A few days of our ministry this past week were focused around “slum ministry.” This is a time where we are sent out in teams to the most poverty-stricken areas in the city better known to the nationals as the slums. Our mission was to go out, see the school, visit the families, and play with the children. My first day out, we prayed over the school and a few of the people and spent a lot of time playing with the children.
After our time there was done, we went back home and I began to process through the day. I kept asking the Lord to show me more. I wanted to see Him in a place that was so deprived. I knew He was there, but I couldn’t see Him. I began that night praying over our next day when we would be going into another area. I asked the Lord to make himself more real to me than ever before in that place.
Ask and you shall receive.
The next morning my team went out and once we arrived we prayed over the school and separated into two smaller groups. The larger of the two went to spend time with the children, while my team of five went to visit the houses and families.
As we began walking down the narrow path paved with garbage we saw the half clothed and naked children running alongside one another. My group tried to squeeze by a woman walking with two children in front of her. Two little boys. One running along in his tattered clothing and the other directly in front of his mother. Before I could pass by her, the child directly in front of me began yelling. I stood right in front of that little boy as he was shoved to the ground, receiving one blow after another to the head by his mother. I stood frozen unable to do anything. I couldn’t help. I couldn’t ask her to stop. I couldn’t move around. I just stood. A few seconds felt like hours, and I watched other members of my team that had already passed her unaware and walking ahead on the path in their own conversations.
Finally, the mother picked up the child and shoved past me and my friend that unfortunately got caught in the cross hairs also. We began silently walking towards the rest of our group down the path that had seemingly gotten ever darker within seconds. I only made it around one corner before I stopped and turned to my friend walking behind me. My mind was consumed with a million angry questions directed right to the Lord; both of our faces flooded with tears. I couldn’t get any other words out of my mouth to her other than, “We just need to pray before we go any farther.” We began praying together over what we witnessed, but even more so I began asking the Lord all the questions that had been consuming me.
Why? I asked you to show me where you are in this place and all I see is poverty and despair. How can I claim that you are Lord of this place and this is a place of your dwelling when that is all I can see? Where are you here? I need to see you move.
It was in that moment that He began speaking to me. Right there in the middle of the crossway between two trash filled walkways he told me that He needed to be invited in. This wasn’t a place of his dwelling. He wants to be welcomed and His presence ushered in. We were called to that place to bring His presence in. The last thing I prayed over my friend and I was that we would be at peace knowing that we will see Him move today.
We pulled ourselves together and began walking to catch up with the three others from our group. Once we did, we were all invited into a home of a woman that said she was a Christian. Her home consisted of four cement walls with no light. It was probably half the size of a standard bedroom in a modern American home. The bed took up the majority of the room, but there was a small walkway in between the bed and the shelves on the wall.
After we came in and sat down, we began asking her if there was anything that she wanted prayer for. She told us that she had been having very demonic dreams and that she wanted us to pray for her, so we did. We began praying over this woman and her entire house. Before we could even finish praying, our translator told us that she is wanted prayer for her husband that is blind. She called for her husband to come into the house and he sat in a small chair in front of the bed that we sat on. We asked him what happened to his sight or if he has always been blind. He told us that it began in his left eye, and now he can’t see out of either. The doctors wanted to do surgery, but they can’t. (I am still unsure of if that was because the doctors couldn’t, or if it was because they couldn’t afford it.)
We began praying and interceding on his behalf. The Spirit began to move so heavily in that place that we were consumed. We began to worship over their house and invited him to come and move in this family. We asked the man to test his vision, to open his eyes and tell us if he could see anything at all. He said no, but we all knew that the Lord wasn’t done yet.
Our faith only grew when it should have been dissolved. I felt the Lord nudging me into an uncomfortable direction. He showed me a vision of washing this man’s eyes as we prayed over him. At the risk of sounding crazy I shared with the group what I felt like the Lord wanted us to do. Without question, the girls handed me some water and we prayed over it together; that the Lord would do a miraculous work through our works of faith. We all began praying over the man again, this time as I washed his eyes. I began asking the Lord to not only restore his physical sight, but his spiritual sight as well. We continued praying over him until I felt a release from the Lord.
We asked again, for him to test his vision. It began small. He squinted through small eyes as if the light coming in from the door was too much. He began telling us the colors of our shirts that we were wearing. He could tell us how many fingers the two of us closest to him were holding up. It was a very blurry sight he said, but he could see, more so out of one eye than the other.
My friends began to encourage him by explaining that we don’t serve a halfway kind of God. He is a God of full restoration. We still felt like we weren’t done there yet and we wanted to pray over him one more time. This time we asked his wife to come and pray over him while we prayed over their family.
We began praising the Lord for what he had done in that house and praising him for even more that He is going to bring to their family after we were gone and no longer there. We prayed a blessing over their house and over their daughter before leaving them.
After that family, we met two others that wanted us to pray over them. We prayed against the spirit of addictions, oppressions, poverty, depression and so much more before we were through.
The Lord showed me His presence in that place in a mighty way. I asked for him to show me more, and he did just that. I serve a powerful God that heals and preforms miracles, but that’s not why I serve him. Some say the miracle of this story is a blind man’s sight being restored…I say it’s that he is alive and moving through the darkest of places. Even when we don’t see him, all we need to do is invite Him in and watch Him work.
I want to encourage everyone reading to ask the Lord what part of your life you haven’t invited him into yet. What part have you shut him out of because you have been fearful of what will happen? I then challenge you to just invite him into that place and watch Him work.
All for now friends.
My prayer for now is that all reading will see the true miracle of this story, that God is at work. I pray that each of you are encouraged by this story to search out your own hearts to see where you should be inviting the Lord to work in your life. He is a God that loves the big prayers just as much as the small prayers. Continue praying over this family and that entire area of people I got to meet that day. Pray that the Lord shows them that it is His works, not ours that bring restoration.
Check out this story from my teammates perspective also:
http://teaganmacknight.theworldrace.org/post/the-blind-can-see
http://bresteele.theworldrace.org/post/i-found-heaven-in-the-slums-of-nepal
