God speaks to us in daily life.  Most people believe this - the problem is telling if it's God speaking, or us, or the pizza we had last night (with the extra anchovies and sausage).

The missions group that hosted our church's Youth Missions Trip to New Orleans, 'Adventures in Missions' (AIM), emphasizes teaching the youth to pray AND LISTEN for God's direction in His response.  Our AIM hosts gave our team some ideas and instruction on how to do this.  It seemed like really good advice to me, so I thought I'd share it.

At one of our first Team Morning Devotionals in New Orleans, each person on our team was handed a small business-card-sized paper that listed the things our hosts stressed in teaching youth how to hear from and obey God.  The card had the AIM motto: "Follow God... Reach our world".  It also had a short acronym to help teach how to do that.  The acronym, "A.L.O.E.", stood for
Ask
Listen
Obey
Evaluate,
and if we followed these steps, this particular A.L.O.E. would bring life and healing to the nations around us.

The back of the business card listed five steps to evaluate any guidance received in prayer, to TEST it, to see if it was really from God.  Their suggestions (with Scriptures) were these:

1. Does it exalt Christ? (John 16:14)
2. Is it Scriptural? (Proverbs 30:5-6)
3. Do other Christians confirm it? (Proverbs 15:22)
4. Does it produce good fruit? (John 15:1-16)
5. Does God bring it to pass? (Isaiah 55:10-11)

I really appreciated the emphasis our hosts with AIM placed on encouraging our youth to a daily devotional habit and a living faith based on a relationship with Almighty God.  I have met many people who argue all the time about whether God even exists, but no one can deny our personal testimonies, when they include the regular experience of hearing from God.  What a privilege to know and serve the Living God who created us, but never abandoned us - He is right here right now, with us, and He chooses to speak to us and with us.

Modern philosophy teaches that God doesn't exist.  Islam teaches that the last prophet died 1200 years ago and now no one hears God's voice.  Deists teach that God made us, then left us on our own, to get by as best we can.  Our God lives, and He is Emmanuel, the God who walks and talks with us!  This is what makes us different, and what makes our message unique.

Q: What do a rat tattoo, a college baseball team, a used T-shirt, a clock radio, and the stereo system in a Chinese restaurant all have in common?

A: They all became part of the story of how God speaks to us on a daily basis.

This was one of the main things I saw on our Church Youth Missions Trip to New Orleans, over and over again (see previous two blog posts, HERE and HERE).  God speaks to us, every day, and in many ways, as we walk with Him in the ‘daily-ness’ of life.

I posted two long blog entries about what I saw God do the week of the New Orleans trip, but there were many smaller praiseworthy things that happened.  These didn’t seem to fit in the other posts, but I wanted to share them anyway.  So, consider this the ‘testimony pot pouri’, the tidbits of miscellany gleaned in the New Orleans trip – small, but still deserving of praise to God.

A vision, a T-shirt, and a picture:  One member of our team had a vision from God before the trip.  I won’t go into great details, because that is part of his testimony.  Suffice it to say that he saw a particular man in New Orleans that needed help, and wrote down a description of him before we left on the trip.  When we got to New Orleans, he recognized the man from his vision and was able to talk to him and provide help.  You can see a picture of the man on our Live Update blog – he is the man in the red hat with the borrowed T-shirt.  Please remember to pray for him.

That was the one and only picture I took at the BBQ outreach, and the one and only picture we have of this man.  The only reason I took it was because one of our New Orleans house hosts, Francisco, asked me to take it.  Francisco was a U of Miami graduate, just like me, and that fact rapidly developed a bond between us.  The man in the red hat had come to the BBQ while it was still pouring rain, so he arrived soaking wet.  Francisco felt impressed by the Lord to give him a dry T-shirt.  He made sure it was a U of Miami T –shirt, and wanted the picture of the man, the T-shirt logo, and the ‘U’ sign.  At the time, neither Francisco nor I had any clue that this was the man from someone’s vision.

OK, so it wasn’t like splitting the Red Sea, but I thought it was really cool the way all those small little ‘coincidences’ combined to make sure that we had a picture and a name for this particular man, so all you fine folks reading would be able to pray for him.

