Romans 11:36

"For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.
To Him be the glory forever! Amen."

Aug 1, 2008

God speaks

God moment, Week 5


This past week a team from Lake Placid, Florida joined me in Puerto Viejo. They had some incredible spiritual leaders with them.

On Monday night, three members of the Lake Placid team prayed for one of the Puerto Viejo hotel employees. The employee’s name is Saidy, and she has a young two-year-old daughter who has a health problem with a valve in her esophagus—the lower esophageal sphincter, or LES, I do believe. After the prayer was over, Saidy was sweating profusely and said that she felt a fire come down upon her while the three team members were praying for her. So what did she say right after that?

“I’m bringing my daughter here tomorrow night so you can pray for her, too.”

The three Lake Placid team members were Roberto, Maria, and Bobby D. Roberto and Maria are married and pastor a church in Sebring, Florida; Bobby D is highly involved in a youth outreach ministry, Youth for Christ. The three of them are very in tune with the Spirit and love to be prayer warriors for whoever needs prayer. So, of course, they were thrilled to have Saidy bring her daughter in for prayer.

The next night, Saidy brought her daughter, Carla, and her husband, Carlos (Carla was born on Carlos’s birthday, hence the name similarity), to our hotel. It was a blessing from God to see Carlos there with Saidy and Carla, as many men in this country are notorious for leaving their wife/girlfriend after they have a baby.

Roberto and Maria took the lead of our prayer time (since they both speak Spanish fluently), and started to explain to the team from Lake Placid how critical it was for all of us to have faith that Carla could be healed by our prayer. Because look at what Jesus said to the woman in the crowd who grabbed his cloak, “Your faith has healed you” (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%209:18-22;&version=31;). Then they asked Saidy and Carlos if they had faith that Carla can be healed by God. They answered with a resounding yes.

Then the prayers began. While I have no great healing story to share (not saying that she hasn’t been healed, she just hasn’t been back to a doctor yet ;-), Maria looked at Carlos and asked him if he had been walking faithfully with the Lord, and she wanted to know if he needed to be reconciled to God. Carlos said that he had been straying from the path and that he needed to get closer to God. But, he wasn’t too thrilled about the whole reconciliation with God part.

This is where my learning moment came: rather than just give up and assume that it wasn’t time for Carlos, Maria and Roberto kept pressing him. They weren’t manipulative or rude or overbearing or over-Christian or anything, they simply kept reiterating the importance of Christ in our lives, and the help that God would give to Carlos as he raised his little girl, Carla. And they kept talking to him.

At one point Roberto said that Carla is in need of a strong Christian man to raise her (speaking all in Spanish, of course). As soon as he was done saying that, Bobby D (who has no knowledge of Spanish) said in English that Carla is in need of a strong Christian man to raise her. Roberto and Maria freaked out, and told Carlos what Bobby D just said.

“He seriously doesn’t understand Spanish?” Carlos asked in disbelief.

“Nope, he has no idea what we’ve been talking about,” they answered.

That was enough convincing for Carlos, and he asked to receive our prayers so that he may be reconciled in his relationship with the Lord.

God works in wonderful and powerful ways, and I was blessed to witness such an unfolding of events. I’ve always felt that God speaks to me most clearly when he lines up way too many coincidences in a row to simply call them coincidences. That night, when Roberto and Bobby D shared what was on their hearts, they were clearly sharing what was on God’s heart.

Thanks God, for teaching me about the power of prayer and the need to be bold in our faith. Amen.

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