I Will Come Get You

The group practiced healing prayer.  Those praying over people would share words or images that came to mind about the person.  Sometimes what they shared meant something very personal to the prayee.  Other times what they had to share was generic.  Other times it was ambiguous and could apply to just about anything.  For example, they would tell a sad person they received the word “sad “when praying.  Or they would say, “I suspect there’s something heavy on your heart”.  Those answers, of course, didn’t require much discernment or seeking of the Holy Spirit to figure out since people typically came to healing prayer because their hearts were troubled.  However, I kept going in hopes I would get a specific and meaningful message from God.   I wanted so badly to have a divine meeting with Jesus.

I asked for group prayer to cure the feeling of sadness I’d been experiencing.  As they began praying I closed my eyes.  I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.  The images I saw in my head were normal images/visuals you would see whenever your mind wanders.  Perhaps it was because I was seating with my head down I saw an image of myself in the exact same position in the corner of a room.  I looked pretty sad.  When the group finished they all shared how they saw the word “depression”.  I was unimpressed with that answer as you had to be blind or insensitive not to notice how sad I looked.  As I was preparing to leave and write-off the ministry permanently one of the men in the group followed me and asked me how I was doing.      

“Are you okay?” he asked. 

“I told you I was feeling a little down,” I replied in an annoyed voice. 

“It’s just that I saw this image of you when I was praying” he said. 

I mockingly said to him, “oh really?  Did I look depressed?”

“Actually you did.  I’m just concerned because I saw you sitting with your head down in a corner room.  You look so sad,” he said. 

Immediately I was paralyzed with chills when he said “corner room”.  He went on to say how it made him feel bad for me because I looked so helpless.  He began describing what I was wearing, my facial expression, and specific details that matched exactly the image I saw when the group prayed over me.  I was dumbfounded and stood there for a few seconds staring at him.  I didn’t know what to say. 

I finally snapped out of my trance and thanked him for the prayer and started to turn away to leave.  He called out “listen, God cares deeply about you and I care about you too.  Please come back next week so I can check up on you.”  It was then that my heart began to register that God really loved me because he wanted me to know he saw how sad and broken I was, and that he wanted to do something about it by speaking through the man who prayed for me. 

A few months later I had another experience that changed my heart permanently.  I was having a conversation with a friend on the phone and I couldn’t help but space out as he was talking.  That day I was desperate in my heart for love and affirmation from God but I didn’t know how to ask or express it.  This need was so great that it made it impossible to listen to my friend talk.  I had to quickly hang up phone.  

I was frustrated because I had been crying out to God over the past year for some supernatural, life changing encounter that I hoped would help get me out of my miserable state.  Aside from my one experience at healing and deliverance prayer, I still haven’t had any other experiences that confirmed God’s love for me.  I remembered thinking to myself that if God was all powerful and can part the red sea why can’t he heal me.   I was in a miserable state I couldn’t get out of and all I really wanted God to do was come get me out of this awful place.  I remembered thinking “God, I wished you’d come get me.” 

A few seconds later the phone rang.  It was my friend and the first words out of his mouth were “I need to come get you.”  My friend said in a matter of fact tone that I got lost during the conversation, so to remedy the problem he needed to back track to where I was lost and look for me.  “That’s what I need to do.  I need to come get you.  Next time, I will come get you.”  He said it half a dozen times.  What amazed me was that I didn’t share anything about wanting love and affirmation from God.  The way that I ended the phone call and what we talked about didn’t require a that kind of followup phone call.  In fact, nothing warranted it.  It just happened out of the blue and because it happened that way I really believe it was God’s doing.  My heart finally opened up to God’s love because that experience confirmed to me God loved me and that he would come and rescue me.  Life was going to be different now.  I was no longer alone and trapped in this miserable situation because I knew in my heart God would come and take me out of those places.  He will come get me.  I finally got it.

My experience caused me to approach God more intimately and prayed more honestly and openly about the things that were weighing me down.   As those things were being released to God, my life transformed because God healed my past hurts.  I had a spiritual awakening and developed spiritual gifts like words of knowledge, prophetic words, and some healing abilities. I started to have dreams, visions, and powerful encounters that I didn’t even know were possible. 

My broken relationships with those I love were restored.  I finally came to experience what it was like to be a new creation in Jesus Christ because I became a different person.  I grew up experiencing anxiety on a daily basis because my parents fought a lot, but since my spiritual awakening I’ve had consistent peace and confidence.  Those things that once bothered me and at times paralyzed me with fear have become more manageable. And though challenges continue to erupt in my life to shake my faith, I’m able to persevere through because I more sensitive Jesus’ nearby presence during the hard times.  What’s even more amazing is that I’m occasionally used by God to pray over people and am given words and images to share with them to touch their lives. 

