The summer I was 15, a friend we were visiting took my family to the top of the incline overlooking Johnstown, Pennsylvania. As he was describing the disastrous flood that had once hit the city, I stood looking down at the homes below. “How many people in this town know Jesus?” I asked myself. “What would happen to them if another flood came?”
My mind immediately went into problem-solving mode. “I could come back with a bunch of friends, and we could knock on every door in the city and ask whether anyone knows Jesus in that home. If no one does, we could offer to tell them.” I even picked out a big white house with a round porch that would serve as a starting point.
My brain continued by trying to calculate how many friends it would take and how long we would need to stay. I ended up concluding that it would take ten of us all summer to get to every door. Then I remembered that back home in California I didn’t even have three friends who cared enough about the lost to dedicate their whole summer to such an endeavor.
Something in me at that moment pleaded, “Lord, could you somehow make it happen anyway?”
The whole thing might have been dismissed as childish dreaming. That’s what I thought as I grew older, feeling a bit embarrassed for such foolish thoughts. But almost 30 years later I found myself standing in front of the big white house, talking to a man recovering from drug addiction. I had been recruited to help as a leader with The Blitz, an outreach day during Brethren National Youth Conference (now Momentum).
Almost 2,000 people were participating that day. Our goal? To knock on every door in Johnstown and offer to share the gospel. There were 200 times as many people as I had asked for, and it took one day instead of a whole summer. What a great reminder that to God, our prayers are never embarrassing!
If you see prayer as an important part of walking with God, please consider joining us at the Soul Cry retreat at Camp Conquest in Pennsylvania in September. Click here for more details. — from womenofgraceusa.wordpress.com