In Ephesians 3:20 the Word of The Lord says that God can do immeasurably more than we could ever ask for or imagine, according to the power of the Holy Spirit that is at work within us.
Well this is a story about God working in my life in a way that I could never have imagined…
The Story of Meeting Heidi Baker:
It all started back while I was still in Guatemala about two months ago. One day while I was on facebook, I got a message from Heidi Baker. I could not believe it! The message was a very prophetic message that seemed to be right inline of what God was doing and speaking into my life. After reading the message and being in awe of just receiving this message, two thoughts came to mind. One being this must be a divine message that The Lord put on Heidi’s heart to write to me or two being that this isn’t the real Heidi Baker.
So I wrote back to her and the first thing I said to her was, “is this the real Heidi Baker lol.” I honestly wasn’t sure if it was her or not. For those of you reading this who have no idea who Heidi Baker is, here is a description of the amazing ministry that her and her husband have in Mozambique, Africa – https://www.irisglobal.org/about
Heidi has been described as being a woman who is truly after God’s own heart. She is a minister of the gospel, a missionary, a mother to many orphans, a prophet who follows and listens to God in whatever he says, and most of all a Daughter of the King of Kings who has given her entire life for the true love of Jesus Christ. Heidi is blessed to have invitations to speak all over the world but spends most of her time ministering to the people of Africa who live in the poorest parts of the country within the bush of Mozambique. Heidi has been described by many people as a now a day Mother Theresa. I say all of this to describe how much I was in awe when I got these facebook messages from Heidi. This also meant so much to me because if I could pick one person in the entire world to meet, above all the NFL players and sports icons in the world, I would pick Heidi Baker. Next to Jesus, she is my hero and someone that I look up to, respect, and admire so much. I don’t look up to her and respect her for what she has done (well I do), but I most of all look up to her, respect her, and admire her for the way that she loves Jesus. The Spirit, power, intimacy, and love that she walks in and has for Christ is what I hope and pray that I can have one day as well. She is truly a woman after God’s own heart and that is what I admire and respect about her the most!
So after getting a couple of facebook messages from her that were spot on every time with what I was going through. I clicked on her facebook page and saw that she was going to be speaking in Guatemala. I was bummed because it was just after I was going to be leaving Guatemala. But then I noticed that she was going to be speaking in Orlando, Florida. As I looked at the description of the conference, I truly felt the Spirit of God saying to me that He was inviting me to go to this conference. As I felt God’s Spirit prompt me to go, I was nervous and scared. But I felt like the main reason he was calling me to go was because he had a divine connection for me there to meet Heidi Baker. I said to God, “How am I going to be able to afford this and where am I going to stay.” But The Lord gracefully and lovingly just told me to trust in him and that He would provide for me one step at a time as I walked in faith and trusted in him. So in my heart I said “Yes.” I said okay God, if you are calling me to this I will go – no matter what the cost is, I will trust in you.
So after I decided to go to the conference, God put it on my heart to write an email to this awesome Vineyard Pastor named Happy Leman to invite him to come to the conference as well. As I wrote to him telling him about the conference and how I believe The Lord wanted him to attend it, he wrote back to me explaining that he was already planning on coming to it! I was blown away by this. Then God even amazed me more. He worked through this pastor and his church to bless me to stay with two guys from their staff in their hotel room which was located right within the conference center itself. I could not believe it, I thought I was going to have to sleep in my car or get a cheaper hotel farther away from the conference. Lets just say that this hotel was amazing and way out of my price range. God continued to amaze me with his goodness. I then felt in my Spirit that God not only had a divine connection for me with Heidi, but also with the four pastors from the Vineyard that I got to stay with and spend time with. God continued to bless me through out the week with divine appointments and with new friends who have now became family to me. A group of new friends from Alabama, especially a friend named Bob felt God calling him to pay for every single meal of mine during the week. Then one of his friends named James blessed me with 100 dollars before leaving the conference. The entire week God blessed me so much with amazing relationships and favor that I could not fathom.
It was now Thursday a day before the conference was over though and I still had not met or been connected with Heidi. I wanted to be very careful and discerning in this matter. As much and I hoped and prayed to meet her, I did not want to orchestrate it by myself. I only truly wanted to meet her if this was a divine relationship and connection that God had ordained for me to have. So I was very careful to wait on his timing and only move when and if he was calling me to move.