We are created to bond intimately with God.  God’s love is meant to be experienced personally in our lives.  If you never experienced his love in a personal way and would like to know it, then please begin to pray that God will reach out to you in a specific way so you will know that it’s him. When you know that God loves you, you begin to surrender more of yourself to him and the more of you God has the more he can reconcile and make whole.  God is love and he does all things through love.  And it’s from knowing and understanding this love that your life begins to be wonderfully transformed.

^“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

Open Thread: How Has God Protected You?

In the spirit of our friend Pastor Sam’s awesome testimony from earlier this week, we here at WitnessLA.org want to hear how you, our readers, have been protected by God in the past.  Please share any stories you have of divine intervention, near-death experiences, healing miracles or any other way God has protected you, your family, or your friends by submitting a comment below.  They can be grand or small.  We just look forward to reading your stories and for our community to be blessed by witnessing God’s hand on each of your lives!

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.  When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.”  (Isaiah 43:2, NIV)

Reading the Bible At Denny’s At 5AM

Have you ever felt like you should have died?  That if God hadn’t put you in the right place at the right time, or that if even the smallest detail had been different, something would have happened to you?  Our friend Pastor Sam shares an incredible story about how God protected a member of his church through the leading of the Holy Spirit and the intuition that he needed to be at Denny’s at 5 in the morning.

I am a pastor at a church in the San Fernando Valley.  Last year we began to realize that our community valued the word of God, but not really.  Not enough to actually read it.  We began to notice that our encounters with the Holy Spirit had an undeniable shallowness.  With that much of it became man-centered.  We were led to have a season where we established bible reading in our lives.  Not sporadically but chapter by chapter, book by book.  Not to read into it but to read
what’s contained in it.  It was hard work.  Many people were not enamored with the idea but the leaders felt that this was what God was leading us to do.  So people began to meet everyday online, in cafes, and through other ways to read the Scripture everyday and for prayer.
      
I was praying at the time that our community would really value God’s word.  I was led by the Lord to pray that the people would realize the gravity of His word in our lives.  A sister at the church started a group at 5 AM in the morning at a local Denny’s.  2-3 people were there every morning.  One of our brothers thought of going to the gathering everyday but always ended up hitting the snooze button on his alarm.  Then one morning he woke up at 5 AM and for some reason couldn’t go back to bed…[click “Read More” below to continue]

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God Planned Us To Be Friends

Have you ever felt like a friend or someone you met was literally a Godsend in your life?  Our friend Sarah Weichhand shares the amazing story of how two total strangers somehow crossed paths, became the closest of friends, and were ultimately able to bless each other’s lives, all according to God’s plan. 

I was standing in the coffee shop just ready to sit down at my already covered table when I saw her from across the room! I often stopped in coffee shops just to relax and spend time reading and talking with the Lord-pen and journal in hand. This particular time, just as I was about to sit down, I noticed this smiling girl with her arms full standing at the opposite end of the coffee shop. She was just brilliantly glowing with joy and smiling from the other side. Hmmm.

Something told me she was not just an ordinary girl. As I saw her there, I felt prompted by the Lord to invite her to my table. From across the room, I motioned her over, “Hey-do you want to come sit over here and talk with me?!!” I smiled to myself. (Stranger things have definitely occurred-but inviting a stranger for coffee, at the time, was a new one for me!)  As I motioned to this stranger, she came quickly over and introduced herself. She said her name was Nancy and I told her I felt strongly to invite her to sit with me. I had no idea why.

As we talked, I found out that we had SO MUCH in common! We talked for HOURS-realizing that this was no ordinary meeting, but a divinely orchestrated blessing from heaven.

As Nancy talked, I thought-this is incredible! What the Lord had put in our hearts for this generation, for hurting women, and for our own lives and ministries was almost exactly the same! We had many common experiences and even in our differences, we could somehow relate!

It turns out that months earlier Nancy had had a dream about a friend named Sarah (which happens to be my name) who was standing behind a table filled with delicious foods and was feeding her strawberries…[click “Read More” below to continue]

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When I Look at You, I See Sarah

A few weeks ago at our house church’s prayer meeting, a girl named R came for prayer because she had a tumor growing on her ovaries.  I remember as we asked her to sit in the center of the room for us to pray over her, she had this really uncomfortable look on her face, as if she was saying “yeah I’m not sure this is actually going to do anything, but I guess I’ll give it a shot.”  She didn’t seem to like talking about herself, but started to share how this wasn’t the first time she had a tumor on her ovaries, and that she had had tumors removed from that area before, and all the surgeries had left her with a lot of scar tissue inside.  Now that the tumor had grown back again, she didn’t know what to do.  She said she didn’t really know what to ask God for, but just wanted us to pray for her and this latest tumor.

