…and apparently so am I.
When AIM leadership asked us to pray that God quiet the voices in our heads other than God’s and ask him for a vision of what he wanted us to do for our first Ask The Lord (ATL) ministry project, I thought they were crazy. How in the world could God speak to me, or anyone on my team for that matter? I thought God only spoke through the bible and through smart people who knew the bible cover to cover. WRONG.
My team, which is made up of Melanie Dodson, Colin Langston, Geoff Shepard, Hope Mendola, Michelle Johnson and Emily Gearhart sat and prayed. We all felt that God wanted us to pray with people on the streets of Atlanta. We asked that He bring the people to us. We headed out a little apprehensive, of course, not really knowing what to expect or what to do.
The first man Hope and Colin noticed, who we later named Frank, was very disturbed emotionally. It was hard to understand him. They both went over and tried to pray with him, but the man was full of anger and they felt they needed to walk away. We headed down the street, my two teammates a little discouraged and the rest of us still not knowing what to do. We came across Andre and Melvin, two men who were friendly (and both came to us, instead of us going to them), talked to us and allowed us to pray over them.
Colin and Hope both were being told they needed to go back to “Frank.” We went back as a team. After a while, although there were some breakthroughs in hearing more of this man’s pain-filled story, we didn’t know what else to do. Hope and Colin backed off, feeling at peace over the situation and noticed another man sitting alone only a few steps away. They, along with Michelle, decided to minister to him. The rest of us later decided to step back, continue praying for them as they worked with our new friend and just talk a while. We noticed that as soon as they started praying for him, he started crying, noticeably full of pain and exhaustion from the life he has. A good while later Hope came over and simply asked, “Can you guys get a coat?” Emily, who I’m learning has a ton of faith especially after this particular moment, responded with a “yeah.” It was 8:30 p.m., nothing was open and we were going to get a coat? Emily prayed, asking God for outside-of-the-box ideas for Anthony, this man who was shivering and crying (and “coincidentally” was wearing a shirt with the name Michelle Johnson, my teammate’s name, on it.) We took off wondering how we would do this. Then all of a sudden we stop at just the right spot on a street corner where God showed me what we needed to do. I saw a hotel a block down the street and suggested that we split up to the two hotels in that block and ask if they had a lost and found and if so, if they had an extra coat. (Disclaimer: I am normally NOT this creative in my thinking, God gets all the glory on this!) We took off running.
Emily and I hit up one hotel, where the workers told us they had no coats, but could load us up with blankets. “Yes, we’ll take them!” we said. So we left the hotel completely excited for this outside-of-the-box idea God had given us. We turn the corner and Melanie and Geoff had a coat in their hands from the hotel they had gone to. We are AMAZED. We ran back to Anthony and the team got to see this man actually laugh.
A while later after leaving him we were standing on a street corner, in our continued awe, when we saw a new Anthony. This Anthony was no longer hunched over in his sadness. He was literally SKIPPING down the street because not only had God given him a physical warmth, but a warmth in his heart as well.
