I sat at a table with two other girls. We all bowed our heads, praying silently. We were praying over the ministry we would be doing that evening, asking God to give us direction. As I sat there in the silence, God gave me instruction for the evening.
“Encourage My people.”
I heard it clearly “Encourage My people,” and immediately questioned it.
“God, aren’t we here to spread the Gospel? Go to the unsaved? Tell them about You? Why are you telling me to go find people who already know You?”
“Encourage My people,” God told me once more.
“Ok, God, but there aren’t a whole lot of Christians here. Were will I find Your people?”
God didn’t answer my question in that moment – so I went out to do ministry that evening praying that God would allow my path to cross with that of a brother or sister in Christ who needed encouragement.
Four hours later I was able to look back and clearly see how God had answered.
While God was telling me to encourage His people, He was telling my team leader to go North, toward a river, and He gave our Malaysian friend the idea to go to a bus stop.
So we set off, driving North. We crossed over 2 different rivers and found ourselves in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Penang. In the middle of this neighborhood there was a large bus stop full of people. This is where we decided to stop. In was North, past a river. It was a bus stop, full of people. Now, would there be Christians there in need of encouragement?
The Bus Stop
As we walked over to the bus stop a friendly man caught sight of us and invited us to sit down and talk with him. He explained that the bus stop was the neighborhood hang out place. People would gather there every night to catch up with neighbors and buy the news paper. It was a good place to meet people. Perfect! It seemed like just the place we needed to be!
We sat down and chatted with this man for a little while. He’s a Buddhist, and upon finding out that we’re Christians, quickly warned us not to talk to Muslims about religion – evangelizing to Muslims is illegal here!
As we talked with this man I was silently praying that God would bring to this bus stop whatever people He wanted us to talk to that night. At 8:00 the man told us good night and headed off to his apartment. After he left my friends and I decided to go see if we could pray for the man selling news papers, he was sitting at a table at the other end of the bus stop. We’d noticed earlier that he was limping. As we moved his way however, his stand was flooded with customers. So we took a seat on a nearby bench, and started to talk with a group of older ladies. The fact that we were Christians had already spread throughout the bus stop, so one of the ladies wasted no time telling us that she too was a follower of Jesus. We sat with this lady and the others for a while and just listened to their stories, encouraging them as we could. Time was their love language, just spending time with them, listening and engaging in conversation was the best way we could show them the love of Jesus.
After a while a woman with a tracheostomy mentioned that she was in a lot of pain. Her neck really hurt all around her breathing tube. We offered to pray for her and she agreed. So my friends and I gathered around her, laid our hands on her shoulders, and prayed that she would be healed, that the pain would be taken away.
God answered!! Immediately after we prayed the pain left this woman’s body! She had a huge smile on her face and started declaring to everyone gathered in that bus station that Jesus had healed her! God had answered our prayers and taken away her pain! What a testimony to God’s love!
Upon hearing this, another woman told us she wasn’t sure if she was a Christian, but she did enjoy going to different churches and singing worship songs. Our Malaysian friend asked her what her favorite song was, and then the two started singing together. For the next half hour the bus stop was full of praise to God as the two sang song after song glorifying Jesus. My team leader and I smiled and clapped along, despite the fact we didn’t know any of the songs, as they were all in either Malay or Mandarin.
After the impromptu worship session, the woman told us the one thing which held her back from declaring herself a christian was this: She didn’t feel the presence of God in her daily life. So we prayed that God would make Himself very real to her, and that her relationship with Him would grow.
Then we prayed for another woman before once again making our way to the news paper man.
This time time he wasn’t busy so we were able to talk to him. He quickly told us he was a Christian too, and it was incredibly encouraging to witness the bus stop filled with praise for Jesus!
Yes indeed, everything God told us at the beginning of the evening had come to fruition! We went North, past a river, found a bus stop, and encouraged God’s people there. When we chose to go out and minister to people that evening we didn’t know where we would go or what we would do, but God led us exactly where we needed to be!