Our Pastor Jaeson started asking her more questions to prepare to lead her, and the 30 or 40 of us there, in a prayer for her healing.  Jaeson asked for a volunteer to pray for R, and my friend Sarah W. volunteered to pray for her.  As Jaeson and Sarah W. were beginning to minister to her, I felt the Holy Spirit move me to say something to R, in front of the entire group.  No I really shouldn’t, I thought, reasoning with myself.  I’m not the leader here.  Jaeson and Sarah W. have all the experience with healing prayer.  Besides, I had just come in to the prayer meeting late about 30 minutes before this, and had interrupted everyone because I decided to ride my bike in, and had to literally lift it up over all the people in the room.  Accept your place, Dan, I remember telling myself.  Don’t think the world revolves around you and what you want to say. 

But I kept feeling that familiar nagging, like God wanted me to speak up.  Recently, I had gotten better at discerning God’s voice, particularly when it comes to prayer for other people.  Through all that God had been showing me, my new motto had become if God asks me to do something, do it.  So despite all the mental blockage I had in my mind, I decided to say what God had put on my heart for R…[click “Read More” below to continue]

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God Will Send You Reinforcements

Do you ever feel like you were meant to meet someone for some reason?  Maybe you both have something in your past that’s the same, or they have a unique way they can help you or a story that’s meant to encourage you, or they somehow speak to you directly to your heart.  This is the nature of our God - Love.  And he shows it through His people, sent to you with a purpose and mission for your life.  He desperately wants to reach you with His love, and he’ll never stop trying to help you and sending you “reinforcements.”  Our friend Dave shares a story about God working in this way.

I attend a Bible study on Sunday nights called GBS. During the Bible study, we break up into smaller groups where we have a chance to share with one another and pray for each other. One night in particular, Dan and I paired with a newcomer named Grace. And… it was pretty amazing!  The Holy Spirit was definitely there among us, even though we had never met her before.

Even though she was more or less a stranger, the three of us had a chance to really open our hearts with a sense of vulnerability and compassion. It was one of those moments where if we said our deepest darkest secrets, it would be ok. Everything would be ok. No one felt churchy. Everything just clicked because we felt like we weren’t alone in our spiritual walks. And I feel like those are moments I definitely cherish and friendships I want to keep.

When we started sharing with one another, the Holy Spirit was definitely convicting Dan and I for Grace. Grace was sharing about how there was so much she wanted to do for God, but she felt like she was always disappointing Him and not living life with the purpose she was meant for. I started to get the sense that there was something about her name that had a special meaning for her, and I shared that with her.  At the same time, Dan said “I’m not sure if this means anything to you, but I felt like God wanted me to say that your name is Grace, and you give grace to other people, but you need to give grace to yourself before you’ll be able to do all those things for Him that you’re supposed to do.” 

We were shocked at what happened next…[click “Read More” below to continue] 

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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/

A Call To Prayer

Our friend Karen shared a great testimony about praying for those in our workplace and how God has purposely placed us there to make a difference to those people:

God has really challenged me in my prayer life in the past 2 years. Working with children who are terminally ill, sometimes all I can do is pray. I am not a medical professional but I can intercede behind the scenes for the doctors, nurses, social workers, and patients. I often ask God why He lets these children get sick and why he chooses to let them die; I still don’t have an answer but I know that right now, He is calling me to be faithful by praying over what I see.  

One of the biggest joys at work is having the opportunity to share my faith with the doctors I work for. The good thing -and one of the only redeeming factors- about having to face the reality of death on a daily basis is that conversations about faith are very natural. Praise God that, because I’ve developed enough trust in the relationships I have with my doctors, I am able to say things about God without much awkwardness.   

With one doctor in particular, I felt God compelling me to write her a message when she lost a patient a year ago. I told her that this patient was extremely lucky to have her as a doctor, and that I was praying for her and for the patient’s family. I also indicated that I often pray for the doctors on our team. Surprisingly, she responded very kindly and was not offended at all.  

