“This wasn’t supposed to be my moment. But God made it His.”
Doug didn’t expect a life-changing encounter when he set out on a Saturday outreach. Alongside four local pastors, he was delivering something simple: batteries—for smoke alarms—in an apartment complex.
“I basically gave them just a couple of things to say,” Doug recalls. “When we knocked on a door, we were just going to hand the battery to someone and tell them we were showing them God’s love that day.”
It seemed too simple, even awkward. The pastors weren’t sure what to make of the mission. Shouldn’t they be doing something more obviously spiritual? Serving food? Leading prayer? Visiting hospitals?
Doug could feel their hesitation—and his own.
An Unexpected Door
As the group climbed the stairs of the complex, they approached the first door and heard something unsettling: fighting. A man and woman were arguing behind the door, loudly and emotionally.
“My first reaction was, move on,” Doug said. “This is not something that’s in my wheelhouse.”
But then, he felt a nudge.
“I just sensed God saying, ‘Knock on that door.’”
So he did.
A Divine Appointment
The pastors and Doug were invited inside. The apartment was tense. A table sat in the middle of the room. The husband stood on one side, the wife on the other. They stared at their unexpected visitors.
Off-script and unsure, someone asked: “What’s happening here?”
The wife responded.
“We lost our baby last night.”
The husband, still angry, was arguing that God wasn’t there. The wife stood firm—God is always there, she insisted.
And now, four pastors and Doug stood in their apartment, not with food or sermons—but with batteries, and the presence of God.
“It still emotionally strikes me as unbelievable,” Doug reflects, “that God brought us to that room… to soothe these people. To let the man know that God is there.”
They stayed for a while. They listened. They prayed. They stood in the ache and did what they could.
The Kairos Moment
Doug didn’t know it then, but this moment had a name: Kairos—a Greek word for “the right time” or “God’s appointed time.”
“A Kairos moment is when the supreme leader appears in your life,” Doug explains. “When you sense a prompt from God, you have a choice: to do nothing—or to take action.”
Doug chose to act. And that decision allowed God to do what only He can do: show up, uninvited but undeniable.
“My calling to you,” Doug says, “is go out and act. Be a person of action. God wants you doing something in your life—for someone else’s life.”
Scripture Reflections
- “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
—Ephesians 2:10 - “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act.”
—Proverbs 3:27 - “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.”
—James 2:26
Final Thought
“It wasn’t about the battery. It was about obedience. And God turned it into something eternal.”
