Why I Wrote the 911 Bible App

Have you ever seen the same number popping up in front of you multiple times a day? Whether it’s a time on a clock, or number on a license plate or billboards, you just keep seeing the same number and it feels like its nudging you. I’ve had this happen to me many times. There was a season of my life, a very difficult season, I kept seeing the number ‘911’. It was right before I went through a difficult divorce. Even before I was struggling in the midst of the coming turmoil I kept seeing that number. I thought God was warning me about an emergency, that there was a danger coming. But even a year after the divorce was over I kept seeing ‘911’. I started getting frustrated with God. “Yeah, I know. You can quit warning me now. I get it. It’s done!” But it kept appearing…911…911…911. Finally, I told my pastor about it and he recognized what it was right away. Psalm 91:1 “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” It wasn’t a warning. It was an invitation. God was inviting me to come into His presence and find safety and refuge and healing.

In another season I kept seeing the number ’47’. Over and over again. Again I knew God was trying to tell me something but this time I got out my Bible and started digging through Scriptures looking for every occurrence of combinations of 4 and 7. Starting in Genesis I found Gen. 4:7, Gen. 47, Exodus 4:7, and so on going through book after book, chapter after chapter, verse after verse until I came to Philippians 4:7 “And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Something jumped in my heart when I read that and I knew that the message God had for me. So now when I see that number I think of the Peace of God and it helps remind me to let His peace come in and guard my heart and my mind. There have even been a couple of times when I’ve climbed in my car and started it up and the dash clock showed the time 9:11 and the temperature 47 degrees. Ha ha, God is funny!

So in this process of trying to be sensitive to hearing God speak in this particular way I found myself methodically going through my Bible looking up the chapter:verse number combinations whenever there seemed to be a number that seemed to repeat in an unusual way. This was slow and awkward so I wrote a program that would do the tedious part for me. A program where I could enter the number then have the computer display all the possible chapter:verse combinations for me to read through and see if something jumped out at me as a message God wanted me to hear in the moment.

Let me be clear. Like anything we as fallible people do, we can take things too far to one side or the other. We can ignore signs God puts before us like seeing a number repeat and miss an opportunity that God is giving us to hear something special from Him. On the other hand, if we are seeing numbers everywhere and thinking they all mean something we end up distracted from the Truth, chasing something we weren’t meant to and possibly being deceived. God speaks to us in many ways. We need to be spiritually discerning and let the Holy Spirit lead us. Also, anything we think we hear needs to be in line with the Word of God. These two Witnesses will help keep up us safely on the road. With that, I hope that this service blesses you and helps you receive a special message from God.

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Blessings,
Don Gray