God’s Agenda is to Love People

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’