Heidi and her husband Rolland had an outbreak session on Wednesday the day before. This was the day that I thought I would meet them. But after the session people flooded them for prayer. As I watched from a distance I had a sense that this was not my time. So I went into the back of the room by myself and sat on a chair to wait until all of the people left so I could hopefully talk to Heidi and ask her if it truly was her who sent me those facebook messages. In my heart I really believed that it had to be her because of how divine the timing of the messages were into my life. For an example, one time while I was still in Guatemala I was in worship with the rest of my teammates and I was feeling so much anxiety and worry about coming back home to the states. Through this time God just kept speaking to me, “peace Ryan, peace. I am your peace that is within you, peace.” I remember getting this sense from God in my heart that I was gonna go on facebook after worship and have a message from Heidi. So after an hour or two later, I went on facebook and I did have a message from Heidi and it said one word…”Peace.” Once again, I could not believe it – it was the exact word that God was speaking to me in my heart during worship. How would she have known to write that to me? So this is why deep in my heart as I waited in that room to hopefully meet her and her husband Rolland, I knew deep within me that it had to have been her that wrote those messages to me.
Well as I continued to wait in the back of the room by myself, I closed my eyes and started praying. The Lord met me in a very peaceful way that I was so thankful for, but when I got done praying and opened my eyes – Heidi was gone. So I was so thankful for the prayer time with The Lord, but I missed out on meeting Heidi and the chances of meeting her was becoming slimmer and slimmer.
So now it was back to the second last day of the conference. Once again, I prayed and hoped in God to connect me with Heidi if it truly was his Divine Will to connect us. If we never met, then I was okay with that and I knew it was not his will. So after I truly let go of the expectation and hope of meeting her within my heart and truly surrendered that longing to The Lord, My Father in heaven gave me so much peace. I truly found contentment and peace with whatever would happen.
God’s timing is so amazing….because once I truly surrendered the hope of meeting Heidi to my Father, he truly amazed me with doing only what he could do. After many divine appointments through meeting a special friend named Erica, she then invited me to have lunch with her and Bill Johnson with the hope of finding Heidi in the green room where all of the speakers ate lunch at. After getting to talk to Bill’s assistant about how I felt God calling me there to the conference to meet Heidi he then introduced me to Heidi’s assistant named Alicia. Alicia’s kindness and loving heart was able to direct me to help me find Heidi. So after lunch I went to a certain meeting thinking to myself, “this is it, I’m really going to get to meet her.!” But as I was in the outbreak session listening to the speaker talking, I looked around and could not find Heidi or Alicia anywhere. Once again doubt crept in, and once again when I thought I was going to meet her, I didn’t…
So then the outbreak session finished and I went to the last outbreak session of the day and got to listen to an amazing man of God named “Will Hart.” After Will’s talk he invited people to go in the back of the room to receive prayer. So I went into the back of the room and I got prayer from Will, I actually got prayer from him twice. There were many people there and he quickly prayed for me and then moved onto the next person. To be honest, I didn’t really feel much and was pretty disappointed. I went and sat down and started processing with The Lord. I said, “Lord why is everyone else experiencing you in such powerful ways, but why am I not? Do I not have enough faith? ” As I processed this with Him, I just kept getting a sense that He was telling me to wait and trust in Him.
Shortly after praying this I noticed a small group of people in the front of the room. There was a small group of people sitting on the floor and standing around a person. As I got closer and looked to see who it was, I couldn’t believe it, but it was Heidi Baker! Heidi was sitting there holding different babies while praying over them with God’s love. I stood back from the people and watched for the next two hours as she prayed for different people and how they felt God’s presence and love in such a pure and peaceful way. Heidi’s assistant Alicia kept looking at me encouraging me to come closer so I could talk with Heidi. But I kept feeling the Spirit of God saying, “wait.” At different points while I was waiting, I admit it was frustrating because it was so difficult to get to her. People wanted to see her and talk to her so much that they would sometimes walk in front of you and do whatever they could to meet her. But I kept being reminded that our God is a gentlemen and that I needed to wait and even sometimes take myself out of position to meet her to put children and mothers in front of me so that they could meet and have the chance to talk to her first. So as I waited about 2 hours, then Heidi started to walk out of the room to leave to go to her next meeting. The fear came in me once again and doubt crept back in saying that I was going to miss the chance to meet and talk to her once again. The temptation of me forcing myself past other people to talk to her tempted me, but the peace and patience of God kept prompting me to wait for His timing. So I waited and patiently walked behind her with about 20 other people following her out of the room. People continued to talk with her and Heidi always stopped for the one to pray and acknowledge them. There was a couple of times I thought that it was my turn but then someone stepped in front of me again and I don’t even think Heidi knew that I was there. Then when I least expected it, the miraculous happened!
