With tears streaming down her face
she stood bravely in front of the church telling her story. I sat on the edge of my chair to listen
to the woman who we had prayed for just a few hours earlier that day. She began to share part of her story that
I already knew. She was a widow
raising her young daughter. Her
husband had died in April of what I think may have been a parasite or
intestinal worm. They visited the
witch doctor and tried many things to heal her husband. Unfortunately, he continued to spiral
downward and towards the end of his life they could see something moving in his
abdomen. She had stopped going to
church many years before and lost faith in God. Shortly after she lost her husband she became ill with the
same symptoms and felt she had nowhere to turn. She remembered her days in church years ago and prayed to
Jesus that He would heal her. Sure
enough her symptoms went away. She
began to pray on a regular basis but didn’t want to step foot in a church even
though she knew that God had healed her.
She was ashamed and felt that she had let her husband die because she
went to the witch doctor. We came
to her house earlier that day, encouraged and prayed for her, and on that day she decided to come back
to church. This is what I already
knew, what I had been a part of.
The
words that followed were what I had yet to learn. She said she knew that today she needed to come to
church. She knew that we were to
be trusted and that she knew we were sent by God specifically for her and her
family. You see, the previous
night my new friend had a dream.
In her dream she was sitting outside her home cooking, just like we
found her that day. She dreamed
that 4 visitors came and told her about the living God. A God that wanted to take her burdens
and restore her joy. These
visitors told her that they came from a far away land and were there to share
God’s unfailing love with her. The
best part was this, they had the head of lions, and yet they were soft and
loving. Gentle warriors, if you
will. Fierce and mighty, but
compassionate. In the dream they gave her words of life, encouragement, and
truth. With that she said words
that I already knew but didn’t believe until they came from her very
mouth. “Today I knew that the missionaries
who came to visit me were from God and sent just for me. God showed me they would come so I knew
to trust what they had to share with me.�
I was astonished. God loved
this woman enough to speak to her through a dream. Even better than that I am a LION. As far as Christian imagery goes this one is my favorite and
I appeared to her in this way.
Jesus is referred to as the lion of the tribe of Judah, He lives in me,
and therefore I have the spirit of a Lion as well!
It’s
in unexplainable moments like this that I cant even begin to wrap my head
around how big God is. He truly
does go before us and we just need to be obedient to the things He asks us to
do. I have no doubt that our
prayers that day were a divine appointment and I just thank God that I was used
in His all-encompassing plan. Not
only did He use me to encourage a sister in Christ all the way across the world
in Africa, but He also increased my faith while revealing His glory. You see, that day had nothing to do
with me or anything I did right. I just was lucky enough to show up and see His
hand at work.
