Let me introduce you to another World Race/Adventures in Missions term: ATL (Ask The Lord). This is the term used when we practice the art of listening prayer. Listening prayer is praying specifically for God to speak to you through the Holy Spirit. This can be anything from a picture or vision, a word, maybe a feeling, or something different.
I think in some ways, this is a lost form of worship in Western Christianity. We spend an awful lot of time talking to God, but not very much time being still and listening. This doesn't typically make for a good relationship. We all probably know that person (and have been that person ourselves) that talks, and talks, and talks, but doesn't do much listening to your side of the story. And if they(we) do, it is just to get to a point when they can talk some more.
This is a big part of what we will do for ministry throughout the year. It is very important to be open and receptive to what God is asking us to do. He may ask us to speak to a particular person, go to a particular place, or to pray for a certain person or situation.
We had our first adventure in ATLing on our last full day at launch. Our teams were given instructions to take time to pray and listen, and to follow what we see and hear. Our team went up to our room, and took some time to pray. We sat for awhile, and just listened. Soon, we started voicing the images and feelings we were getting. I saw green grass, but I didn't say anything for a few minutes, because I wasn't sure if God was showing it to me, or if it was just my mind wandering. Soon, a few people piped up, “I'm getting something with red tops.” “A bike rack.” “Some kind of a clock tower.” “Food items.” “A red heart”. “A park.”
When “a park” was mentioned, I was like, okay, my green grass was probably legit. So I said it. We got to a point when we felt like we were done, so we decided to head out. Angela said she was feeling like we were supposed to share our food with someone, so we loaded up a few backpacks and headed out.
Josh remembered that we had seen a park on our way to the grocery store the other day, so we decided to head in that direction. We had been walking for a few minutes, when Tiffany said, “Guys, I just really feel like we are supposed to go in the other direction.” We stopped and immediately turned around. Our team really trusts one another, and it was cool to see that trust in action. We didn't even question Tiffany's feeling.
So, we headed back in the other direction. We were walking along the side of the highway, when Brittany, who had been lagging behind a bit, said, with tears in her eyes, “Guys, can we just stop? I just feel like we are rushing off to a destination that we don't even know what it is, and we haven't really taken time as a team to just be together.”
Right when she said it, we all realized that she was right, and we stopped right there on the side of the highway. We circled around, and prayed for a few minutes. Some people got things off of their chest, some said encouraging words to other teammates. As we were talking, I looked down, and saw this:
My green grass.
It was so cool to see something that God had shown me. It really affirmed to me that God really does speak to me.
After that, it was time to walk back to the hotel. We had lunch, and met with our squad coaches and squad leaders as a team, and debriefed how we were doing as a team, and how our experience with ATL went. We told them that it was different than what we expected, but still totally what we needed.
Afterward, we decided that since we had several hours until we had to be back at the hotel, we wanted to go into downtown Chicago to see the Bean. So, we boarded the shuttle from the hotel to take us to the airport, then took a 45 minute train ride into downtown. We saw the Bean, and had so much fun taking pictures.
When we were done, we decided that we wanted to get some authentic Chicago style deep dish pizza. We asked the guy working the hot dog stand where we should go for some good deep dish pizza. He recommended a place called Giordano's, and pointed us in the direction. “It's just across the street and behind that building.”
So, we started out. We thought we were following his directions, but it soon became clear that either his directions were wrong, or we totally didn't follow them. We ended up taking a 20 minute detour in a circle, and finally found the restaurant.
Along the way, we ended up seeing all the things that we had seen in our prayer time earlier. It was cool, but we didn't really think anything of it at the time.
We got to the restaurant, and learned that it took 45 minutes for them to cook the individual pizzas. We took the time to chat and hang out, but by the time the pizzas came, we only had enough time to eat one piece, box up the leftovers, and start heading back.
We made it to the train station, to find out that we had just missed the train. We had to wait for the next one, which was frustrating because we knew we were going to be late for our session, but we had no choice but to wait.
The station was crowded, and a man with a box drum started playing. Some of my teammates started talking to him. He was homeless, and supported his family by playing at the train station. We had been given some free samples of pita chips and hummus while walking around downtown, so we gave those to him, and Josh and I gave him the rest of our pizza. We asked if we could pray for him.
We also made some friends on the train with some students from the Chicago Performing Arts High School. We had a good conversation with them, and explained to them what we were doing. There were several other people from the train that joined in on the conversation.
We ended up being about 15 minutes late getting back to the hotel for our session, which was kind of frustrating. Even though I am a chronically late person, it doesn't mean I like to be late. But, it ended up being really cool. If the chain of events of that afternoon hadn't happened the way that they did, we would not have been able to connect with the people that we did. It was really cool to reflect on how God showed us all of the things we had seen earlier in the day, and that we had ended up sharing our food with someone. We thought that our ATL was done in the morning, but God showed us that we needed to go on the journey to meet up with the people that he wanted us to talk to.
Stay tuned for the final installment of Launch Chronicles, which includes a video from launch. Which will be posted as soon as we have stronger internet.
