Tag: Outreach

Testimony Thursday: Faithful in Little

On By CaitlynIn IHOPKC Life

I went on outreach again today to Oak Park Mall! It was awesome. I admit, last week I was a bit disappointed because I felt like I was on the sidelines a bit, but I shook it off and today was much better. My partner and I talked to at least ten people and prayed with over half of them. I really feel like God set up some divine appointments for us.

We prayed for a couple of women who were working a lotion store. They were both the sweetest, most joyful people ever, both Christians, and we loved getting to encourage them, because they encouraged us so much too!

We prayed for a teen girl in Macy’s who had a swollen pinkie toe. She wasn’t healed, but she was definitely touched, and as we were walking away we encountered a woman who had been interested in our conversation. We asked to pray for her, and she said her life was a mess and she had actually been praying right before she came around the corner and saw us. We encouraged her a bit, and although she didn’t want us to pray right there with her, we prayed together for her after she walked away.

Those were my favourite encounters today. Our other groups came back with stories of a leg growing out, a Methodist couple getting healed and then radically baptised in the Holy Spirit, a couple of atheists agreeing to come to church tomorrow, and a guy coming to the brink of giving his life to Christ.

I realise, I’m not at the place some of the others are. I’m not super prophetic or dramatically anointed for healing. But I do have the Holy Spirit inside me–I know the truth, I hear his voice, and my voice carries power. And he is stretching my faith and teaching me to partner with him more.

As we were briefing and praying before going in the mall, our leader said, “Jesus isn’t here [in the flesh] today–you are.” That started me thinking… what would it be like to go evangelise with Jesus, if he was the partner I was strolling through the mall with? I imagined holding his hand and walking through the stores as he waited to see what the Father wanted to do, then watching as he healed the sick, spoke truth, and brought hope to many.

Then after I watched him with several people, he would say, “The next one’s yours. Go talk to that woman right there.”

“I don’t know about that, Jesus–I mean, I’m not you,” I would probably say (or at least think, which would basically be the exact same thing.)

“What are you talking about?” he would say. “You can do this. I’m right here. I’ve got your back.”

And I would go and do it. Jesus would be right there, giving me the words, silently encouraging me, healing when I asked him to. Not everyone would be receptive, but Jesus and I would be faithful together, to at least offer what’s available.

How painful is it for him when he asks me to go and I don’t because I don’t really trust him?

I know he enjoys me even in my immaturity and is so proud when I step out as far as I can, but sometimes I know I let him down. I’m not always a faithful steward of what I’ve been given. But as I push my faith to the limits now, he’ll give me more faith and more insight, and one day I really will consistently see the lame walk under the touch of my hand. I would love to suddenly be blasted with a massive gift of healing and prophecy, and I am constantly praying for more faith and more anointing, but in the meantime I want to be faithful with what I have. My light might not yet be a full bonfire, but I refuse to hide it.

“His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.'”
(Matthew 25:21)

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Testimony Thursday: Rose Garden Encounters

On By CaitlynIn IHOPKC Life

Good news! I finally got to go on outreach again today. As soon as we got in the shuttle to head out, the leader said he felt God wanted us to break out of our routine a little bit. We prayed about where to go and two people felt God was saying “park,” so we went to this huge gorgeous park in Kansas City that I’d never been to before. Not many people were there since it was a Thursday afternoon, but we walked around for about an hour and a half and had some excellent conversations with people.

As we were entering a nice little rose garden area of the park, my group first met a woman who was tending a flower bed. She was a Christian, and we just got to encourage her in her walk with God and pray for her niece, who was going through a difficult situation with her parents. The woman was really blessed. Next, towards the back of the garden, we met another woman who had a back injury from work. We prayed for healing, and she was so touched that even though she wasn’t healed, she started crying as she opened up about all the struggles this injury had caused. We got to pray and speak prophetic words of love and hope into her life. God definitely touched her in a powerful way. We also talked to three other people and prayed with two of them, and definitely planted some good seeds in the third guy.

