Pues, the purpose of this post is to share the encouraging moments of yesterday. We met, prayed, worshiped and called out and listened to God together, and before we left this guy Justin shared this Psalm and encouragement idea. I'm actually unsure which Psalm it was. Possibly Psalm 59:8 which reads:
"But You O Lord laugh at them"
or it could have been Psalm 2:4:
"The One enthroned in heaven laughs"
Either one, they both work. Well, he encouraged us to share some of our fears, the lies from the enemy that we shouldn't believe, but do, so that we can laugh at them. Which sounded silly, but it was such a source of joy let me tell you! Well, Earlier in the night this guy Royce said, "I'm gonna jut make a big plea God, don't let us encounter any hard hearts. I pray that everyone be open that we talk to." I shared that when I individually tried to pray that, I had admitted personally to myself that I had such little faith. That I couldn't believe it; the past two weeks I was punted and completely rebuked. (It was in those times my mom encouraged me, with "The world will hate you, but it is not you they hate but [Christ in us]," very encouraging). So I shared that, and how I was praying that I couldn't imagine: out of all the people we will talk to, how can not one get ignored or hated? We all had a good laugh at that disbelief and set out.
I got a chance to see the Holy Spirit move in amazing ways, and He blessed me by allowing me to see my part in His plan that night! For a long time, Satan had me fooled into believing 'coincidences' or even that I don't even hear the Spirit. And other such nonsense. Anyway, the Spirit gave me a very clear picture of a man I mistook for a friend of mine, so I assumed it was him. Anyway, I get discouraged so easily and I had thought surely he must be at Fuddrucker's. When he wasn't there, I believed more of Satan's lies, that I made this up. But I just kept praying His mercy for my unbelief, and prayed faith to believe His promises.
So me and Royce go to Petco, cause he the Lord told him turtles, fishes/fish tank and...something else.....anyway I can't remember. We go there, and there he is. However not chris, but the guy that I saw in my head that looked exactly like Chris. He was the guy we were supposed to talk to!! And the movement of the Spirit inside me was something like Joy, I remember. I felt justified against all those lies then. I hold this to myself, and we see him again, of course, by the turtles and this is when I tell Royce. He agrees. So we look for him and, of course, he's elbow deep in a fish tank.
The talk was great, he knew about Christ, but not WHO he is, like personally, or about His perfect Love. The sweet part was we talked to him for like 10 minutes, and it was as if he was waiting for us to talk to him. As if our visit was what the Spirit used as a catalyst. I knew this, because after we prayed for him, when we were wrapping things up, I thought in my head 'now would be a good time to extend an invitation' but the Spirit told me "I have already taken care of that. You do not need to worry about Him" Like, I felt the Spirit assuring me that He was already there! And the questions he asked! (He literally asked me, "so what turned you to Him?" awesome!)
At the end of the night, after everyone shared their testimonies, of course of course of course, NO ONE encountered a hard heart. All the hearts were open! He heard our big prayer and regardless of my little faith in praying it, He answered! He wants us only to ask, that is how I believe we demonstrate our faith. We have such a good Father :)
On top of this, be assured that movements of who the Holy Spirit is, that He lives in us, and fascination and the pursuit of God on earth that resides within us is evident in other churches. That is my real note of encouragement. That I have heard of pockets of believers from Grace, Community Church, even Church of Christ who are interested in KNOWING and MANIFESTING and WALKING in this Spirit. And this is an encouragement to those pursuing or have yet to, to continue on. He is at work in you and others.
So, I really enjoyed reading about treasure hunting here, and then getting to listen to you talk about it at the painting party. It was really encouraging for me. you are neat :)
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