Just before we returned home from Iraq in 2007, I was given orders to snatch a top insurgent leader, a twenty-one-year-old psychopath. He had kidnapped and personally shot in the head from behind eighteen Iraqis who had been working at the airport. He was known to be leaving Basra in a convoy of six pickup trucks and heading for safety in Iran to get treatment for an injured leg received when he was targeted by a US missile. I had two helicopters with twenty-two men in each and another helicopter with two men.
As I prayed about this the Lord rebuked me for my lack of love for this man, murderer though he was. Jesus died for murderers! I was told to pray that he would not be killed. Up to this point every subject of a snatch had died in the inevitable ensuing fire fight.
As his convoy left Basra, they split up into a group of two and a group of four. I placed my two helicopters to intercept the second group while I sent the third helicopter, with two SAS men who had providentially been loaned to us, to deal with the first group. They flew the helicopter so that it sat a few feet above the lead car and turned it over with the down draught, disorienting the occupants. The second car vanished. A door of the first car opened. Out came a man with a stick! It was our man. He was bundled into the helicopter and taken to a secure place.
We worship a God who answers prayer!
*Photo credit: https://www.pexels.com/@douglas-dunigan-926323180