A God Full of Surprises

One of the things I really love about being here at this ministry among so many different types of Christians is seeing how much God is working beyond my life and my little circle of people who believe and think like me. It doesn’t matter how different people are or what traditions they follow or don’t follow – God is always reaching for people. Can I get an amen?

I found out today that the group here from Kansas are Methodists, and let me tell you – they really make the Methodists look good. It’s all about Jesus for these people, and the youth leaders are such awesome people in that way. We just finished up our nightly devotion (which is really a church service) in which we discussed the church’s situation in Acts 2:42-47, where they were literally sharing everything with each other. They were living communally (many people saved on the Day of Pentecost were Jews from out of town, so when they got saved, they just moved in with the local believers), eating together, praying together, meeting each other’s needs, etc. We compared that to how similar the situation is here, and how powerfully God moves when believers come together in such close communion with each other.

Afterwards we had such an intense time of prayer that I was shocked to find out we had been praying for over two hours. One of the “traditions” down here is to put people in the “hot seat” and the others take turns praying out loud for them. It’s so neat when that happens because everyone winds up praying a completely different prayer even when praying for the same need or the same person. You know that when people are done praying for you that your prayer has been totally saturated from every angle, and you can feel the difference in your spirit almost immediately. Tonight we prayed prayers that require very specific results, so it ought to be interesting to witness the fruits of those prayers over the next few days.

A Different Experience
I don’t normally do well at praying out loud. For one thing, I get very self-conscious, and my mind goes blank. For another, as well as I am sometimes accused of writing, I don’t have a gift for oral speaking at all. That’s why what happened tonight really surprised me.

There’s this college guy here named Brandon who is such a sweet guy; he spends most of his free time doing dishes or mopping the floor even though he has back problems and is in pain a lot of the time. Anyway, we were praying for a friend of his who had just been stricken with a brain hemorrhage, and after some very thorough prayers for that situation, I took the opportunity to pray an encouraging little prayer and thank God for Brandon and his servant’s heart. When I opened my eyes afterward, I was sort of disoriented to find myself in the living room again – it was like I had been in another place while praying for him, a place where I wasn’t self-conscious at all and the words flowed freely. And I was just like, “Thanks God! That was so cool!” One thing I can definitely say about God is that He never fails to give me pleasant surprises.

Questions, comments, concerns? Please feel free to E-mail me!