"'Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house. Test Me in this,' says the Lord Almighty, 'and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.'"
I'm giddy out of my mind right now. This week has been incredible, and it's still only Wednesday! On Saturday after G Day (UGA's spring pre-season football game), Michael (one of my Freshley small group leaders), Meg, Ian, LeAnn, David, Josh (all people from Freshley; the first four went to Jamaica over spring break, and the first three were on my team in Port Maria, in addition to Michael), and I decided to go on a road trip. But I'm going to save that story for last.
Then last night at our weekly Port Maria prayer and worship night, one of our prayer topics was boldness in showing God's love; the first person that came to mind was my roommate because I haven't been a great model of godly love toward him, but then another entirely different voice spoke up in my mind: "Downtown." At the end of our prayer meeting, I announced that I would be going to downtown Athens with whoever else wanted to go, and we would walk around looking for people to pray for. In the end, only Michael and I went, but "where two or three come together in My name, there am I with them" (Matthew 18:20), and that was all we needed. In fact, any more than two people (plus God) probably would have been too much for our purposes to succeed according to what God had planned for us. (Actually, I was wrong: the road trip story isn't going to be last; this one is.)
Then today, I was on my way from ECV (one of UGA's dining halls) to band when someone walked by and said, "Congratulations on making Derbies!" (The Derbies are the part of the Redcoats that go to all the away games—because it would be too expensive to pay for transportation, lodging, food, etc. for 400+ college students, so we cut it down to 100 for the away games.) Apparently, the email with the Derbies roster was sent out today. I hadn't seen it yet, so that was a surprise when I heard I made it. Haha. But it was a good surprise. I can't wait for next season now!
But even better, I got back to my dorm just a few minutes ago, and when I went to check my email, the first message I noticed said, "Welcome to Freshley Prayer." I've been waiting for that email since last Thursday. The wait wasn't too suspenseful, but it was still reassuring to finally get the email. And I'm thankful 1) that I was accepted onto the Freshley prayer team for next year, and 2) that the Wesley leaders got around to sending out all the emails so soon. I'm really excited to see what God has for me on the Freshley prayer team in 2011-12!
So last week Meg announced to me, Michael, Ian, and Shelby that she felt like God was telling her that we needed to take a road trip to Kentucky. See, Meg drives a lot when she needs to time to think and pray, or just for fun. So she got Michael and Ian hooked on the idea of driving on a whim two weeks ago. The first time, Ian, Michael, and Meg got lost and had to look for a familiar highway (they were without a GPS), and they ended up staying the night at Michael's house when they found it. The second time, Meg, Michael, and Michael's roommate Alan went through South Carolina to North Carolina, got lost, ended up in Tennessee, then made a loop into Alabama before finally coming back about thirteen hours later. After hearing about their adventures, driving through four states—five including Georgia—we were all eager to join in on the next trip. So Saturday after G Day, we left campus at 8pm. We drove into North Carolina, drove through a suspicious, unpaved mountain highway, ending up at a rest stop in the Nantahala National Forest. (I thought that was cool because I went rafting down the Nantahala River in North Carolina at Snowbird last summer, so we were decently close to where I stayed for a week last year.) At some point, we crossed over into Tennessee, but then we ended up back in North Carolina again. We were looking for a mountain called Mount Mitchell, which, until the Rocky Mountains were discovered, was the tallest known mountain. But somehow we found ourselves too far west, deep into Kentucky; our original mission of reaching Kentucky had been achieved, but now there was so much opportunity to do more. Why not go to Ohio while we're at it? In fact, why not visit the Great Lakes? Well, the time factor was a good reason not to, and that's what eventually made us turn back. But not before cutting through the corner of Ohio, stopping at a playground to stretch, and then having "car church" (similar to house church, but... in a minivan). It was now Sunday morning, and we had gotten to witness the sunrise from Ohio, and we knew we had to decide when we were going to return home. So since it was Sunday and we hadn't found a church to go to (the truth is, we didn't even look for one), we decided to have our own Bible study in Michael's ManVan.
