Tend the sheep!

Tend the sheep!

After our prayer time at Green Sage we decided to show some practical love in the cold weather to the people we encounter on the streets. Sharing Christ and sharing a hot cup of coffee - great combination.

While passing out the hot drinks we encountered different types of grounds. Some of them were fertile and filled with the love of Christ, happy to share that God dwell
s deep within their hearts. Some of them were hard, not ready for sowing. Some of them were rocky and thorny - they are not grounded with their faith, but as the hot drinks warmed their bodies, so can some encouragement fan the tiny flames in their hearts for God.
If we are open and dial into God, we will recognize the opportunities in our daily lives when our uncompromised love for Jesus can help wavering believers to gain some encouragement in their walk with Christ. Making disciples very much includes making an effect on those who are spiritually less mature than us and are not necessarily unbelievers.

The Lord affirmed us and our work on the streets through a gentle soul who spends a lot of time in the heart of the city and have daily encounter with the folks there. She told us how the Lord uses our ministry to change people's lives there. Some of them started to bear very good fruits. They have become much more gentle and less argumentive. The Spirit of God have been growing the seeds we planted into their hearts over the weeks.

After rejoicing in her words, we asked her if we could pray for her and she gladly said yes. She felt very loved by God and by us as she experienced the Spirit's gentle presence and received some encouragement from the Lord.
I've heard stories similar to hers many times - she used to be a strong Christian, but the sprouting faith got choked by different things of the world and she's been feeling distant and disconnected from the Body of Christ and from God Himself.  Thankfully God always welcomes us back to the Father's house, if we are willing to go.

Romans 8: 38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We hope and pray that she continues to surrender to the love of God and His great plans for her.

Join us next time to experience what God is doing in the city on the 18th of November at 8:30 AM at Green Sage!

Here is a great resource on how to share your faith by Time to Revive.

Blessings

Adam

Making disciples

After our prayer time at Green Sage, inspired by the Spirit we headed out to a little African American area downtown. There was one man there waiting on his sister to pick him up for work. It turned out that he was almost 100% blind ever since his birth. After sharing with him the story of Bartimaeus, he let us pray for him. He felt the Spirit of God strongly on him and appreciated our prayer very much. He shared with us that he had a rough past, but was in a need of God's touch very much. Since God loves to heal, we pursued with him to let us pray for him more for further physical healing, but he did not want to. We believe the the Lord has His timing and I am excited to follow up with him.

On out way to Prichard's park we did some follow up with some of the guys, whom we ministered to a couple weeks ago. Eventually as we were praying for a man who had diabetes, 2 other people from the park - as they saw us praying in a circle joined us. One of them was a lady we never met before, she just saw the children of God coming together to seek His face! That was an amazing experience.

The majority of the people we meet on our outreaches are people who at some point of their lives embraced the free gift of salvation, but decided to leave the narrow road and their lives crashed. I strongly believe that the Lord's calling for us on the streets is mostly to find these lost sheep, these prodigal sons and daughters and call them back from the pigpen to the Father's house, so they can have their inheritance and He can have His inheritance in them.
That's making disciples (Mt 28:19) -- helping these people by the grace of God to become followers, real followers of Christ.

We need labourers... there are many prodigals. On the streets of Asheville, at your workplace, at your school, in your neighbourhood. Maybe you are one...
God loves us with all His heart, mind, soul and strenght. There is only one worthy response to that kind of love. To love Him with all our heart, mind, soul and strenght. And that involves stepping out in faith. Give in to the voice that calls you to share your faith with that neighbour or classmate who does not know Jesus. Obey the Person who calls you to pray for that coworker you meet every day and does not have Life in him. Remember, the same Spirit works in you that raised Jesus from the dead.

Join us on our next outreach on 11/4 Tuesday ad 8:30 at Green Sage downtown Asheville and we will help you to take the first steps.
Luke 2:52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.
Jesus needed to grow in wisdom and physical stature as a child. Do you? Billy Graham and John Wimber did not start as pro evangelists. Everyone has to have his/her time of learning and making mistakes. It actually takes a lifetime.

Why not to start now?

LOTS extension

This post is meant to be an encouragement to those who are struggling with sharing their faith, because they don't feel like they are mature or prepared enough.
To me Love on the Streets has been a real personal blessing, because it gives me a platform to freely share my faith with strangers, thus it is also a practice that I bring into my everyday life.

