Last night I went to a prayer and Bible study at a church not far from where I live. As the evening was winding down, a young woman asked me a question: "There's a guy at your church who has long dreadlocks, he made us feel so welcome when we visited your church a few years ago, he knew a lot, and he had a lot of people around him. I think he's on the staff. Do you know who he is?" After a bit of thought I replied to her, "Well, his hair is shorter now, and he doesn't have locs anymore, but you're talking about Pastor Richie." She then said a wonderful thing: "I've been thinking about him lately."
Sometimes, our experience of "the community of faith" leads us to believe that every local church is operating in a vacuum, and that our prayer needs are limited to the people who we spend most of our time with. That's not true. God is not limited by geography, nor culture, nor anything else. Though God had not given this young lady our pastor's name, He had given her a vision of Richie as she knew him five years ago, and she prayed in faith even though she didn't know his name or title. When I told her that Pastor Richie had recently been ordained an Elder in our denomination, and that his robing ceremony had just occurred this past Sunday, she nodded: "Now I know why God put him on my heart."
Consider God's action. He was looking for someone to pray for our pastor, and He found a willing intercessor: a woman who never sat under our pastor's ministry, met him only once at a leadership event, and never saw him again since that day. God chose to remind her of him.
Think about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment