A few weeks ago my church did this thing we've done for the last 3 years now I believe, called As Yourself Night (inspired by Mark 12:31). It is where instead of having our normal church service at 6pm, we meet at the church, team up, pool our money together in a paper bag, and then go out into the community to bless people with the money the Lord has blessed us with. Some straight up CRAZY things have come from these nights… I have story after story I could share, and if you've read any of my blogs, you can probably tell that these nights have become incorporated into my everyday lifestyle because I have seen so much fruit from them and so much of the Holy Spirit doin' work in them. But I'm just gonna focus on telling you about what happend this last time…
Some people in my group wanted to go to the homeless. My immediate thought was "here we go…" because the Lord just seems to ALWAYS pull me toward the homeless. And whenever He does, ridiculous things always happen (see past 2 blogs if you would like some examples). I have learned a lot from my experiences with the homeless and one of the major things I have learned is that prayer and even a listening ear are FAR more powerful than any financial or material blessing I can give. So all I really wanted to do was go pray it up with some peeps, but I felt it was more important to sit back and see where the group was led than to really try and emphasize my own personal desire for the night.
As we were driving to Downtown Bloomington it started to rain. A lot. And we were like crap, this could make things a little more difficult for us, since we were planning on just walking around outside, looking for people. So we decided to go to one of the homeless shelters in town. We get there, parked, and stepped out of the car and the rain immediately stopped. Not a drop of rain hit me. It was crazy! So that just made it pretty clear that the Lord still wanted us to walk around. Our group of 6 decided to split up into 2 groups of 3 and half went into the homeless shelter to talk to the people and the other half of us went to walk around the neighborhoods in the area.
We walked down this street and there was a woman that was unloading groceries from her minivan with two young girls. I suggested to my friends that we should go up to her and give her a gift card we had. The guys seemed a little hesitant about it, but after I persisted they decided to go along with it. We went up to her and my friend explained who we were and what we were doing and she was very surprised but was not willing to take our gift we were offering. So that's when I asked her if we could just pray for her then. She responded with an enthusiastic yes! I asked her if there was anything specific and she went on to tell us specific prayer requests she had. We prayed with her in front of the two young girls, and when we finished we offered her the gift card one more time and she decided to take it. We also suggested that if she didn't need the money, she could always bless someone else she knows with it. It was an awesome opportunity to share the love and compassion and generosity of Christ.
We continued to walk around the neighborhoods aimlessly (but not really cuz the Spirit was leading) and came across a man that was sitting outside of an apartment complex in a wheelchair with breathing tubes. I immediately walked up to him and started chatting with him, then my two friends came up and we asked him to tell us about himself. We found out that he has been fighting cancer for the last year and this is not his first time having cancer. We of course asked if we could pray for him and he said yes. We prayed a lot of healing over him and when we finished we asked him if we could bless him at all financially. He said that the governement helps him out a lot and he was pretty happy about that.
Walking away from him I was feeling pretty amped that the Lord was giving us so much grace with these strangers. That 3 twenty year olds could approach some strangers, offer them money, and they would rather just get prayed over! Pretty stinkin legit if you ask me.
We continued to walk around and came across some girls that looked about our age that were standing out on their porch talking. We all felt like we needed to go up to them and the guys suggested I do the talking with these girls. So I explained to them who we were and what we were doing and their response was overwhelming! One woman, her name is Robyn, right away said "Stay here with them first, but when you're done with them come over to my house, I want you to pray over my children." So she walked away to her house and we stayed on the porch with these three other women.
Turns out there was some drama between Robyn and one of the other three woman's children. One of the woman's sons, who is only 6, earlier that day threw a water bottle full of rocks at Robyns son's face, knocking multiple teeth out of his mouth including breaking half of one of his two front teeth off. Robyn had just gotten back from the emergency room with her son and was over at the other women's house discussing the stituation when we walked up to them.