Yesterday, God gave me another opportunity to share His love with this doctor. She told me about a family member of hers who is battling cancer- the same kind of disease that we treat at our center. I asked her if I could keep her family in my prayers regularly and she responded with a very enthusiastic yes. She also shared that it is probably not a coincidence that she is an oncologist, since she has been able to help two family members deal with cancer. She said that she would like to thank God for that, if there is a God.   

 I am very thankful for the small ways in which God has allowed me to shared this joy of bringing about His kingdom. While I might not be the one to reap the fruits of my prayers, I am very privileged to be able to talk about God and prayer at my workplace. This is a very challenging environment to work in because of the severity of our patients’ sickness, but I cannot imagine working anywhere else for now.

Karen

Blessed Are the Pure in Heart

Anyone who has heard my testimony before knows that my life was a constant struggle with purity.  Instead of being like Joseph, who famously fled from sin, I fled towards it, my whole life, until basically a year ago.  If sin were like a time bomb, I would be the crazy one running towards the ticking dynamite while others ran for their lives in the other direction. 

Even though I had started going back to church about three years ago, other than being convicted to keep going and seeking after God, I hadn’t grown much in my first two years.  I used to wonder why that was, but looking back, I know that part of it was that I was still living by the world’s rules and the world’s standards during that time.  On Sunday, I would cry my eyes out in conviction during worship, but then the rest of the week I would be chasing the sins of the flesh.  God’s voice was still there at the time, but it was drowned out by all the white noise from the life I still chose to live.  I was straddling the line, one toe curiously dipped in God’s water, but the rest of me was still firmly planted in the world’s desires.  I was trying to serve two masters.

But what changed for me over the last 8 months or so is that I made a firm decision to give God the keys to my life.  When I was behind the wheel of my own life, I was a reckless driver.  I would speed aimlessly, have a horrific crash, shake myself off, then repeat, chasing spiritual death harder and faster each time.  Finally I reached a low enough of a low 8 months ago that I was fed up with all the destruction my own choices had wrought in my life.  Finally it occured to me that maybe I should stop driving and for once, give God’s free limo ride a shot.

What I wasn’t expecting was that by trying on a life of obedience, even cautiously and full of doubt as to what that could do for me, I was seeing God work and hearing His voice in a real way for the first time in my life.  I’ll share more of those stories in other posts, but once I tasted what it was like to see God really working before my eyes, answering prayers, working miracles in people’s lives, speaking to me, I never wanted to lose that again.

So as 2010 started, I was really convicted for purity.  During smallgroup one night, we were reading the beautitudes and one of Jesus’ lines struck me in the face and seared into my eyes like lightning.  “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”  Matthew 5:8.

This became my motto for 2010 as the new year started.  I couldn’t stand the thought of God “turning his face from me” like the psalmist once said, and more than anything else, I wanted to continue to see God work and hear His voice.  So I took the verse, wrote in on a sticky tab, stuck it on my desk and prayed on it every day in this New Year.  “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”  I would repeat that to myself all through the day, and I would use the verse as a sword when temptation would attack me.  I would say, “I am not going to listen to you, sin, because I want to be pure in heart so I can see God this year.”  And amazingly, God has given me the strength to overcome the temptations that used to haunt me like an addict.  Their voices dimmed as God’s voice got brighter.

In any case, Matthew 5:8 became my personal mantra in this New Year, what I saw as the over-arching theme to my growth in 2010.  I had shared with the guys in my small group how important this verse and purity was for me, but not many other people.  But what truly blows my mind is how God shows me encouragement, that this quest for purity is a change he wants to see me continue. 

Tonight I was sharing some discouragement about my life and career with my friend Bonnie, and she asked if she could pray over me.  As she was praying, for some reason she felt led to keep repeating about my “pure heart.”  Finally, as she was closing, she said “guard you heart Dan, for blessed are the pure in heart.”  When we opened our eyes, I was stunned.  I asked Bonnie if I had shared with her how this verse had become the central focus of my plan for 2010, a verse near and dear to my heart, that I looked at and prayed on each day, but she said I hadn’t.  It just came to her as she was praying for me.  It was truly the Holy Spirit in action.  We were seeing God.

As an awesome postscript to this story, yesterday, almost a month after I first posted this entry, my friend Rocky asked me if he could pray for me at bible study.  He hadn’t even asked me what was going on in my life, he just wanted to pray for me first.  As he was praying he said “God, give Dan a pure heart, because blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God.”  After he finished praying, I asked him “did you see my blog post on that verse?”  His response: “What post?”  I think God is making himself very clear right now, but more than an admonishment, I see it as gentle encouragement - finally his lost son is on the right path and He wants to see me continue.