When you grow up in the church like I did, naturally you gain a lot of head knowledge about who God is and what He has done for each of us. The problem is, head knowledge isn't valuable by itself. There is a moment in everyone's life that pushes that person toward God and having a real relationship with Him that goes beyond just knowing about Him. Since I explore that idea in depth in my novel, Legacy, I thought it'd be nice to share my own personal story of that one moment.
In 2008, I was a brand new, fresh-out-of-flight-school pilot who had just moved to Albuquerque. The airline I worked for operated nine-seat turboprops and had two shifts: days or overnights. As a new pilot at the bottom of the barrel, I, of course, was put on the less-desired night shifts.
Federal aviation regulations require specific rest periods for pilots based on duty time. My airline decided a good way around having to pay for hotels every night for its employees was to call the shift a "continuous duty" overnight. Translation, no required rest period because people were technically on duty for fourteen or fifteen hours throughout the entire night and into the next morning.
For us pilots, that meant sleeping on the airport floor in the nasty backroom behind the check-in counter for maybe five hours if we were lucky. Sometimes there would be a couch or loveseat in the room (depending on what city the overnight was in) and we would at least get some cushions out of the deal.
One night, I was in Hobbs, New Mexico. The layout of the backroom was simple: one room had two couches in it, and a door connected to a baggage room where we stored several materials we needed for the winter months. One item was a de-ice machine, which had to be plugged in overnight in order to be heated enough to use the following morning. We (the captain and myself) had plugged the machine in, turned out the lights, and passed out on the couches.
About 3:00am, the captain shakes me awake and tells me there's a fire in the baggage room. Thinking he was joking, I told him to shut up and let me sleep for another hour before heading back to Albuquerque. He punched me and made me get up.
The door between the rooms had one of those narrow rectangle windows in it. Flames could be seen leaping up. The de-ice machine had started an electrical fire. I ran through the tiny terminal to try to find a fire extinguisher, and finally found one in the main lobby area. The captain used it to put the fire out, which he did multiple times because it started back up almost the second it had went out. After the fire extinguisher was empty, I decided to call the fire department.
The building in Hobbs was made of metal, which meant no cell service inside. I went out the front doors, and low and behold, a fire truck was parked there. I never made the call. After the fire fighters put out the fire, I learned they were not part of same county as Hobbs and were passing through on their way somewhere else. They didn't belong there. They only stopped at the airport because they needed to refill their water tank on the truck and the fire hydrant in front of the airport provided that for them.
In that moment, I heard clear as day, God telling me "Do you see how much I love you now? I gave you this long before you even knew you needed it."
That was the night God became more real to me than He'd ever been.