Taking it to the Streets

We had been invited to go with a church in North Augusta out to the streets for street ministry this past Sunday night. This church had a guest come from Greenwood, South Carolina named Shawn Patrick Williams. If you are interested in reading an outstanding guide on how to use the Word of God as the weapon it was designed to be used for, read his book "Warring With the Word." In this empowering book, he gives his incredible testimony that is filled with powerful teachings from the Word of God, and is a book that Frank and I reference quite a bit when we are looking for specific scriptures for specific situations. You'll totally love this book. http://www.warriornations.org/ His testimony alone is worth the time investment to read this 123 page book. But to have this topical reference at your fingertips is invaluable! Once we got down town, our group went into the area right in front of where A Church Without Walls meets. It's a totally different atmosphere at night.

Once we went into the alley-way of the apartment building that a good bit of our church "members" live, we encountered a man sitting on the bench. He was drunk. Actually, he was beyond drunk. I don't know, is there even a state beyond drunk, I mean this old man was plastered. Totally tanked. Bless his heart. And the absolute dirtiest man we have ever encountered. So we ended up ministering to him with prayer and gave him some food and water. I felt the Lord impress on my heart that we needed to move on, but that God would later give us another opportunity with this man. I figured we'd see him at some point, maybe even next Sunday morning.

Meanwhile, we had two other groups that went out in different directions. Kenny, the Associate Pastor of the church we were with, took a group down near 6th street, and Shawn took a group in a direction towards one of the few bars that were opened on Sunday. Later when we met up together with the group at the end of the night, Shawn told us that 3 people gave their hearts to Jesus! Isn't that just totally awesome! The amazing thing was that this night was ordained as a Divine Appointment by God and the date for street ministry was given to Shawn some time back by the Lord. He shared with us how God told him to come down to Augusta on THIS night, August 19th, and how he ended up meeting with a drunk chick and her boyfriend outside a bar. As he began to talk to her they both realized that she was from HIS hometown. I think Greenwood is about an hour and a half drive from Augusta.

So here she is, on this night, the same night a man of God from her hometown is here. As they continued their conversation, he discovers that her pastor, the same pastor she had been to church and sat under that same morning, was a pastor friend of Shawn's. In fact, he's a pastor that Shawn has ministered with in conferences and appears to be pretty close to. Anyway, he was able to really connect with her, set her to thinking of the straight and narrow path again, AND lead her boyfriend to Christ! Divine Appointments really happen.... Totally AWESOME!

Well, after we had left the drunk man on the bench, we went to talk with a group of people who were congregating in the alley-way. We invited them to Sunday morning services for next week and talked with them a bit. Our group had Frank and I, Melony (Kenny's wife), Miranda (Kenny's teenaged daughter), another youth from their church named John, and a man named Jim who has a heart for evangelism. So we kind of spread out amongst the group. I'm not sure what Melony talked about with the people she encountered...but I'm sure it's awesome, as she is an awesome woman of God. (I will post it if she emails me later....and BTW, Melony, I thought the picture of you was so fun, so I put it up, if you hate it, I'll take it off....hee hee).

Frank, Jim, and I ended up talking to a man for a few minutes and prayed with him about a job and some shelter for the night. He was already a born again believer. So Jim said to the man, Victor, that, "Since you are already a Christian, take this tract and give it away to some one else." I thought that was an excellent idea. I never thought to do that, so Frank and I both thought that that was a pretty cool technique...a way to encourage another believer to get out there and represent Christ.

Some "soul winners" have often expressed that they get discouraged when they only meet saved people, since their only focus for the night is reaching the lost. However, I firmly believe that God sends brothers and sisters in Christ across one another's paths for the purpose of encouragement and edification. So if you are out there in your personal ministry, don't be dismayed at not having a lost person come your way. Reach out to the believers too. We are called to support and encourage the body of Christ just as much as we are to reach the lost. This does not need to only happen at church pot-lucks. You just get out there and love them to life!

After we spoke with that man, one of our "members" came out of the building very down-trodden. He had just been evicted from his apartment. I believe that God had us there as a Divine Appointment for "D". We were able to minister to him in prayer and in love, and able to encourage him to continue to believe God for his needs to be met. "D" struggles with alcohol, and instead of having the opportunity to go down to the bar to drink his problems away, he was met by Spirit-filled believers who were able to minister to him and help him see passed his problem and go straight to the One Who could help him. "D" was a different man when we left, his countenance was changed, and his faith had increased for God to work this out for him. God is so good!

After that, we passed by the drunk man, Danny, again. The Lord told me to keep going, so we continued quite a few blocks til we found a man sitting on a park bench reading a newspaper. We engaged him in conversation and discovered he was homeless, though I have to admit I was a bit surprised. He was very clean and appeared to be very intelligent. Anyway, in the course of conversation with him he told us he was raised Catholic. And while he was impressed with the help he was given from the Baptist missions down-town, he had been told repeatedly that all Catholics go to hell. We told him that not all Baptists believe that, and apologized on behalf of the people who had wounded him in that way. I think it really helps that Melony's church across the river is Baptist, and that as everyone well knows, Frank and I have a strong Baptist background. I think this lended credibility to our apology to him for the hurt and confusion that a few people operating under a religious spirit rooted in the enemy had thrust upon him.