And God had planned ahead and set aside a specific passage of Scripture for us to study. Last week after the PoMo prayer and worship night, I was reading 1 John, and Meg came over and said, "Read to me." After some reluctance (and the addition of two or three other people), we started going through 1 John, with Meg initiating discussion with various questions. We made it through the first three chapters. Then, later last week when Meg made her announcement about Kentucky, we tried to finish chapters 4 and 5, but we didn't get anywhere (although, Michael, Shelby, and I did learn something about 1 John 5:16-17, which never became a part of the discussion with the full group). Meg and I were both convinced that we had received callings to different places—Meg to the Great Lakes and me to the coast of Virginia), and so we knew we needed to test the spirits and see which was true. And, ever the comedian, God speaks through John on exactly that topic: Test the Spirits. After some discussion and deep thinking (and "casting lots," aka flipping a coin), we decided to come home.
During the trip, we stopped in Berea, Kentucky. Coincidentally, Meg had had a dream about Berea, but she couldn't remember what it was about. I remembered the story of the Bereans in Acts 17, so I showed her that passage, and a verse jumped out at me, which led us to turn east to go toward Virginia Beach. That plan didn't fall through though. It would have taken much too long, and we wouldn't have been back home in time for school the next day. So that plan was scrapped. But along the way, we discovered Athens, Kentucky, and, ironically, Baxter Street, which is in Athens. (For those of you who don't know, my dorm is on the corner of Lumpkin Streeet and Baxter Street in Athens, Georgia.) And while we were still in Berea, we stopped at a gas station to go to the bathroom and get snacks, and the guy working there was very nice to us, wishing us well on our trip, and even offering us free copies of the local Christian newspaper, called The Seeker. And later we ran into a Muslim man at a rest stop in southeastern Kentucky who had no cash and needed gas money. Josh, being the bold prayer warrior he is, immediately said, "I'd be happy to give some money. And can I pray for you while I'm at it?" Thankfully, Josh went to Jesus in the Quran, a kind of seminar about how to appeal to Muslims with the gospel, so he was able to share the gospel with him. And even though we didn't get to see the man make a confession of faith, we guess that, because he was a white Muslim, he had converted to Islam because he had been hurt at some point by the church. So we were able to show him some love and possibly partially redeem the church in his mind so that he'll be more open to receiving Christ later on down the road. So it doesn't sound like we did much other than driving/riding and talking, growing closer to each other on our 23-hour road trip (God blessed Michael with the energy to drive all 23 hours!), we can expect to see great fruits coming from our journey in the future, whether we get to see the results in this life or in heaven.
Then last night Michael and I went downtown, and God moved in incredible ways. To start, I was still questioning whether or not it was really God's will for us to go downtown at 11pm on a Tuesday night (actually, when I started questioning it, it was only 9:30). So I went over to a corner in the Russell prayer room and prayed and listened to God. Then Ian came over, and we talked about it; he was also trying to decide whether or not he should go. He had a lot of insight to share with me on the topic. He started by asking what my motivation was for going: Was it to bring God glory and praise, or was it for my own selfish ambition? I wanted to be able to say that I wanted to glorify God, but the truth was that I had some pride building up because I wanted to be able to say that I went downtown in the middle of the night to pray with drunk and homeless people. But I wanted it to be all about God, not about me, even though I subconsciously wanted it to be all about me. Then, when Ian said that our motivations will never be entirely pure, and that we will always have pride, and that God will decide where to draw the line, I remembered Proverbs 16:9: "In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps." Whether we were going for selfish reasons or to glorify God, He would see to it that He received the praise for what we were about to go do. But I continued to doubt that my motives were right. But God had an answer for that too, and it just happened to be Proverbs 16:3: "Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed." So I claimed that promise: Whether I'm doing this to build up my own pride or to honor You, God, let the final outcome of this night point directly to You, and only You. And as Michael and I set out—after being prayed over by Ian and Meg, as well as Melissa and Zack (two RPR regular visitors)—I was reminded of Mark 11:24, which has been on my mind a lot these last couple weeks: "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." So we trusted in God, believing that He would move in amazing ways, and that even if we didn't see immediate results, we would know that He was working in the hearts of the men and women that we would talk to, producing results in the future.
