He cares

My friends Derek and Michelle got married today. When I checked the forecast earlier this week, it showed that it would be cloudy and rainy this whole weekend. As someone who cares about them and as someone who believes God cares about them, I asked God a few times to hold off the rain and let the sun shine on their wedding day.

When I woke up this morning, I saw that the sun was shining behind some clouds (woohoo!), and there was a perfect amount of overcast sunshine for their wedding pictures in the Boston Public Garden. It turned out to be a beautiful day--plenty of light and no rain. God really does care about us, and I'm glad that we can ask him for small, meaningful things.

Long lines can be good

Another overdue testimony involves God healing someone at the Post Office. I went in to mail something and got stuck in a long line that was going nowhere fast. The woman behind me had a medical boot on her foot. I said "hi" to her and asked her what had happened. She said that she had sustained a stress fracture in her foot (I can't remember how), but she didn't take care of her injury right away. She was a nurse and was probably too busy on her feet, taking care of everyone else, to take care of herself.

I asked if she was in pain or had limited mobility. She said that she was in pain and had trouble doing things, like driving. I could feel God's compassion for her and that the Father wanted to heal her. I asked if she had ever heard of people being healed through prayer. It didn't seem familiar to her, so I told her how I first heard about it and some firsthand experiences I'd had with it. Before it was my turn to go up to the counter, I told her I believed Jesus wanted to heal her foot and asked if I could pray for her outside of the post office after we were done. She agreed and met me outside later.

I prayed a fairly simple prayer of faith, and with expectation asked her how she felt. She said that she felt a lot better. I asked her on a scale of zero to ten--zero being no pain, and ten being excruciating pain--what her foot felt like. She replied, "Zero." With my eyes wide, I said something like, "That's awesome!" I told her that Jesus healed her and loved her, and I asked if she had ever heard about Jesus. She said "yes;" she grew up going to a Baptist Church but she didn't think that the faith was for her. She said that she was Bahai. I couldn't believe that she didn't want to get closer to the God who just took her pain away, but there is that story in the Bible where Jesus healed ten lepers but only one of them came back to him.

I gave the woman my email address and told her to give me an update after her next x-ray or doctor's appointment. I haven't heard back from her, but I'm still pumped about God's demonstration of his love and healing power.

I've been slacking

Where's my praise at? I guess I have no one to apologize to but God. Spirit, help me to praise you more--in the blog are not. I just want to do it more.

When the college team from Boston was here a few weeks ago, Jessica, Beccah, and I had a cool encounter while sharing the love of Jesus with ASU students on campus. We met a couple guys who were really friendly and interested in talking with us. They both had Christian church backgrounds and were open to us praying for them.

They shared prayer requests, and we also waited on God for any encouragement he wanted to speak to them. After we were done praying, one of the guys said, "Hey, are you psychic? You prayed the exact thing that I was worried about." I guess we prayed something off of his prayer request that struck a chord with him. We said, "No, we're not psychic. God just knows you."