A Rat Tat, a Baseball Bat, and an Extra Sandwich:  God is a Univ. of Miami ‘Canes fan.  I know this because, everywhere I went in New Orleans, there were fellow-grads and ‘Canes fans, and this small piece of my past provided a bridge to many an interesting conversation.

One of the most interesting people our team met in New Orleans was a rough, gruff, tough former-Floridian who moved to New Orleans some time after he survived Hurricane Andrew.  Otis was a formerly-homeless man who had been taken in by a friend and now guarded his friend’s house from looters while he was at work and the house was being repaired.  He owned the clothes he wore, the piece of plywood he slept on, and the .44 magnum next to the ‘bed’ that served as his personal Security System.

Our team was assigned to help with prepping and painting the house’s exterior, while other work would eventually be done on the interior.  When we first met Otis at the house, he wasn’t overly friendly.  With all the teams that had been in and out of the area volunteering and helping, the team he most vividly remembered (and the only one he talked about) was a team from Missouri that had worked on the house, then stolen all the tools he used to own.  He was resistant to initial attempts at conversation or friendship, and cynical of our motives; but then who could blame him.

One of the youth leaders on our team felt strongly impressed that the kind of witnessing we needed to do at the house was to be ourselves and let the love of Christ show through our actions and interactions with each other and with him.  He changed the subject from the hurricane, and asked Otis what he most enjoyed doing in his spare time.  Otis started talking about how much he liked fishing.  Any kind of fishing.  Deep sea, off a boat, from a bridge, or with a cane pole on the bank.  Others asked about sports.  I found he was born on Key West and was raised in the Miami area.  I found out he was a big Miami Canes baseball fan (even though his parents had graduated from FSU - Grrrr!).  We talked about Andrew (the ‘Big One’ that hit Miami several years ago), and lots of places we both knew about – Kendall, Coral Gables, the U of M, and Cutler Ridge.  He showed me the ‘Ridge Rat’ tattoo on his upper arm – proof he was an ‘old school’ resident of Cutler Ridge, before it was all built up.  Others on the team talked about anything and everything as we worked.  It wasn’t long before he opened up and warmed up to all of us.

We had all made sack lunches to throw in a cooler that morning, so we wouldn’t have to take a long lunch break while working that day.  The same youth leader who had the leading about reaching out to Otie had felt impressed to make extra sandwiches that morning (God bless you, Danny!!  Did you realize you were hearing from Almighty God when you made that extra lunch?).  We invited Otie to join us.  He made it clear he wasn’t the type to take our charity, but when he saw that we genuinely wanted to have lunch with him (not just hand him some sandwiches), he sat down with us for lunch.  He shared more stories about ‘life before’, and we continued to work on the house afterwards.  By the time we left for the day, we all felt like he was family.

Later in the week, our team had A.T.L. time.  This was a block of time left open (no scheduled projects or activity) specifically so the team members could pray together and Ask The Lord what we should do.  Several team members felt a strong urge to get some money together and buy Otie a fishing pole and some gear, so he could do what he enjoyed most.  Our AIM Missions hosts took us to the local Wal-Mart, and the guys with fishing experience in our group picked out a tackle box, some lures, weights, hooks, and a pole.  We all prayed for our friend Otie, then drove to the house.  It was a moving thing when we gave the gift to him.  We stayed for a while and he joined us for some prayer and praise in the shade of the carport. We all hugged before we left.  I hope he saw the love of Jesus Christ in us.  At least I know that now he will have a different volunteer team to remember and talk about.

Clock Radios and Blurry Vision:  After all the things that I saw on the NOLA trip, I was convinced that God was speaking and directing, all the time, even in the every-day occurrences of life.  This convinced me that maybe I should be actively looking for this direction, listening a little better, and even expecting it.  The evening we got home, after two days and 25 hrs in a van, I was fairly exhausted.  My husband and son met my daughter and me for dinner, then they went home while I vacuumed the van, gassed it up, and got the mail from the post office.  When I backed up out of the parking space in front of the post office, I glanced at the clock radio in the van.  It said 91.9, the number for the local Washington, DC-based Christian radio station.  I thought that was odd, because I knew the radio was off.  I re-checked the clock radio – my mistake; the radio was off, and the time was 9:19.  “That’s a sign,” I said out loud to myself, with a big stupid grin, as I turned the radio on.  Anyone who was on our team for the trip, I’ll give you one guess what the radio station was playing at exactly that instant.  That’s right, it was blasting out our team’s unofficial ‘theme song’ for the week, “Sweetly Broken.”  I felt the peace of knowing God was with me, that I had obeyed and finished what He asked of me, and that He was pleased.  There is nothing else like that feeling in this world.

