Today our small team of 10 headed for
Bedford town centre as we do each week on a Thursday afternoon. Why? To offer
to pray for people who are sick, for their relatives who are sick and basically
to offer to bless people any way we can. Just as in Jesus day sometimes people
are open and receive and sometimes they are very closed and some are casually
indifferent.
Last week we prayed for God to show us
particular clues that would lead us to someone he wanted us to meet and share
God’s love with plus to give us a prophetic word for them.
God had spoken to me about a lady in a
wheelchair, perhaps recovering from an operation and possibly called Alice.
This led us to a café and to a lady in a wheelchair. As it turned out her name
wasn’t Alice and she and her husband didn’t want to be spoken to and both Tim
and I were politely asked to leave the café. Stepping out in faith means
getting it wrong sometimes!
God had spoken to Tim about meeting someone
wearing a bobble hat, carrying a Primark bag and who possibly had a sleep
problem. We spotted a young girl fitting that description and when we both
approached her and her boyfriend she was touched by us wanting to offer to pray
for her. When we asked if she suffered from insomnia she replied, “Whoa, read
my mind or what!” She didn’t want to be prayed for right then but we were able
to give her the written prophetic word and invite her to the Carol Service.
This week Stewart and I had the opportunity
to pray for at least 6 people. Pretty amazing when you think they had each set
out with their own agendas perhaps to do their shopping, or take a trip into
town to see a friend or just go to work without, perhaps, any thought of God or
his love for them.
Here are a few people who shared a little
of their story and let us share God’s love with.
C from Australia had just had major surgery
on both of her knees and though was meant to be resting had chosen today to
make her first trip out rather than mope at home. Just 24 and a keen
sportswoman, she was facing a long and painful recovery from her operation. We
offered to pray for her. At first she said yes but then redirected the
conversation to something that seemed more important to her which was a need to
find community and friendship. She told us she had been recently thinking about
church and getting back to her faith, something her boyfriend didn’t share with
her. We discovered she was actually quite lonely and was going to be on her own
this Christmas and though resigned to the idea she was very keen to take up our
invitation to the Carol Service and said she would go home and look up the
website. As she walked away from us we both felt God’s heart for her and prayed
that she wouldn’t forget that God had picked her out today to show her his
love.
C, had booked tickets, to travel on
Christmas day with her 3 year old son to visit her family in Zimbabwe who she
hadn’t see for 10 years and who hadn’t yet met her son. When we asked if there
was anything we could pray for she became tearful as she shared the difficulty
of obtaining various documents she needed because of her estranged husband and
how it might prevent her from taking her little boy with her. We were able to
tell her of God’s love and prayed that God would make a way through what seemed
an impossible situation. We discovered she believed in God and her brother was
actually a pastor.
M walked over to us! He appeared to have
learning difficulties and seemed quite lonely but was a regular attender of the
Salvation Army.
He let us pray for him and Stewart had a
word for him that God was going to give him a whole new confidence.
E had a daughter who had recently been having
unexplained blackouts and was having tests. She allowed us to pray for her
daughter and for her.
A was a grandmother who asked us to pray
for her for good health
D asked us to pray for her elderly mother
who she had just visited in a care home. Her mother had a long list of
illnesses. We asked God that he would draw near to both her and her daughter. D
said she believed but didn’t go to church and took the invitation to the carol
service.
Lastly we met K. At first he seemed a bit
reluctant to stop. He seemed in a hurry and was carrying a table flower arrangement,
which we thought was a Christmas decoration. When we asked if there was
anything we could pray for him for, he said if there was, he wouldn’t consider
himself worthy enough for us to pray. Stewart told him that God placed great
value on him and I said I liked his honesty and thought God did too. He became
very responsive to our comments and said it had made his Christmas! He then
told us he was getting married the next day (no wonder he was in a hurry!) He
didn’t want us to pray but we blessed him and his wedding and he went off
grinning and… we think… feeling special!
For some of these people we had the
opportunity to talk about God’s love and desire for relationship, for some we
were just able to give out an invitation to a Carol Service and for others we just
got to smile at them as they hurried past with heads down.
Everyone has a story that is both past and
present that only perhaps those closest to them know (or not) but which God
completely knows and cares about.
‘He was in the world, and though the world
was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which
was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him,
to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God’