We started talking to the women about what they needed prayer for and one of the women, I'll call her "Tara", couldn't stop expressing how awesome it was that we were there at her door. She said that she just went to church for the first time in a long time that morning and that she was just praying that God would bring someone into her life to bless her. She said she put offering in the plate praying that God would bless her for giving some of what she had, and there we were, to bless her! We asked her what she needed prayer for and she came right out and said "my attitude!" Tara admitted that she has a terrible attitude and she wants that to change. The women wanted prayer for their finances, they said they were all really struggling financially, and they wanted prayer for their children. So Casey, Josh and I started praying. Casey and Josh really covered it all in their prayers and I just felt so much joy that God was bringing this all together so perfectly. He brought us to more people that just wanted one thing PRAYER. He brought us to people that really needed to meet us that day. He brought us to people that were receptive to what we were offering and had to share. Ahh He's just SO good! When it was my turn to pray, I wanted to specifically pray for one thing, Tara's attitude, I knew it would probably sound better coming from me than Casey or Josh, so I just decided to lay it down for her. I prayed that God would forgive her for her bad attitude and that God would guide her in the ways that He has for her. I prayed that she would reckognize that the root of her bad attitude is selfishness and that God would free her from her selfish thoughts and actions. I thanked God that she chose to be honest and transparent in front of us and I praised God that these three women wanted more than anything, for their children to be prayed for! How awesome! It was truly one of my favorite prayer moments I've ever had, that this random group of believers, from all walks of life somehow came together that very night and were in communion with our Lord and Savior. POWERFUL stuff!
When we finished praying, Tara was crying a lot and kept saying that God was doing something in her heart in that moment, she could feel Him. The presence of the Lord was truly upon us, it was amazing. We then asked for them to tell us more about their financial situation. Tara said that she couldn't pay one of her bills and was extremely stressed about it. So that's when Casey offered the rest of the money that we had left to them. He said that we had this money and it was not ours, it was from God and He wanted us to bless these women with it. Casey suggested that the three women could discuss what they wanted to put the money toward, but it could definitely cover that one bill. There were more tears and squeals of joy and many hugs, it was a wonderful moment.
It was then time to go over to Robyns place to pray for her and her children. Robyn definitely had a full house and we were so glad we had the opportunity to pray for Robyn and her children, specifically her son who was in a lot of pain from getting his teeth knocked out. She was stressed because she had to take him to Peoria (45 min away) to go see a doctor about his teeth and didn't know how much everything was going to cost. We also took the opportunity to invite Robyn to our church (we did the same with the other three women) and we told Robyn about our church's group for single mom's and also the Children's Church that is provided. She was very serious about coming to that. The prayer time was also very powerful and when we finished praying I looked up and Robyns smallest child had snuck out of his chair and into Caseys arms in the middle of the prayer – how cute is that!? 🙂
We left Robyns house just FULL of joy and praise at how perfectly God had orchestrated the night and how He had not only provided for all the people we encountered but He also provided for US! He gave us exactly what we prayed for that night. I felt especially blessed because truly ALL I wanted to do that night was pray, and that was literally all He had me do! 🙂
So Casey, Josh and I met back up with Brad, Brandon and Matt who had been off getting groceries for the homeless shelter and having conversations with some of the homeless people. They also went over to a gas station with their extra money they had hoping to buy gas for some people and literally NO ONE pulled into the gas station! Crazy huh? Or maybe just GOD knowing EXACTLY what He's doing! We all realized that they couldn't find anyone who needed gas because it was ROBYN who needed gas! That money they had left over, God specifically reserved so that once the six of us met back up, and we explained to them about our night and the people we encountered, we all realized we needed to go back to Robyn and give her the money. So that's exactly what we did. The six of us walked back over to Robyn's house, we introduced her to the rest of our friends, and they gave her the rest of the money suggesting that she could use it for her gas to Peoria. She was so thankful and excited and her kids were happy to see us again too 🙂
What gets even greater about the story is literally the NEXT morning Robyn called me about 3 times asking for my advice on certain situations and said that it was better than anyone else's advice she had gotten… Wanna know why? It's cuz I prayed for WISDOM and God to guide my words before I spoke with her! Haha, God ALWAYS provides! To top it ALL off, Casey has been meeting up with Robyn at our church Eastview, and while Robyn goes to the adult service, Casey takes the kids to Kidsview! Pretty amazing, pretty perfect, undeniably God.
I. Love. To. Pray.