A Message from God with Your Fortune Cookie:  The day after we returned from our trip, we all stood before our entire congregation at our Sunday church service to thank God and share testimonies.  Right now, I would like to interrupt my regularly scheduled blog to tell everyone just how proud I am of my daughter.  She went on this trip and showed the love of God.  She heard from Him and obeyed.  She spoke to total strangers, prayed for people on the street, worked hard, and never complained.  And at the end, she stood before a congregation of 150 people and testified of what God had done.

Tomorrow, she will turn 12. 

We now return to our regularly scheduled testimony.  So, after church service, we let Kelly pick where she wanted to eat lunch (a part of our regular Sunday after-church routine).  Kelly immediately picked her favorite Chinese restaurant in the area.  We sat down and enjoyed a nice meal, while Kelly and I continued sharing with the family specifics of what had happened in New Orleans.  Suddenly, my husband stops the conversation to ask, “Is that what I think it is playing?”  We all stopped talking to listen carefully to the restaurant’s sound system.  We could not make out the words, because they were in Chinese, but the tune was absolutely unmistakable.  There, in the Chinese restaurant, while we were celebrating and thanking God for our safe return from the missions trip, the sound system was playing the song “Go Light Your World”.  I knew what that song meant to Kelly, and I knew that we were in her favorite restaurant – I hope this simple message spoke to her the same way the clock radio did to me, the night before.

Carry your candle; Run to the darkness
Seek out the hopeless, confused, and torn
Hold out your candle for all to see it.
Take your candle, go light your world.

Truly, we serve an awesome God!

Today I would like to share about some of the things I saw God do in New Orleans, all of which I would summarize by saying: GOD SPEAKS.

God speaks to us in many ways at many times.  This last week I saw God speak at every turn.  I say ‘I saw’ Him speak, because many times I really didn’t ‘hear’ at the time.  Once He spoke through a line of a 500-year-old hymn, and once through a clock radio.  Sometimes it was through circumstances or other people.  Sometimes it was an impression inside my spirit that I recognized as the leading of His Spirit.  Usually it was through desires that I didn’t even realize at the time He had given me.  Several people in our group had visions or dreams, heard God speak, and/or repeatedly felt strong impressions in their spirits.  For me, though, the most amazing thing was that I saw God speak to me in the ordinariness of every day life. However it happens, I hope everyone reading experiences it and realizes the tremendous privilege of hearing from the living God who cares enough to speak to us.

SAM: Sam was one of my favorite people that I met in New Orleans.  Sam’s real name is Abu Hashish, and he owns a corner convenience store a few blocks away from the mission where we stayed.  Sam runs the store with his son, Omar, his only family member within 1000 miles.  Sam is a Muslim from Amman, Jordan.  I met Sam when I was out Prayer-Walking in the neighborhood with my daughter, Kelly, and our Team Leader, Crystal.

ASIDE: “Prayer Walks” were when we went out in teams of two to four people, going where we felt led by the Lord, praying for His impact and grace over the neighborhood.  As we walked, we would talk to specific individuals as the Lord laid it on our hearts.  Many times we would speak to encourage them, talk about God’s love for them, or share specific Gospel elements as God directed.  In almost every case, we would ask if they needed prayer in any specific areas and offer to pray with them.  Except for a half dozen individuals, I don’t think anyone refused prayer the whole time we were in N.O..

Kelly had felt led of the Lord to turn down a specific street and speak with a very lonely lady on a second-floor step.  We spent enough time talking with her under the hot, New Orleans sun that Kelly started to look a little woozy.  Crystal saw that she needed some rest and offered to buy us all bottled water at the nearby convenience store.