We walked through a glass doorway in the hallway walking towards the elevator and suddenly I heard God say “engage, it’s game time, go.” So I stepped out in faith and put my hand on Heidi and said, “Heidi, do you know me by any chance?” She looked at me and smiled while looking at my name tag and said, “well of course, your Ryan Otto!” She then hugged me and started praying over me and kept telling me that God has given me such a pure heart. She kept repeating the word, pure heart, pure heart, pure heart! Let me just stop here real quick to explain how meaningful this was to me. Heidi didn’t really know me yet, she knew my name because she looked at my name tag. But she kept saying something over me that I prayed for myself for almost every day. If you were to ask me what the one thing that I pray for the most for myself was I would say, “A Pure Heart!” I try to pray every day that God would give me a pure heart where I would always truly love him and be faithful to him with all of my heart and life. So as Heidi repeated this over me, I was amazed at how God was using her to speak the exact thing that I prayed for the most into my life!
I then told Heidi that the whole reason I came to this conference was because I got messages from her on facebook that God had really used to speak into my life while I was in Guatemala. She so gracefully apologized saying that she did not write people personal messages on facebook and that those messages must of been a scam coming from a fake account. She then asked me if they asked for money from me? I told her that they didn’t and surprisingly enough that the messages were always right on with what I was going through and that the messages really helped me a lot. Heidi said “Wow, God used a fake Heidi Baker to lead you to the real Heidi Baker!” As we walked and talked I was blown away at the attention and love that Heidi was giving to me in the midst of so many other people being around her. She suddenly stopped and looked at me in the eye and then bent down to get something from her purse. She took a card out of her purse and wrote her personal cell phone number on the card and looked me in the eye and said to me, “Ryan this is a divine connection, text me and I will write you back. God had us meet for a reason!” She then put a folded amount of money into my hand and told me to now go and buy some food for myself! I was once again in complete awe and amazement of everything that God was doing!
Just to put this in perspective for you. Imagine the one person in the entire world that you longed and hoped to meet doing this for you. Maybe it’s the president of the United States for you, or a great football player or basketball player, or an actor or a singer. I mean this when I say this, out of all those potential people, the one person who I would choose to meet in the entire world besides Jesus himself, would be Heidi and Rolland Baker. I was in awe that God told her to give me her number and that she too felt that we were supposed to meet for a divine reason and purpose. Heidi is a normal person, but a special woman of God that hears and knows God in a very special, pure, and intimate way. Like I said before – she always does what God invites her and calls her to do. I believe that Heidi listens and obeys God like this not because she has to, but she obeys him out of love because she wants to!
So we then were approaching the elevator, she hugged me again and said to keep in touch with her. As she got into the elevator and many other people jumped in and continued to follow her, I felt like God suddenly speak to me and prompt me to give Heidi my shield of faith necklace. Any of you reading this that really know me, knows how special these necklaces are to me and how powerfully God has worked through these necklaces in my and other people’s lives. I usually give many away when God prompts me too, but I didn’t want to give this one away at first. It was a special one for me that I was wearing and i told myself that I wasn’t going to give this one away. But God spoke and I listened and obeyed out of love for him! So I jumped into the elevator at the last second and told Heidi that I had something to give to her. As I tried to get the necklace off my hands were shaking out of amazement of everything that was happening. As the elevator opened and we all began to walk off, I gave her the necklace and told her that God wanted her to have it to help her always know that He was with her wherever she goes. The necklace is a shield of faith with the Bible verse Joshua 1:9 on the back of it that says, “Be strong and courageous, do not be terrified of discouraged, for The Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” As I gave Heidi the necklace I told her that I know she already knows God is with her wherever she goes, but I believe God will use this necklace in powerful ways to help remind her that she is never alone whenever she goes through hard times.
She then looked at me and hugged me again with a mothers love. Then the amazing happened! As she hugged me, I felt like I was hugging my Mother and this love deep within me shot out like a pipe full of water bursting from within the heart and core of my being. I started sobbing from the core of my being, from a place deep within me. I’m even getting choked up now as I type this. As Heidi hugged me all these emotions hit me from the past two years of traveling to 11 countries in 11 months, then from leaving my friends and family once again in Ohio and moving to Georgia for 5 months, and then leaving Georgia to move to Guatemala for 6 months. I felt so tired, so weary, and so burned out from the past two years of the adventures and missions that God had called me to. But as Heidi held me and prayed for me, I felt my Father’s and Savior’s love touching me in such a deep, pure, and intimate way. I felt God’s love in a way that made me feel like I was a little boy resting in my Father’s arms. I couldn’t believe what was happening. It felt like I was hugging Jesus himself. (Now I only say this to say, I’m not making Heidi an idol and don’t think she is Jesus, but I felt the presence, life, Spirit, and love of God through her in such a powerful, true, peaceful, and loving way that it made me feel like I was truly hugging Jesus himself.) As I sat there and rested in Jesus’ arms through Heidi hugging me, I finally felt for the first time in a long time, that I was finally home!
