Today some fellow squad mates and I got to do something called Encounter with the people from Vineyard Church that we’re working with. I was really nervous and afraid because I’ve been pretty quiet and reserved these past months. I haven’t been the bold and outgoing person God’s been teaching me to be back in the states. So needless to say I’ve been really frustrated because I felt like I’ve taken more steps back than forward these past few months. But then God’s been showing me more and more that my boldness comes more from love for Him and others. So this morning I was really struggling with being bold and knowing that God may ask me to do things I had thought in my mind that I didn’t want to do but that my heart was dying to do. So I read the verse a friend gave me a few days ago from 2 Timothy 1:7, “for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”
As we prayed for God to show us things that would bring us to people to pray for or people themselves that needed prayer I would quote 2 Timothy 1:7 in the back of my head. There was a part of me that didn’t believe God would give me anything and a part that wished He would and another part that was afraid He would give something. Once we were through asking God to show us something we talked about if we got anything. Several people saw stuff but didn’t know if it was relevant or not. Tom (an older guy at church but a fairly new Christian) saw an older man shuffling (having a hard time walking) and I saw a clock. When I told them I saw a clock I felt a little silly because I didn’t know if was anything at all. But the guys we were with said that there were two clocks in the town and we’d go walk around there.
There were 7 of us total walking the streets so we decided to split up so we wouldn’t be too over whelming to the person we asked to pray for. So there ended up being four of us walking around the square and then we came across an older lady holding a bag with Canada written all over it. We stopped and talked to her, mainly Tom talked. Tom eventually asked Mary if we could pray for her. She then told us we could pray for her brother Jimmy who has Parkinson’s disease. After we prayed for her under the clock we walked off a tad and saw an older guy having difficulty walking shuffling about and going down a street. We caught up with him and chatted a bit and found out his name was Sammie and his sister Mary was visiting from Canada! So we ended up praying for him because he had a stroke and lost some of his mobility so he has difficulty walking so we prayed for healing. It was so cool to see God connect the dots there for us. Some people may say its coincidence and I even struggled a bit with it. But I believe and my heart tells me that it was definitely a fingerprint of God moment. Tom asked me to pray for the guy seeing how I hadn’t personally prayed for anybody yet. Once I was through praying for Sammie I just felt full and all the fear left. I was certain I had said the perfect words but I was certain that God knew what was needed and that’s what He heard from my heart.