Well, starting off, we didn't know what to expect, but what we expected looked nothing like what actually happened. I was expecting to run into a handful of homeless people who wanted prayer and some pre-party sober college students wandering around that we could share the gospel with and pray for. But then we met Robert and Mae Mae, a black homeless man and woman. As we approached them, they seemed to know part of the reason why we went out of our way to talk to them: to help them in any way possible. Before the question "Is there anything you'd like us to pray for?" was out of our mouths, they were asking for money to buy food. Of course, that was a little suspicious because everyone asks that downtown, especially if they're looking for money for drugs. But when another guy walked by asking for money that supposedly was "not for crack," it appeared that Robert and Mae Mae were relatively trustworthy. But, fortunately for us, we didn't have any cash, so we bought them some food from Little Italy and sat and talked with them. Now, I had my Bible with me, so I put it on my lap when I sat down, and almost immediately, Robert noticed it and jumped right in with a barrage of questions. But he had much more to offer than a series of questions that he expected us to answer. If anything, he probably taught us more than we could have hoped to teach him. Mae Mae stayed relatively quiet and was content to listen to Robert share his wisdom and insight into the Scriptures and the Christian life, but she left after about half an hour. But Robert... well, I'll get to it.
There wasn't really any particular thing Robert said that was especially significant or mind-blowing. The adventure was in the whole experience. He basically told us his life story—not his life history, but his recent past and his current story. For six years of his life, he had been a Muslim. He had spent some time in jail for some automobile offense that I couldn't quite understand, but it sounded like it was a crime someone else committed that Robert got convicted of because the vehicle belonged to him... or something like that. He was released in 2008. He has four brothers and three sisters, and his mother passed away last November, leaving him and his oldest brother Jerome a double-wide trailer. Jerome, known as Michael Jackson in downtown Athens (he's a favorite among college students because of his Michael Jackson impressions), has serious drug problems; and as if that weren't enough, he has three different types of cancer, including colon cancer, lung cancer, and one other type that Robert couldn't remember. Robert may be the only Christian in his family from the sound of things. One of his sisters recently bought a $180,000 house, while Robert and Jerome are left scraping up the little money they can in downtown Athens, the poorest city in America. But through all this, Robert continues to trust God and pray for and show His love to his siblings.
While he was still in jail, Robert wrote a song, and Michael and I had the privilege to hear him sing a couple verses of it before we parted ways. It was a simple song, but the raw emotion that went into the composition and performance of it was moving, and I was amazed at the simplicity and sincerity of the praise and thanks Robert gave to God through the song. I know I felt very blessed to be able to hear him sing for us.
Before we left Little Italy (before we heard the song), Robert did one more thing for us. The whole time he was talking, he seemed to have some doubts that we actually believed what he was telling us. And to tell the truth, I'm not entirely sure I believed everything either. But when Robert was telling us about his brother Jerome, he kept saying, "If you don't believe me, come by my double-wide and you'll see I'm telling the truth." After saying the same thing a couple more times, he gave us his address so we can stop by and talk to him and his brother and continue to pray for them and witness to them. (It may sound dangerous going to the home of a random "homeless" guy on the midnight streets of downtown Athens, but no human being could make up the understanding that Robert had of the Bible. I trust him, and I'm really looking forward to visiting him some time.)
So... yeah. That's been my week so far. And all I can do is thank God for it and pray for Robert, Mae Mae, and their families. So please pray for me and Michael as we continue to minister to them and to whoever we run into downtown next time we go.
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