Our last week of ministry in South Africa was a holiday for the schools so we weren’t able to do sports ministry, instead we were doing street evangelism! Each day we just asked The Lord to guide our steps, to bless and share the Gospel with whoever was willing to listen.
One particular day, we broke up into groups and as Tellus and I walked along the streets, we just prayed for The Lord to show us a person who needed to hear of the Fathers love. We noticed a woman who gave us a smile from a distance and felt that God was really leading us to talk with her. We walked over and introduced ourselves asking if there was anything that we could pray for. Her name was Nombe and she asked for us to pray for her to find a job. I smiled back at her and told her that of course we would pray for her to find a job, but we also had something even better we wanted to give her! She smiled and invited us into her home and Tellus began telling her of the Fathers love and about Jesus, the one who takes away the sin of the world. She then began to explain to us a little bit of how she used to believe in God and go to church but had left both of them due to various reasons. She had just lost both her mother and her mother-in-law in the last month and we could tell that this was still weighing very heavily on her. We talked with her for around an hour, trying to speak life into the situation. We then prayed for her and said that we would return the next day to come back to talk and pray with her. When we left, I could feel that the Holy Spirit was at work, so i just started praying that she would open up more the next day.
When we approached her the next day, a few of our other squad mates came along and immediately we could tell that she was still grieving deeply. As we spoke, she was a bit hesitant to open up, until all of the sudden she started tearing up and couldn’t speak. She finally got enough composure to blurt out that after we had left her daughter came home from school and at dinner she asked her, “Mom, why don’t you pray anymore…….you used to pray all the time?” Overwhelmed, she just started crying uncontrollably. We all got big smiles on our faces as we could all tell that the Lords hand was definitely on this situation and was moving. We dove deeper into her situation and explained that it was ok to grieve the loss of Loved ones and that even Jesus wept for the death of Loved ones and knew exactly how she felt. We spoke life and truth into her situation and by the end of our conversation she was convinced that The Lord was using us to draw her back to himself. She confessed that Jesus was Lord and that she wanted to live the life that God had planned for her. She then tried to fight back a smile, so we encouraged her that just as it was ok to grieve it was also ok to let out a smile. Finally she stopped holding it back and let out the biggest grin and I could sense so much joy released inside of her, it was the biggest grin I have seen in a while! We gave her a Bible and our contact Bradley exchanged information with her so that he could continue to help encourage her. The Holy Spirit worked in such a beautiful way, that I felt so privileged to be apart of this experience.
All of her hurts, pains, and circumstances had caused her to run away from and blame the only one that could ever redeem and bring life back to her broken situation. Too often we blame God for our mishaps and even sometimes, unknowingly run into the very hands of the one who has caused us all of this pain. God is waiting with open arms, as no heart is to hard or life to far away for Jesus to redeem.
God wants to use You, his child, to bring restoration and take back all the enemy has stolen!
Peace
