When God Nudges...You Listen!

As a Minister of a local congregation in the rural northern Texas Panhandle, I have always valued my community and the people that I meet from day to day. I always place community involvement very high on my list of priorities as a Minister. 

It was about a year ago (October 2018) that I began to pray for God to open a door for me to serve in my community at a deeper level. 

My family and I are beginning our sixth year here in Spearman. I have been in the community serving as the volunteer chaplain for Hansford Hospice since the fall of 2015 and my service with them continues. I just wanted to do more and learn more about our community. So, I continued patiently to pray for open doors to serve more. 

As I carried out my day to day responsibilities as a Minister at the church and Chaplain in the community, I began to sense something. I noticed that God was nudging me toward those who were suffering. This had already been a reality with my role with hospice in many ways. I wanted more, I began to listen to God and others and found myself with those who were hurting in some way or another. It seemed as if I was often in the right place at the right time. 

I knew I had to listen and pay careful attention to this sort of feeling or nudging that was obviously coming from God. 

I continued to listen and be naturally placed in circumstances that were beyond my comprehension. I prayed, waited, and responded when I was sent. It was in early October of 2017 that I noticed something that was appearing on my Facebook wall and on my Instagram account. I would just scroll on by and didn't pay any attention to it. One day, after my prayer time and Bible reading, I came upon the same advertisement that I had been ignoring for a while now. 

The advertisement was for an EMR class that began later in October. EMR stands for Emergency Medical Responder. It was a class for those who want to be trained to respond to emergencies and assist with patient transfers by driving the ambulance. I thought about it and prayed some more. One day I just got up and went to talk to those involved to find out more information. 

After some strong resistance on my part and persistent encouragement from others, I decided to take the class and see what happened. 

After passing the class and a difficult test, I became an EMR with our local EMS team. Now, one year later, I will enroll in the EMT-Basic class beginning in October. It is an online class that is self paced and entirely online. My job as the Minister at the Spearman Church of Christ has enabled me to get into our community in order to love and serve others at a deeper level.

As a Minister, Chaplain, and member of the EMS team, God sends me where I need to be at the right time. God is all over this and all I am doing is responding to the call to love and serve my Church Family and my Community daily.

Answering the call...because life is why... 

Trent