I then suddenly fell down because I felt the love of God in such powerful way that I fell to me knees crying and sobbing (a happy and thankful cry) to The Lord thanking him for his love and goodness. The only thing that kept coming out of my mouth was, “thank you Lord, thank you Father, thank you so much God.” Some of the other people around me also fell down and Heidi kept praying for me saying that I have a pure heart and have been called by God and that God knows me and loves me! I was amazed again at how she kept saying pure heart because that is the one thing that I pray for the most to have!
She then said that she needed to go to her next meeting but said, “Yay for God for making divine connections, and for using a fake Heidi Baker to lead you to the real Heidi Baker.” She then told me to text her and that the real Heidi Baker would respond!!!
I sat there in the middle of this hallway for another half an hour in a fetal position crying and just resting in my Father’s love. I then opened my eyes and about 4 or 5 of the people who were following Heidi stayed with me and continued to pray over me. We then began to laugh hysterically with the joy and love of The Lord for what He did and how strong his presence was with all of us!
I even joked around with people who walked past me looking at me saying, “Yup I used to look at people like me and thought they were crazy too, but now I’m a believer…I JUMPED IN THE RIVER BABY!!!!.”
For the first time in a long time I was free and I didn’t care what others thought about me. I was free in my Father’s love as His Son!!!
So I share this testimony not to put any glory on me, but to give all the glory onto my Father! Whatever your dreams are that are truly from him….know that He is faithful to complete the work that He has started in your life. God is love and all love comes from him! The love that your dog or cat has for you believe it or not comes from God, the love that your grandparents, parents, family, and friends have for you comes from God. The love that your spouse has for you comes from God and God is able to connect us to the people that He wants us to be connected with. It says in the Bible that God puts the lonely in families. When I was hugging Heidi it felt like I was hugging a spiritual Mom that I was created and designed to know and have within my life….I cant really explain it. But it gives me hope that God will do the same thing in connecting me with one of his daughters that He chooses to bless me with one day to become my wife, best friend, and in who I will be blessed to have to spend my life with. Meeting Heidi in the divine way that I did reminded me of the true hope that with God truly all things are possible and that he can connect us with anyone that He wants to bring into our lives to help us shape us and mold us to live the life and be the people that God has created all of us to live and to be. Whether it’s a spiritual mother figure like Heidi, a mentor, a friend, a pastor, or even a child….God will not forsake us nor leave us, He will connect us with who He wants us to know and be connected with!
I might not be married, I might not have a lot of money, I might not live near my family or have seen them in a long time….but one thing that God has blessed me with wherever I go that I am truly so blessed and amazed with are….friends….friends who are from him who are now brothers and sisters in Christ to me. God has blessed me with mentors and spiritual mothers and fathers who continually remind me that I’m not alone and that God is for me and with me wherever I go.
I say all of this to say…the same God that lives in me and is for me….also lives in you and is for you! You are his child and He loves you….Let the wind be a reminder of His presence in your life, the sun light be a reminder of his light in your life, the love of others whether it’s a pet, a friend, a family member, a spouse, or a child, let their love for you remind you of the love that your Father and Savior in heaven has for you in your life…and no matter what happens always remember that
With God ALL THINGS ARE TRULY POSSIBLE
and that He is with you….
Thanks for reading everyone and once again…know that no matter what your going through and where ever you are in this life….that you are never alone…you have a Father and Savior that loves you and that is always there for you….even when you can’t see it or realize it…HE IS ALWAYS THERE…
YOU ARE NOT ALONE!
“I will not leave you as orphans,
I will come to you and live within you.”
– John 14:18
If you want to learn more about Heidi Baker and her life – please visit her website and check out one of her books called “Compelled by Love: How to change the world by the simple power of love in action.
Thank you and God Bless you all!
ps – I am being blessing to travel around to see family and friends that I have not seen for a long time. I am in the process of praying through different options that God has blessed me to have about what’s the next step in life are for me. But now God has really stirred something within my heart that I am praying through and hoping for….so who knows, I now might be going to Mozambique! I’m praying for discernment and for God’s will that he would continue to open the doors for me that only He can!
Thank you so much for all of your encouragement, support, and prayers…
Here is a song that I have been listening to on repeat that The Lord has been speaking through and blessing me with so much in this season of transition and unknown within my life…
If you can afford it, this whole cd is called “You make be Brave.” It’s so powerful and anointed. It’s my favorite cd right now that I have been listening to a lot for the past three months. It’s by Bethel Music and is available on itunes. God has been using it and helping me so much through it! If you can, please buy it, I know you will be blessed by it!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/you-make-me-brave-live/id862593658
