“Your Knees Have Been Cut Out from Under You”

I needed a word of encouragement. It had been a year like no other. In this past year our younger daughter had several major injuries that ended her Olympic dream a few months before the Winter Olympic trials, my wife’s father died suddenly and tragically, we had to evacuate our apartment in Florida because of a hurricane where my daughter had been training, never to return, my mother-in-law had stage three cancer and then fell and fractured her pelvis following cancer surgery, my mother fell and broke her back, then died a few months later, I moved to Ft. Worth to be a part of a cutting edge development that would house my sport psychology practice only to have the plug pulled on the day of the ribbon cutting ceremony by the developer… Dreams shattered, deaths and heartache, and in a new town seemingly without a reason.

On the day before my birthday we went to church where several people from around the country had flown in to speak words of encouragement over the church leaders and to give a word of encouragement to the people of the congregation as a whole and individually if so led. This morning about 1500 people showed up. In the middle of it I was taking notes and being encouraged by what was happening.

As I looked down at my notes, writing, I got a tap on my shoulder and suddenly looked up to see 1500 people looking at me and listening as a man standing in front of me spoke into a microphone. The pastor who had come in from Arizona asked my name. Then he looked deep into my eyes and said, “You have had your knees cut out from under you.”

Time stood still. My heart raced. I thought to myself, “If you only knew.” But then I realized, he knows.

He went on to say, “This isn’t because of something you have done. It’s not because you have failed. It is because God is re-positioning you. Right now, you are on your knees, and that is where God wants you.”

He quoted a verse, “Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it cannot produce fruit.” He continued, “Stay on your knees and let the old die and the new be revealed. God is re-positioning you to do things you could only have dreamed of and more. But first the old has to die. Be patient and wait on the Lord and look forward with anticipation to this new thing God is doing.”

He said many more encouraging words then added, “And one more thing the Lord wants you to know… He is pleased with you.”

Never in my life had I needed to hear such encouragement and supernatural insight. I am in awe of the precision of God’s message and the method in which he brought it to me. Only about 15 people were called out in the congregation that day. I was one of 1500 people in an audience that did not know me. But God had a word for me on the eve of my birthday. What a word, what a present.