Well, the day started off with a bang. Denise, a regular who hangs out in the park, came by cursing and screaming about something and someone. Without missing a beat, I called out to her and asked her if I could pray for her. She agreed and we enjoyed a few moments of peace as I prayed that the Lord would give her a change of heart and help her to love her enemies. I am so grateful to the Lord for opening up avenues of prayer with some of the regulars of Wicker Park and even allowed me (at times) to be able to speak truth and life to them because the growing compassion of the Lord that dwells within me needs an outlet.
Whenever I read about Jesus' life and the way He interacted with people, I'm always impacted by how He had compassion on the masses of people who came to Him to be healed (Matthew 9:36; 14:14; 15:32; 20:34). Over the last many days, the Lord has used my time being on the street with the Mobile Prayer Station to cultivate more of His compassion within me. Just the other day I was spending time with a group of friends and one of them said that there was something different about me. She literally asked me if God had healed me or something because she said that there was a softness about me that was new. At the time, I really didn't understand what she meant. But, in reflecting on this now (I feel like the Lord is connecting the dots for me even now as I write this), the softness that she was sensing from me was the compassion of the Lord growing within me. Praise God!
The highlight of the day came with three teenagers who must have passed by me three times before they stopped and we started talking about dreams. Without any delay, Gabriel, Gerard and Ashley started sharing dreams that they had in the past with me. Many of them were dreams of demonic visitations where dark shadow figures would come into their bedrooms inciting terror and fear in them. Now, this is something I am very familiar with, so I took this opportunity to talk about the reality of angels and demons and the cosmic battle between good and evil. While we were talking I felt like the Lord gave me a word for them: that He has placed an incredible destiny on their lives, but the devil was currently trying to steal their dreams, kill any sense of hope in them and destroy their awareness of God's destiny for them by instilling fear in them. So, I shared this with them and asked if I could pray into God's destiny for their lives. They excitedly agreed. Let me just say that it was probably a moment that these kids will carry with them for a very long time. Thank You Jesus!
I love how God meets us all right where were at. The seed of faith that was planted in these kids hearts and mind today was the reality that God has a destiny for their lives and that He will fight for this destiny to happen. That's where the good soil was within their hearts. Sometimes, I feel like good intention believers end up blindly throwing seeds of faith against brick walls in people's hearts and minds because they fail to spend the time in discerning where a person is at on this journey through life, where the Lord has someone on their faith journey and where the good soil actually is within their hearts and minds. What this takes is a sensitivity towards the Holy Spirit, but also a compassion towards people. To be like Jesus means to embody both. And the Good News is that both of these graces are available to a believer because we are in Christ. Maybe today is a good day to start meditating on what it actually means for you to be in Christ and all that that entails...
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