Just as our devotion time in the morning is a jumping board into a spirit of prayer, so all day we can share out thoughts and feelings with the Lord, participating in an organized outreach is a place, where we see how others do it, we can practice it and also have grace to get it wrong or mess it up.

After a few outreaches, I thought I would give it a try to share my faith with my classmates using the Time to Revive Bibles. After I prayed for them and they experienced some physical healing, I led them through the verses and both of them responded with obedience to the Holy Spirit and they-as it turned out - RE-commited their lives to Jesus. One of them just a few weeks later decided to get baptized and his faith and obedience rubbed off on his high school friend, who also recommited his life to the Lord.

Both of them got baptized in Asheville French Broad River. It was a great honor to me that they chose me to baptize them.

With this story I want to ancourage you to step out and join us on Love on the Streets or the outreach of your local church and become part of the harvest. Let sharing Jesus with words and deeds become part of your daily life.

In Jesus

Adam

Worship on the Streets

Today as we were seeking the Lord’s face for guidance on our outreach, He led us into worship in the heart of the city, where prayer warriors have sowed seeds years ago.

As we were lifting up Jesus in our praises in the very middle of Prichard’s park (where on Friday nights people gather to invite unclean spirits with drums) and interceding for Asheville, the Lord gave us a word – „mark the Land”. Soon after a guy came by totally out of the blue, grabbed a piece of chalk from his pocket and wrote on the pavement

CHRIST

IS

LOVE

Isn’t God awesome, how He confirms His word? As we continued in worship and people appeared in the park, the members of our team left the circle of worship to greet them and share the love and mercies of Jesus with them. We prayed and shared the gospel with several people.

We have been asking the Lord to add more people to our team and He is already answering our prayers, as Greg and his wife joined us today. We met Greg two weeks ago and saw the fiery passion in him for His Saviour. As we continued to minister to them, they became more and more part of the team in reaching the lost and the broken. Sandra, a faithful intercessor also joined us for the outreach.

To crown our event, we just learned that God led the YWAM team – Youth with a Mission -  to serve lunch and minister to the people at Prichard’s Park right after LOTS. Jesus covered the whole morning and afternoon at that place.

There is nothing greater than this that man could have done. He is all-knowing, all-wise, all-love.

Join us on the 23rd of September and watch what the Lord is about to do as we are pressing in with the message of the Kingdom.

Adam Bardoczi & the Revive Asheville team

1 Cor 2:9  "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined the things that God has prepared for those who love him." 

Love on the Streets - the First Day - September 26th

After our regular Tuesday morning prayer at church, our small team (Wayne Clifford and myself) headed towards our new location - Green Sage, downtown Asheville to have our meeting and prayer for the outreach.  After Jeff Manning arrived, we felt like the Lord wanted us to start a Bible study at Pritchard Park, inviting the people hanging aroud these early hours.

After our arrival we started to talk to several men there and we found Greg and Joseph, both of them faithful followers of Jesus and homeless. We get to know that Greg has been living on the streets for years and has a great passion for the Lord and sharing the gospel. Greg joined us to pray for Joseph, who has been having severe pain because of his arthritis. After prayer Joseph's pain significantly lowered, but has not disappeared completely, so we decided to start our Bible study, being watchful for how the Lord was moving. 

In the meantime Wayne was following the Holy Spirit and had great conversations with the people who did not want to join our study group, sowing seeds of love in their hearts.

About 10 minutes after we started our study, the Lord brought a deliverance team to us - two guys who walk the streets of Asheville daily looking for people in bondage of sickness and pain, ready to minister deep healing through the power of the Holy Spirit to those who are open to it.

We were excited to meet them. After they learned about Joseph's situation, few seconds passed and we were all in prayer for him. One of the volunteer team members gave some words of knowledge to Joseph that helped him to overcome some serious issues of the past that scarred him and possibly had physical manifestations in his body. Unclean spirits were also attached to this past hurt and they had to leave after Joseph dealt with this particular thing with the help the Spirit of Jesus. 

Wow, what a powerful deliverance. We are excited to see the healing process of Joseph. 

Towards the end of our ministry time We agreed on following up with both Greg and Joseph long term. Lets pray that the Lord would also provide a home for both of them.

Here is a testimony of Greg and His passion for the Lord.

During the whole outreach we felt the favor of God on us and it really felt like we just had to be obedient and show up and let Him arrange all the details. 

The day was a testimony of how an all powerful God can use simple people in union to do great works.

He gives us the ability, if we give our availibility.

Glory to Him.

Adam Bardoczi