable and then my air conditioning quit. Just like that, out of nowhere. Ice cold then fresh humid air.

Now it’s a sweat lodge in my truck. So I rolled my windows down, hot air blowing everything around, papers I need scattering across the cab. I was grabbing at them one-handed while I’m still trying to make my next stop.

For a delivery or two, it was fine, you deal with it. But after an hour of that, in that heat, doing what I was doing? It wore me down to nothing. So I figured I’d swing into a shop on my break, get it charged, keep moving.

That’s not how it went. They assured me “easy fix”. Out of there by 10 pm, they closed at midnight.
But they broke a bracket getting into it.
Then they told me the compressor was out too. And the part I needed? Was a day and a half away. I felt my stomach drop, because I wasn’t done making my drops. I still had the back half of my deliveries waiting on me for the next day. Now the whole shipping office was scrambling, resetting every appointment down the line, it put my office contact on edge. Me included.

Then they told me I couldn’t stay on the property. So they pushed my truck out past the gate, and that’s where I slept. Doors open, windows open, because it was still that hot at night. A neighborhood I knew nothing about. Honesty I could’ve been robbed. Could’ve been worse than that. But somehow I made it through the night, and I know for a fact that wasn’t luck. That was God.

Somewhere in there I prayed. Lord, I’m irritated. Like Paul in that inner cell please help me find the joy in this. Help me understand why I’m here. I know You don’t force us through things, but I know You’re in it. So show me.

He did. Man, did He.

First of all that bracket they said was two days out? My buddy Bruce found one forty-five minutes away, right there in Chicago. Then I’m walking through the shop the next day to use the facilities, and I pass a conference room where a fella keeps looking at me. Door’s open, so I stick my head in. He asked, “You doing all right?” We get to talking, and I mention the bracket I tracked down. He jumps up out of his chair. Turns out I’d been chatting with the regional VP of the whole Peterbilt operation. He starts making calls, comes back, and tells me they’re sending a driver to grab that part and they’ll have me rolling today. Just like that.

That was the first “God bless you.” Then came the woman who’d checked me in at the counter. Turns out she’s known all over that place for her faith, encouraging everybody who comes through the doors. You could sense she had the Holy Spirit all around her.

I ended up in the driver’s lounge for a while, and that’s where the real reason for all of this shows up.

Two brothers came in, driving as a team. We got to talking, and their story started coming out. One of them had gotten out of prison about three months back. He was a year and a half sober now. The other fella had never touched drugs a day in his life; he was just there to help his brother get back on his feet. And the first brother tells me he loves the Lord, says he even goes to church.

So I went deeper with him. I asked him straight: “Do you feel like you’re finished work, or do you feel like you’re still a work in progress?” He starts telling me about praying the sinner’s prayer, getting saved, all of it. And I got to share with him the way Dan teaches it. I told him — brother, if you repented, if you turned from your own ways and got baptized, then that is finished work.

Hebrews 10;14 “For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.”

You’re not meant to wake up every morning digging through yourself for sin to feel bad about. That’s done. Now you get to walk in obedience, serve God, and be excited about it. And if you don’t feel that yet, then maybe the finished work hasn’t fully landed on you.

He looked at me and said, “Wow.” Apparently he thought that was profound. And I just kept sharing, and he kept soaking it in. By the time he left, he had his head up. I really believe he walked out of there a transformed man, finished work, ready to go speak faith in somebody else’s life.

I told him too: faith heals. Not a bunch of us sitting in a kumbaya circle praying like witch doctors trying to conjure something up. It’s that every one of us, when we’re actually listening to God’s voice, can speak faith into another person’s life. We don’t own the power, but through faith we get to deliver the message. Sometimes it’s a word of encouragement. Sometimes it’s a real need, a healing. Jesus didn’t heal folks just because they were sick. He healed to advance the Kingdom. That’s the assignment He left us.

And you know what we’re staying in touch. I came off that trip with new friends, new brothers in Christ. Even the favor kept rolling. I got into a receiver that normally won’t take you a minute past their cutoff, and because I shared a little with them, they made a way for me.

That’s how it’s been out here lately. Everywhere I go, God’s got me sharing faith. I’ll ask a fella how his day’s going, just like anybody would. But when I roll through the fuel island and I see those porters, you know the ones taking out the trash, filling the soap buckets for the squeegees.
I pull off to the side and I reminded one fella in particular who he really was.

1Peter2;9 “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.”

I told him he’s royalty. That he was put here on purpose. And he looked at me like, really? And I said, yeah and where you come from, you’re royalty. A great man. The reason you’re standing here doing this job right now isn’t about you. It’s God.

He’s got you here because trucks are rolling through, and every one of these drivers is under fire from the enemy. Things like money, power, drugs, women, the phone, the algorithms, all of it pulling at them. Most of these guys come through beat up. Tired. Lonely. Some of them sick, some suicidal, some so full of hate you can see it in the way they drive.
Then I tell that porter — brother, you can proclaim faith over every one of these drivers. You can claim them for the Kingdom. That’s your job. That’s why I stopped today. God sees you, and He told me to remind you what you’re here for. You ought to seen his face when I said it. It lit up. Excited about his work all over again.

Then there’s tomorrow.

Tomorrow I take my daughter to college. I load Sloan up and drive her to Missouri Baptist and help her move into her dorm. I’m her footman for the whole day. Setting up her room, and if she wants me there, we get to go to chapel together for the first time. Then dinner. And then it says right there on the schedule: 6:45 — parents depart.

That’s the one that’s gonna get me.

That’s me leaving my baby girl to the world, on her own, for the first time in her life. I’m praying I hold it together. I know she’s gonna be fine, I know it.
Because the same God who carried me through the heat and the breakdown and that night outside the gate is the same God who’s been building her into a strong young woman this whole time. He’s growing her into exactly who He made her to be. And if He could turn a broke down compressor into a driver’s lounge full of divine appointments, then I don’t have a thing to worry about handing her over to Him.

Philippians 1;6 confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.”

I started that trip asking God to help me find the joy in it.

He answered every bit of that prayer and then some.