It was my mom’s birthday and since I won’t be spending time with her in the next year I thought, this is a great opportunity to spend some quality time with her. So when I asked her what she wanted to do for her birthday and she said, “LAS VEGAS!” I was really surprised!
We went and had a really great time. All the lights, the entertainment & of course the people watching. That’s where it get’s real. When you start watching the people. When you notice that in the midst of the glam of Vegas everyone’s eyes start looking a little sad. The amount of homeless people that fill the strip wrenches my heart. The amount of hopelessness in a place that gambles for hope boggles this optimistic mind.
Yet I was sucked into that world of looking at the lights, the shows and the glitz while there. After seeing Elvis and wondering about what the next adventures was going to be a man came up to me and gave me His story. He had been stuck in Vegas and was trying to take a bus back to his family in Kingman, AZ. He was $8.50 away from being able to buy a ticket out of sin city. I looked in my wallet, where I had $6 and a $20 bill. I didn’t take time to listen, I just thought “I MIGHT NEED THIS.” So I handed him the $6 and went about my day.
I am not someone who is super spiritual, or makes things more spiritual then they need to be. However in that situation I was not connected to the source. I didn’t take time to listen or ask God if he wanted to use the situation.
Later that night, as I laid in my bed and prayed my day was recapped. While laying there God spoke to me. He spoke about living with open hands, that everything is His and that as a steward of what He is letting me use I should live openly. You see I had almost become a hoarder of sorts, because I need to “RAISE” money for the world race, yet it all belongs to HIM anyway, and HE is my source so why do I hold on.
So as I am realizing this and crying in my bed, God speaks something else. HE tells me to get up and go to a certain spot and wait. I wrestled with God. My excuses were, it’s 1:30 A.M. in the morning… I’ll have to get dressed… will I be safe? Yet God still pressed on, finally I gave in, reluctantly. I got up, told my mom where I was going and stomped to the spot at the Starbucks on Fremont street as if I were a 3 year old that had lost a tantrum.
I got a drink and talked to the barista as if she were the one God was going to use me to speak to. I walked out on the porch where he had told me to sit and waited to live openly and expect him to be the source. That’s when a man, eating from a jar of peanut butter made eye contact with me from the street. He walked right over and I introduced myself to him, his name is Victor.
Victor began to tell me his story of living on the streets and being homeless. And half way into the story He tells me that he loves Jesus. He then begins to give me a prophetic word. He says (and at this point I have told him nothing of my life) God is transitioning you into a new season. He is taking you to a place where you are going to be doing “Humanitarian” type of works for His kingdom & that from this He will be doing a new ministry through your life. I sat there, like this is just how God works. He would bring this slightly crazy homeless man to give a glimpse of what he is doing because of this reluctant act of obedience. As we talk I ask Victor what I can do for him and he says “All I have been eating is peanut butter, i’d like a better dinner.” So after getting him dinner he goes on his way.
#Peoplematter
I’m not sure what God did through this moment, but I am glad I was listening. I am hoping in this season I will learn to live with my hands open and not hoard those things He is sending my way- because it’s all His anyways! I am so thankful for meeting Victor. I am thankful that God is using my life and that He is the source.
Also after God spoke these things to me, I was listening to Steven Furticks podcast which so happened to be on God being the source. Check it out:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/consider-source-theres-more/id216015753?i=296156372&mt=2
<3
Ash
