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Hi, my name is Wayne Johnston, and in this podcast, I want to share what happened a couple of weeks ago at a men’s fellowship meeting.
Normally, it is not my thing to get up early on a Saturday morning and to get together with others, but there is something about this community fellowship where I live, that I really like.
It’s because there are a number of brothers who come from different churches all with the same purpose; what does God want to do in our town and in our own lives, and how can we accommodate that?
So the other week, we had a couple of new brothers from a Baptist church, and all was friendly and great.
And as soon as the leader opened in prayer, I got this vision from God.
It was very brief, but I shared it after he had opened in prayer. And what it was is that I saw from a bird’s eye view two box cars being coupled together.
The couplers on a train boxcar are massive fist-like structures and when they click into one another they hold those boxcars firmly together.
I don’t deliberately go to a church meeting or anything like that with a word or a vision beforehand. But often what happens is I’ll go to the meeting and I will get it, as we are going to start up.
Because I have a prophetic gift, I try to present it to the Lord and just be open when I am in a circumstance like that, so God can tap me on the shoulder, and give me something to encourage others.
So with this vision, I saw these boxcars being coupled together. I quickly shared that it was like God was joining us together from different churches.
And it may seem obvious to one and all, but an engine by itself is not a train and an engine by itself doesn’t usually run down a track.
Most trains are a mixture of different types of boxcars, flat cars, car carriers, hoppers, and tankers. There may be specialized cars as well.
They all have two things in common. They all have the same exact couplers to join them together, and they all have the same air hoses that connect to each other.
When a boxcar is by itself on a siding, how the brakes work on a train, as I understand them, is that the brakes are on automatically. In fact, even if it is on a bit of a hill, the brakes are on.
And that boxcar may be sitting on a siding full of wonderful gifts for somebody, but it won’t move until it’s hooked up to an engine and those air hoses are hooked up to the box car.
Because it is the compressor from the engine that sends air all the way down to the end of the train, and it’s this air that opens those brakes, allowing the train to move.
Sometimes, when we are not hooked up the way we should be with God’s train, we may not be going too far, too fast.
No breath from the engine, no life, no go.
Sometimes, our Heavenly Father hooks us up with some interesting characters. I may think that I am exceptional and that I am special, and that I should have a place right behind the engine, in front of everyone else, because of my wonderful gifts.
But I may be on a long train, right at the end with live pigs in front of me and a car full of rusted scrap iron behind me. That may be my place for a while.
If that train is going to fulfill its mission or its mandate, it must be hooked up to others and sometimes, God hooks us up with those in front and back, who we may not choose for ourselves, but it is not the boxcar’s decision.
At times trains are made up of boxcars from different denominations, I mean different railways. Sometimes, you will see a train with engines and cars from several different companies, all working together.
And often you hear the thing from the world’s point of view that churches are so divided, and always fighting, and you never do anything.
You know that’s not my experience with this men’s group. We get together with different gifts, with the purpose that the train is going to go down the track and fulfill its mandate.
In Ephesians 4:16, a familiar verse, we read:
16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.
The Greek word used here for joined means, “to render close, jointed together or be fitly framed together.”
At the end of the meeting, we were all joking and coming up with the fact that ‘hey, we got a new secret handshake for our men’s group,’ we are all going to come up to each other and join our hands like train couplers.
But you know at the end of the meeting, an older dignified gentleman, who was apparently a retired teacher. He was a Baptist brother, and it was his first time there. At the end of the meeting, this brother looked at me, and he thanked me for the encouraging word.
“All aboard!”
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