Today Mary Ann and I met at Green Sage and headed to the nearby stairs right away to pray for the Lord's direction for the outreach. After we rose from prayer, we engaged in a conversation with two young guys who, we found out were homeless. One of them, John was a believer and became by choice homeless and decided to travel all across the country and hitchhike from one place to another. We meet those "floaters" all the time on the streets. Mary Ann exhorted him with the promises of God and encouraged him to seek Him wholeheartedly. As we were talking to him, the Holy Spirit said that he needed prayer for healing. It turned out, he had both Lyme disease and Crohn's disease on top of a broken ankle. He didn't believe that the Lord can heal someone instantly and the healing didn't happen right on the spot. When we meet unbelief like that, our strategy is usually to tell them about a previous story where we saw God heal someone on the spot. A testimony often breaks unbelief and people want to experience a miracle because they think if it worked for the other person, it can happen with them too (that's how I became a believer...). It's not always the case, though.
In John's case we didn't see instant healing but the Lord gave me a word for him about Jesus wanting us to have works made with gold, silver and costly stones (1 Cor 3:12-15).
After that we headed to Pritchard's park where Mary Ann was looking for open doors while I took out my guitar and worshiped, but the crowd of traveling hippies didn't seem to be a fertile ground this time. It's strange and sad to me that so many young people leave their home by their own choice and end up in these temporary gangs in different cities, drugged up in dirty clothes. I do believe though that God wants to shine His light through us in the darkness as we step out and obey Him.
I did have another encounter with traveling hippies just at the nearby Walmart this past weekend as they were begging for money and food to be able to travel. "Trip" and his friend were standing at the driveway to Walmart when I approached them with a can of nuts and some cold water. It turned out that both of them had a background in Jesus and as we prayed together, the Lord started to heal Trip's hand that was broken from him punching another guy a few days ago. They were very open to the gospel and I left them with a Time to Revive Bible.
The Lord really loves and loves to save the hippies.
