For those of you not familiar with the buzzwords like “ATL” and “listening prayer”, I will take a moment to explain. Before setting out for ministry like ATL (Ask The Lord), we start by gathering among teams to determine where exactly we may be ministering. We engage in something called Listening Prayer. This time is crucial because we so often jump right in without actually LISTENING to the Lord. We talk and talk and then do. But when is the last time any of us just sat and listened? I’ll continue.
During this time, we pray against any thoughts that may come from the enemy or even our own thoughts that may crowd what the Lord is trying to tell us and we ask that the Holy Spirit would speak to us and equip us. Next….we listen. Yes, we sit and listen. Many times, God presents a picture, a word, or perhaps a verse. So we speak them out to each other and start making connections. For many of our racers and even for me at first, this sounded odd. But I will tell you a story of how the Holy Spirit moved in this time.
I decided to go out with Adam’s team that day. We engaged in listening prayer and the group spoke out as the Lord was speaking to them. I received an image of an overpass with an older man walking under it along with the verse that speaks of young men having visions and old men dreaming dreams (in the book of Joel). We set out together and the team ministered to several people along the way. As the team gathered inside a fast food restaurant to feed this one man, I went out with Rebecca and Audrey to look for street vendors (one of the tasks was to eat dinner at a street vendor). As we started walking, we passed under a MARTA overpass, and sure enough, there was an older man walking up the sidewalk, barefoot, and with a walker.
Now, I had already been blown away from the experience last Wednesday night, so I was excited to see what God had in store. We walked by the man (Willy was his name), and I asked if we could help. He had been walking uphill for a while at that point and had little to no energy. As I looked into his eyes, I could see his story. All of the pain, the hardknocks, and trials that this man had gone through had brought him to this point. His walker had wheels on one end and tennis balls on the other. It could not roll properly. Willy looked at us and told us that he needed to get to CVS which happened to be up the hill and beside the fast food restaurant where the other teammates were.
I feel that it is important to describe Willy. Willy is a gray-heared man with a scraggly beard. His clothes were a ragged plaid shirt that smelled old and stale. He wore some pants that seemed that they hadn’t been washed in a while and his feet were in desperate need of treatment after walking quite a bit barefoot in downtown Atlanta. He had vision out of one of his eyes, but the other was winced closed due to a head injury he sustained a while back. Although he was 53 years old, life had taken it’s toll on his poor body.
We assisted him up the hill by holding the walker in the air as he walked because it cleary was not rolling. After every 20 steps or so, Willy needed a break. We set the walker down and gently rubbed his back. We encouraged him, prayed over him and loved him. Every time he looked up to see how far CVS was in the distance, sadness filled his eyes. I knew the Holy Spirit was moving. At several stops, I would place my hand on his chest. His heart was racing faster than his body could support. As I prayed over him and had my hand on him, his heart began to palpitate at a much slower rate. We crossed over rocky terrain that tortured his feet. I felt the Lord telling me to remove my flipflops and let him use them….so I did. Just to walk the short distance barefoot was difficult, but I imagined what Willy had been doing for years. Eventually we arrived at CVS and I told him to go inside and that we would wait outside for him with some food. He was very thankful.
Before continuing with this story, there are some things that I’d like to stress from observation. When we pray against any form or thought from the enemy and ask the Lord to speak, we MUST believe that he will do it. At times, I have doubted if what I was hearing was from God or not, but we have to know that when we speak those things out and when are hearts are sincere and true, he does move. This is just part of Willy’s story and our encounter with the Holy Spirit. We must not be afraid to act when we hear a word from the Lord.
