They could hear me speak of the Lover of their soul.... the creator.... they could hear me pray that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened to the most glorious of truths.... they could hear me pray that the Healer would apply the ancient balm of Gilead to their hearts and that it would soak into their inner most being and seal the work that The Most High Spirit was doing within them on that day.....
Hundreds of people being ministered to ... being met where they stood and it not being demanded of them to be pushed into a decision that they couldn't even understand..... people being wooed... being loved... being served...
If I was called to an African country... what would I need to do? I would need to learn their language... their customs... the way they lived their daily lives... I would need to become like them and show them worth and value and not demand my own way.... not demand that they become like me... but enter into their world and become like them as to show them that which I wanted to show them.... The love of God... The heart of the Father... hhhhmmmm sounds strangely familiar..... becoming like them as to show them the way......hhhhmmmm :)
So outreach after outreach we learned our way... we learned to watch each other's backs and how to pray over each other after encounters... we learned that the language we speak inside the church didn't necessarily translate but that there were words that could mean the same thing and speak the same truth and that would reach behind the walls that people put up and grasp ahold of their hearts and leave them changed...
We learned that obviously salvations were amazing but that while that was the hunger of our hearts if we instead held fast to the truth that Paul spoke of .. one waters... one plants... one ... one... one that if we left the person closer to knowing God that was truly a life giving moment...
The Engle scale as it was also taught by Wagner and Wimber became our model... if negative 10 was no belief in God and zero was salvation and the positive numbers represented a life of a disciple being grown into a Christ like life..... then it was truly ok if our encounter took the person from negative 8 to negative 5.....
It was truly an amazing thing to be a person in someone else's life that broke through the barriers of what they believed a religious person or a Christian to be...... time after time we learned that grace and mercy really do triumph over judgment and that love and peace and tenderness confounds the wisdom of this world....
We learned what it meant to be like Christ and meet people where they were and woo them towards love and acceptance instead of religion.... we learned how to answer critics who said we weren't willing to mention the name of Jesus and then Jesus wouldn't mention our names to the Father...
Seriously I was told I was going to hell because I used the word Redeemer and The Way and was able to gain entrance into hearts that wouldn't have opened with the name of Jesus but became wide open when calling Jesus the Redeemer.. and the ultimate truth and the One who loved them and called them before the foundation of the world even began......
We learned when it was time to ask if they wanted to meet the one who had knit them together in their mother's wombs and if they wanted to meet the Alpha and Omega... The One who was the beginning and the end.... The Word who became life and dwelt with man...... uhm isn't that straight from the gospels...... and we learned when we were just there to plant a seed of hope or water seeds of encouragement already there.... we learned to walk in love and not results.... we learned... oh we learned so many things...
We learned their ways and we learned a language that would speak to their hearts and I think we were the ones who were left more changed ...
when we let our religious guard down and walked with them.... walked with the tax collectors and prostitutes of our day.... without judging their lives or their ways we learned to love.... and in loving we were turned inside out and left more like Him who laid His life down for us so that we could learn the ultimate ways of life and the most narrow spiritual path that actually is the highest calling in the spiritual realm..... we learned from the Lion and Lamb... we learned from the one who bore the government upon his shoulder, from the one who is the Wonderful Counselor, from the one who is the Prince of Peace...
We learned to get out of the way... we learned to allow God to be God... we learned that people are people and that the results are to be left into the hands of the one who is far more capable and far more able.... whose ways are higher than ... whose ways are not our ways.... We learned so many beautiful things as we exited religious predetermined methods and grabbed a hold of the fact that we can't be what stops the message... not our words.. when we learned that the very essence of who Jesus is makes people hungry and thirsty... who He is draws people to Him... and His name is oh so many things that we never got confused with who we were talking about... and we trusted that He was strong enough to make it clear when the walls didn't come all the way down.....
We learned to love... to trust... to serve... to care.... .... In those days I learned more about the Kingdom of my Father than in many times prior and I was changed and my walls came down... and religion fell of me all the more
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