Then he said he was fed a constant spiritual diet of doctrines that he didn't agree with, so he began a search for the truth. Of course he doesn't realize that this is what he is doing, he said he was just interested in learning about different religions, Buddhist, Hindu, etc. He also told us that he now believed that there were many religions and all of them were right, including evolutionary theory. What a messed up mind this man had!

As we engaged in conversation, we were able to share the gospel with him, however, he had heard it time and time again, but it was not penetrating into his heart. He was completely shut off from believing truth because of a wounded spirit. Yet he was completely comfortable in our dialog. I discerned a spirit of confusion that came from the enemy and asked him if Melony and I could pray for him. He was absolutely open to that, so we bound and cast that defeated devil from him and then asked God to reveal Himself to this man this week as the ONE true creator, the living God Who created him.

When we finished praying for him, I felt a small breakthrough in the spirit...he was now speaking more about things in the Bible and less about things from other religions. Some clarity had come to his mind....I could just see it happening. This was super cool and he was now even looking forward to how the One True God was going to reveal Himself to him this week, even so much as expressing senerios that might happen through God's hand this week. And He will show Himself. He's a good God and He is after this man's heart. I told him that he had a seed of truth implanted inside of him from when he was a little boy in Catholic church, the truth that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that He died for his sins and was the Truth he was seeking. That incorruptible seed that is deep inside his heart had taken root, and now God was going to allow it to spring up inside of him and reveal to Him Who He is. I can't wait to find out what Jesus does this week for him!

After that, we went back down to where A Church Without Walls meets and met up with the rest of the group and then rejoiced in the salvations that came through our mission on the streets. As everyone began to leave, guess who came staggering across the street? Yep, Danny, the beyond drunk guy.

He was so inebriated he couldn't even lift his foot up properly to step out of the street onto the curb. I ran over and reached out and grabbed his very nasty, dirty arm and helped him over to a bench. Then for the next 45 minutes I sat and listened to this man tell me everything that was on his heart. He told me he was a drunk, but he loved the Lord. He said he just can't help it that he is a drunk. But all the Christians come out and tell him that he's a drunk and he's not living for God and preacher's come out and they chastise him for being an alcoholic. He said he was always getting beaten down by churchy people. Well, this was going to be a different night for Danny.

So for the next 45 minutes, we listened to Danny talk about his hurts and his pain and his childhood and his family and all the things that happened in his life. He talked to me about good times and bad times, prosperous times and lean times. I asked him how he ended up here in Augusta since he grew up in another state. He said he came here about 8 years ago for a cancer operation at one of our fine hospitals, and that's how he ended up here. At this place. I hear this story a lot. People come here for medical treatment and then don't have the money to make it back home and end up at the Rescue Mission or on the streets.

During the course of our conversation, I asked Danny if I could pray with him. He told me I could pray with him any time I wanted. He just seemed so grandfatherly at that moment - very tender, totally receiving the love of God. I was honored to be a part of that. So I asked Danny if he wanted to not be "a drunk" anymore. He shared with me that he really did, but he was just what he was. So I asked him if I could pray for the spirit of addiction to be loosed from him. He agreed that he wanted that. So we came boldly before the Throne of Grace and prayed and then we went into warfare mode.

Ultimately I ended up commanding his body to sober up, and for the enemy to leave him alone. When we were finished praying, Danny was sobbing and sobbing. And snotting and snotting. OMG, why does ministry have to be so messy? EWE! I have serious issues with snot. Serious. So as he was sucking gobs of snot back into his head, and I was trying not to lose my dinner, he told me he had recently been stabbed. So I looked him over and found a wound on his arm. He had indeed been stabbed with something. It didn't require stitches and looked to be a day or two old. So we took a couple of cold bottles of water and he let me clean him up the best I could. My gosh he was so dirty.

By then, Frank was finished talking to the guy who had come over to speak with him, so Frank prayed for Danny too. After a bit, Danny got up and walked toward where ever it is he lays his head at night. But this time, he was NOT staggering. He was walking upright and straight! Whoooo-hoooo!~ That's the Power of God!

Then as we were leaving, a man asked Frank if he wanted to buy drugs. I'm glad he didn't ask me cause I would have been totally offended, I mean really, a princess does not buy drugs. The drug of choice for us princesses is chocolate. Puh-lease.

So Frank started ministering to him and found out he was heavy into witch craft at some point in time. He was also stoned beyond belief and wicked scary. He was sharing some of his "experiences" with witch craft, even claiming to have raised someone from the dead briefly enough for her to come out of the casket and claw him with her long fingernails, and also said he was "translated" just like Philip in the Bible. You know what, I don't doubt either account. That witchcraft and the power of Satan is all very real. But we have way more Power of God living inside of us and we have power over ALL the power of the enemy. So anyway, Frank ended up talking to him and he said he was trying to live for Jesus but he had so much guilt and shame over his previous involvement in the voodoo stuff, and seriously wrong doctrine now that he was saved. What in the world? Good grief! He did ask for a Bible so we went to the van and got him a nice one. And Frank prayed for him. Maybe we'll see him again.

So...that was our night out on the streets of Augusta. And we loved every minute of it!

What's going to happen when one person who lives there gets so changed and radical for God that they turn around and influence one more person that gets so changed and radical for God? Then you have two people challenging the strong-holds down there. And those two people will multiply and multiply and multiply until we have an entire army of Christian Soldiers doing the stuff! You go God! Whooo -hoooo!


Phew....is this post REALLY this long?
Good for you for reading all the way to the end. Give yourself a high-five!