Can Prayer Wake Up Someone from a Coma? YES.

I felt somewhat foolish trying to pray for someone who fell into a coma, until God heard our prayers and woke him up.  I’ve learned my lesson.  Don’t ever EVER underestimate the power of prayer.  Our God is the God of the impossible.

About a month ago there was an alleycat fixed gear bicycle race here in Los Angeles that some friends of mine were racing in.  Towards the end of the race, a participant named Jimmy was near the front of the pack, racing down a hill, when he wasn’t able to slow himself in time (a lot of fixie guys ride brakeless - it’s a macho thing).  As he sped down the hill he turned onto a road right in front a big truck that wasn’t able to slow itself.  My friend Zoe, who was ahead of Jimmy in the race, said he heard a “huge crashing sound” and that it “sounded like a car accident” of two cars colliding with one another.  Zoe didn’t know much about what happened to the kid afterward, but from what Zoe heard, the guy’s back and both legs were broken when the truck literally ran him over in the middle of the street.

Zoe first told me about the accident a few days after the race, when my roommate Ezra and I were riding together with the Westside Spokemen (a fixed gear cru) on a Tuesday night.  My heart immediately sank for the guy (whose name we didn’t know at the time), but more than grief I was immediately filled with conviction.  Conviction that I was supposed to pray for this guy for some reason I couldn’t really put my finger on.  As we rode across the city that night, I couldn’t get this guy and what had happened to him out of my mind…[click “Read More” below to continue]

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Mustard Seed Faith

“…I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”  Matthew 17:20 (NIV)

Do we believe, truly, that through our faith we can be healed as Jesus taught the disciples?  Our friend Peter shares a story about his growing mustard seed faith:

I’ve had many direct answered prayers lately and I’ve re-confirmed that God DOES answer, and effectively in Christ’s name. The one that stood out to me very recently was God healing my mother’s possible tumor growth. A couple weeks ago, my mom asked me to take her to the hospital for a check up, but she didn’t specify what it was for at the time. I know she was trying to be a considerate mom and not let me worry, but the fact she couldn’t tell me at first made me worry even more.

I started to pray soon after that, but in order to make sure my mom would be okay, I wanted the reinforcement of others’ prayers for her as well. So on a Sunday, two days before I was supposed to take my mom to the hospital, our pastor Jaeson asked our bible study members if there was any pressing issue to pray for. I asked that my mother’s mysterious condition would be healed whatever it could have been. My friend Caleb offered to pray for my mom and I remember that his exact words were “I pray that Peter’s mom says ‘Everything is okay. I’m fine.’”

Two days later, when I went back to pick up my mom from her check up, it was the doctor who said the same words that Caleb had used in his prayer. “She’s okay. She’s fine.” I tripped out on the Holy Spirit and thanked God.  Our prayers had been answered, and even in the same words that we had asked for it.

- Peter

God Told Me Someone Was Pregnant

During a recent GBS bible study on Joshua chapter 5, I learned how God used praise and worship to break down the mighty walls of Jericho and give the promised land to the Israelites.  For so long the Israelites wandered in the desert because they just didn’t quite understand who God was.  For if they knew they wouldn’t have been disobedient to his commandments.  They whined and complained the land was impossible to conquer because they were staring at the distractions around them and not the great and powerful God who stood before them.

A while back, I was singing my heart out during praise and worship because our church was making preparation to enter into 42 days of prayer for revival.  As I immersed myself into the goodness of God, dancing and shouting out to him, the Holy Spirit put a nameless, pregnant, and single girl from our church on my heart to pray for.  I had this feeling she was there with me at church, keeping this secret to herself and unsure whether she was going to be able to keep the baby.  But I also sensed that God wanted her to know he would take care of her and the baby should she choose to keep it.  I really felt God’s love and genuine concern for her well being and how he wanted to make things better for her.  I got the impression she was confused and that she was experiencing tremendous grief, and how God did not want the burden of this situation to devastate her.  The words I got from God for her were “it’s not as bad as you think” because he was going to take care of both her and the baby should she trust him.

I told my friends Bonnie and Dan how I wanted prayer to find her and share all these things the Holy Spirit was revealing to me.  But Dan was wise enough to redirect my focus on praying for her well being and trusting God to use others to minister and care for her.  Perhaps my only role was simply to pray.  I need to be obedient and not cross boundaries by taking matters into my own hands.   I surrendered the situation to God and gave up on finding her.

A couple weeks later my boyfriend told me about a single girl who recently went public with her pregnancy.  I immediately was convicted by the spirit this was the girl God told me to pray for.  After praying and seeking the advice of friends I felt it was necessary to share this story with her.  She needed to know God’s side of the story, which is his undying love for her.  How God loves her so much he put her on a stranger’s heart to be prayed for.  She needed to know that as God was revealing the worries and guilt on her heart for me to pray for, he was also showing me the things on his heart: his perfect love that was free of guilt or shame.

So I emailed her and within a few hours she responded and shared how she was in awe of God’s amazing grace and love.  She said she felt guilt and shame, and it seemed like those things were preventing her from experiencing the intimacy of God’s love.  However, that barrier has been removed and she finally has a peace about this situation so that she can move pass the grief she’s been experiencing.

Her story is so important to me because of how important she is to God.  Her feelings of guilt and shame prevented her from truly knowing what was in God’s heart so those feelings pushed her away from him.  God knew that happened and he never left her nor did he stop loving her.  He chased her down and sent a messenger so that she would come back to him.  

Her story is also important for my church because we were once known as a “church without walls” (CWOW) but we’re all sinners so things happen and like this girl, we felt separated from God’s love.  A wall went up between us and God and each other.   As God was actively breaking down the walls that prevented this girl from receiving his love, I sensed he was also breaking down the walls of our church so that we would enter into all the good things he had planned and purposed for us (Jeremaiah 29:11).  God fights for us because he longs to love us (Isaiah 30:18).    As the power of praise and worship broke down the walls of Jericho, I ask you to join our church in prayer, praise and worship that will be held at the end of this month to help break down the walls of our church.

Please join in the revival effort for Newsong LA.  Please pray for us: http://42daysofprayer.wordpress.com/

What Do You Look Like in God’s Eyes?

We as people have a tendency to look at ourselves with the most critical, hurtful and hateful of lenses: our own eyes.  I started to realize this on my own road to growth and change, that the harshest critic of who I was, wasn’t any person I’d ever met, any disappointment or obstacle I’d faced in life, but was merely the voice inside my own head.  That familiar voice, that almost all of us face at times, says “You are not good enough.  You have not achieved enough.  You are not worthy to be loved.”

I was reminded of this today because I have a strong, gifted brother in Christ from my bible study that God has a real plan for, but who has doubts in who he really is, what he’s capable of, and what he’s called for.  God just showed him in a real and tangible way how much he is truly loved by a miraculous healing he experienced yesterday and then shared on Facebook.  I, personally, was wowed by his story, and was impressed at his faith that allowed him to be supernaturally healed.

J, as I’ll call him, had been suffering hearing loss in his left ear since December 2008.  He first lost his hearing back then for five weeks when he used the wrong kind of rubbing alcohol to try and clean his ears.  Over the next year, his hearing would come and go, but it was never quite right.  Because he couldn’t hear properly, he had lost the ability to sing, or hear himself correctly.

Yesterday, as we were studying the word in the afternoon, our pastor Jaeson prophesized that someone’s hearing would be restored at the worship gathering we were having in Korea Town that night… [click “Read More” below to continue]

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