Gettin' out of the box

So today I got out a little bit. It all started this morning when I decided that the crowded prayer chapel was not the place for me to pray in tongues. While I was outside I felt that God impressing upon me that I should get back to doing outreach. It then occurred to me that when I had been getting words of knowledge frequently back at the beginning of winter I had been doing outreach a lot. Recently I haven't been going out to pray for people and haven't been getting many words in other times either. Not to say that God took them away, but there is definitely something about stewarding what you have properly so that you keep it.

So I went to go on our Friday night outreach instead of staying in the service where Lance Wallnau was apparently awesome. Anyway, other than the outreach pastor I was the only person from the church that had done outreach before. So I led a team of 2 young ladies and after soaking in the prayer house - God's presence is so awesome - we headed over to the Sundial Bridge where I saw a picture of a woman in a wheelchair.

As we were walking I spotted a woman wearing a neck brace so I stopped and started conversation. After they asked us a few questions about how we would be praying and whether we believed she would be healed, they allowed us to pray for her. She was somewhat surprised that some of the pain in her neck and leg left, but when I asked if we could pray again she said that one time was enough. One of the men actually said how he was so happy to see us out there praying for people. We ended up talking with them for a few minutes and they all thanked us as we parted ways, much different from their skeptical questioning of us when we met just a few minutes earlier.

We walked a little bit further and saw a woman in a wheelchair. They were much more receptive and immediately said that it would be ok for us to pray for her foot. I totally forgot to ask her if it felt different as we got to talking about other things, which is easy to do when people notice my Brasil shirt, the accent of our Australian teenager, and find out our other person is from Virginia. Again, we talked for several minutes and they showed their gratefulness for us praying for them.

As we were walking back towards the car I stopped to pray for a rougher looking man who had a cane. He too was very open for prayer and seemed as though it was quite normal for a stranger to offer prayer in public for healing. Although he didn't notice any difference he too was encouraged and as we parted ways his wife, who was probably 40 feet away at this point, turned around to thank us for praying. After we got off the bridge the girl from Australia (only 16 years old!) thought that we should go to In-n-Out. So off we went. As we drove off I noticed that the other team had just arrived but I decided to just keep driving.

As soon as we got to In-n-Out a man and woman were approaching their car to leave. The man was limping so I asked him what was going on. He said that he was sore from shopping all day but then eventually said that he has been struggling with it for years and can only take certain construction jobs because of it since he can't stay on his feet. He also said how eager he was for God to heal him and how he is praying constantly for it. Although he didn't feel anything the Australian girl (I know her name, I'm just not saying it) said that she felt God saying that he will be completely healed in the next week. Then he mentioned how the woman had things she needed prayer for as well. So we prayed for her and she began to cry. She didn't notice any difference but I believe that they both have the faith to be healed, and they certainly were encouraged by God. Praise the Lord that He put us exactly where we needed to be to bring encouragement to people who needed it!

On Tuesday night as I had been praying I felt that I should start really going after the healing for people that I have been praying for. It was time for something to happen and as Smith Wigglesworth would say, "if God isn't moving, I'll move Him." I felt that I should call a friend who is quadriplegic every day and pray for him. So the next day when I started praying for him I just got his voicemail. Yesterday he called me to say he had been in either the hospital or with doctors all day concerning problems that had come from surgery after the accident that left him paralyzed. These complications forced him to retire from working about 20 years ago. Needless to say, now is the time!