We entered the store and went to pay for our drinks.  I saw Sam behind the counter and immediately fell in love with him.  He was a fatherly-figure with obvious Mediterranean features, who reminded me of my grandfather from Lebanon.  I started up a conversation and asked where he was from.  When he told me he was from Jordan, I told him about one of my best friends from college who was from Amman.  I told him about my grandfather, asked about his family, and quickly exhausted my very short list of known Arabic phrases.  Because I knew so little Arabic and desperately wanted to talk to him about the Lord, I sang a verse of an Arabic Christian praise song my Jordanian college friend had taught me 22 years ago (how’s THAT for God not letting anything that happens go to waste!).  After that we were instant friends, and he loudly announced that we were all welcome to come into his store any time.

Our prayer team left to meet with the rest of our group, but I felt a strong desire to buy the man a plate of baklava.  I wouldn’t say, “God said”, and I couldn’t even say, “I felt led”, but I had a strong desire to do it, and there was no doubt that it was a ‘God thing’, and not just a ‘nice thing’ that I wanted to do.  I told our AIM missionary hosts about it, and they started calling all around town looking for a Middle Eastern bakery that sold baklava.  When we got back to our base, I borrowed a laptop and searched online. No one was able to find any Middle Eastern bakery, but I had this sense of urgency that I just HAD to find some New Orleans baklava for the man.

CULTURAL NOTE:  Baklava is a dessert made with chopped nuts and honey sandwiched between layers of flaky phyllo pastry, popular throughout the eastern Mediterranean region, including Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and parts of Iraq.  BAKLAVA RECIPE.

I knew I had to find the baklava, but we couldn’t find it anywhere.  The next morning we went to another part of the city to work.  While there, I just asked someone if they knew of anywhere to get baklava in New Orleans.  The person wrote down and gave me the names and phone numbers of two different Middle Eastern bakeries close by.   (Note to Group 2 team members: think about the most frustrating help we gave, to the person who seemed the least appreciative – THAT was the person who got my ‘baklava connection’ – just one more example of how our sovereign God attends to the tiniest detail of our daily lives as we walk with Him.)

Back at the house, I grabbed a sandwich and took it with me while our AIM guide drove me across town to get the baklava.  On the way back, we stopped at Wal-Mart to get breakfast food for the team, and some add-ons for the plate for Sam.  When we returned, I put together a neatly arranged collection of baklava, fresh dates, and puff pastry on a paper plate for Sam, and stuck it in the refrigerator.

To be continued……..

MISS YOLANDA: Yolanda was just about my favorite person, of all the neighbors I met in New Orleans.  As soon as I met her, my heart swelled with a supernatural love that must have been just some small glimpse of the way God felt about her.  I mean I just loved being around her.  I felt like she could have been my sister – as in, when I get to heaven, she will be one of the first people I look for, to make sure she’s there and give her a big hug.

After I returned from Wal-Mart, Group 1 taught a VBS class for neighborhood children while Group 2 (including Kelly and me) walked through the neighborhood to help round up kids and invite folks to that evening’s free BBQ outreach.  I met Yolanda while canvassing the neighborhood.  She was sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against the shady side of a building next to a friend.  I introduced myself, and she told me her name. “You mean like ‘Yolanda Adams?’, I asked.  That did it – we were friends.  We talked and shared for a short time; then it was time to continue passing out the BBQ fliers and inviting children to VBS.  I told Yolanda I would be looking for her at the BBQ that evening.

SAM: We returned to base and, while the rest of the team prepared for the BBQ, Crystal and I prayed and took the plate of goodies over to Sam’s store.  His son said he wouldn’t be available until later, and asked us to stop by before the store closed at 8 that evening.  We met and played with a group of neighborhood kids on the corner while there, invited them all to the BBQ, then returned to base to work on the BBQ.

MISS YOLANDA: During the BBQ, Crystal, Scott, and Ryan got the bulk of the-smoke-in-the-eyes syndrome grilling the burgers, while I served as a runner, bringing food back and forth between the inside and outside, getting things needed, and spending time with the neighbors who came.  About an hour into the BBQ, I heard a voice ask, “Where is Miss Ann?”  I turned and saw my friend, Miss Yolanda.  She had come, and even brought another friend with her.  She asked for a Bible, and I talked to Melissa, our AIM host, who was able to get one for her.  I had to get back to work, while Melissa was able to talk to her about the Lord for a while.  She left before I could sit with her and eat and chat together.

As we were wrapping up the BBQ, Crystal suddenly reminded me, “Ann, you need to get that plate to Sam before 8 o’clock.”  We prayed and got the plate, and headed down the street to Sam’s store.  On the other side of the street from Sam’s we ran into a new ‘old friend’.  “Hello, Miss Yolanda!”  We stood there and talked for a while.  She told us that she had backslidden and knew it.  She had drifted away from God, but we reassured her that God had never given up on her.  We talked with her for a while, shared the word of the Lord, and encouraged her to decide – God was right there, and not holding anything against her.  After more words and hugs, we continued on to see Sam.

SAM: When I saw Sam, at first he didn’t remember us.  I reminded him about my grandfather from Lebanon, and gave him the plate with the baklava.  Then he remembered.  In true Middle Eastern hospitality, he then insisted we each pick out a soda or water or to take from his store for free.  Of course, we had to refuse, then accept (It’s a cultural thing).  We talked for a while.  I showed him pictures of my children.  He talked about the family members he had in Chicago, and how far away that was.  I gave him a hug and told him that we were family.  He really liked that, and smiled freely and broadly.  He told me about where he used to live on the West Bank.  Things got confusing there for a while, because he meant the west bank of the Mississippi, just outside New Orleans before the flood.  He had to show me the address on his driver’s license to clear it up.  It was good for a laugh.

We talked a little more.  I mentioned how Muslims believe in Jesus as a prophet and we believe He is God’s son who came to save us.  I mentioned some of the things that we agreed on, like that all of us would one day stand before God and be judged by Him for the things we had done.  Then, in New Orleans, 1200 miles from our home and 10,000 miles from his, two young Christians and one elderly Muslim prayed together that God would make Himself known to each of us, that He would remind us that we would each one day face His judgment, and that He would prepare us.  When we had to leave, he again invited us to come back, and to see him every day we were there.  There were no bolts of lightening or peals of thunder, just the calm assurance and refreshing peace of knowing that I had done what God intended.

So, God spoke.  He gave Kelly a vision to speak to a specific woman on a step - and she obeyed.  She got overheated, so Crystal felt compassion to pull her out of the sun for a bottle of water – and she obeyed.  I felt love and compassion for a man I had never met, and sensed a need to speak to him – and I obeyed.  A good chunk of the AIM leadership heard my urgent request for baklava and sensed it was a ministry need – so they obeyed.  Our team worked all morning in the hot sun – I asked a random stranger where they would get baklava in New Orleans, and God provided our answer.  I felt the love of God for a stranger sitting on a sidewalk, and spoke to her.  She came to the BBQ, and another saint of God responded to her need (which is also often God speaking) and gave her a Bible.  Crystal remembered we had to see Sam before 8 P.M., and she spoke.  We went.  Because we went at that instant and not a moment earlier or later, we met and encouraged and spoke to Miss Yolanda.  We brought comfort and prayer to an elderly man far away from home or family.

At every single link in this complicated, interwoven chain, God was speaking and directing.  If any single link had been removed, we would not have brought encouragement or the word of the Lord to either individual.  The thing that amazed me most about this direction was that it came in the everyday-ness of life, not in the prayer closet, not with a booming voice, or even with what I would consider unmistakable direction – I could have easily missed that it was God speaking, even while unknowingly walking in His direction.  In this case, fulfilling His will was just the natural outgrowth of walking next to a sovereign God.

I was amazed at all the different ways that God spoke.  He gave direct guidance to Kelly.  He spoke through a feeling of compassion.  He spoke through an intense sense of love.  He spoke through what someone else said.  He spoke through an urge to ask a question.  He spoke by revealing another person’s need.  He spoke through that ‘still small voice’.  And in this particular case, He confirmed everything by allowing us to see the results.

One other thing that impressed me through all this – have you ever sensed the need to ‘witness’ to someone, or ‘fulfilled your obligation’ to tell someone about Jesus, and have it come off about as wooden and lifeless as Pinocchio before he met Jiminy Cricket?  In both the cases of talking with Sam and with Miss Yolanda, the sense of love I had for them was so real and so intense that it was the most natural thing in the world to speak to and pray with a total stranger.  May it always be that easy, and may I never forget to be grateful.  TGBTG