I heard snippets of stories from the other groups that showed God was definitely doing powerful things among all of us. One of our groups talked to an agnostic couple, and got to share the full gospel with them before getting shut down. Another group saw two legs grow out. According to our tally sheet, someone even got saved, but I didn’t hear the story on how that happened.

Last Friday at the FCF church service some of us were praying for one of the interns who was sick. She had had a fever all afternoon and evening and felt horrible, but was determined to stay for the service. We prayed, and within a minute or two it completely cleared up and she was fully healthy from then on out. I loved that, even though I think I was struggling with expecting God to actually heal her. As soon as she said she felt completely better, the first words out of my mouth were, “Are you serious?” But it really happened, and we were all so excited and turned it right around into praise.

God’s been talking to me a lot about building my faith. I’ve come to the realisation that faith is a gift, it’s not something I can work up for myself. I can’t do anything at all without God, not even have faith! My faith is small and weak, but all I have to do is keep stepping out and risking, and one of these days God’s going to break through and use me and my little weak prayers in a big way. It’s his job to use me and keep giving me those fresh baptisms; it’s just my job to keep making myself available whether or not I feel it. It’s a partnership, but as has always been the case with God and his people, his faithfulness more than covers my weakness. And he loves to partner with me whenever I step out! It’s not about me; it’s all about his Kingdom anyway. All he asks is willingness and that little mustard seed.

“So they remained for a long time, speaking boldly for the Lord, who bore witness to the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands.”
(Acts 14:3)

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Prep Rooms and Thursday Outreach

On By CaitlynIn IHOPKC Life1 Comment

Hey, guys! I’ve got a few more fun little updates for y’all!

As an internship, we’ve added a couple new optional things to our schedule that are really challenging but really amazing. One of them is “prep rooms.” Every night during our first hour in the prayer room, we set aside a couple of the small side rooms to crowd into and pray in tongues for an hour straight to prepare ourselves to go into the main prayer room. Almost all of the interns have their prayer language (and the ones that don’t will be getting one soon!) and we are being encouraged to put it to use, to really align our spirits with God’s Spirit. It really is a pretty beautiful and amazing gift; I don’t know what I did before I got the gift of tongues in 2009. Actually, I do know what I did—I continually hit a wall of where I couldn’t sustain prayer and would just run out of words. I LOVE being able to pray in the Spirit!

One of the other things we’ve added is regular outreach every Thursday afternoon on our day off. Some of the guys started doing this on their own early on, and in the past few weeks it’s grown to be an official IHOPKC*/OTI scheduled thing for whoever wants to come, headed up by a guy from IHOPU who works with the outreach department an is really anointed for evangelism and healing. I went for the first time last week, and it was pretty amazing. We did it “Treasure Hunt” style, which means on the way there we were all asking God to give us pictures of things to be on the lookout for, ie specific clothes, locations, etc. We went to a local mall and broke up into groups of two or three, so I was with a guy and another girl wandering with purpose around the mall looking for people to pray for. We got to pray for a lot of people, and although we didn’t see any healings or salvations, we definitely got to see God touch a lot of people.

The girl who was with us had “leather sandals” and “pretzel” on her list, so when we saw a woman with leather sandals standing in line at an Annie’s Pretzel shop, we stopped to pray for her. We decided to wait until she had made her purchase, so as we were standing there leaning over a railing on the second floor, I saw a girl below wearing yellow flip-flops. “Yellow sandals” were one on the items on my list, so I left my partners and hurried downstairs to find her. By the time I got there she had disappeared, so I walked around the corner praying for God to show me what to do, and right there was a different girl wearing pink and yellow sandals standing in line at a different Annie’s Pretzel shop! The “coincidence” was too much to pass up, so I waited for her to get her pretzel, then explained that she had been highlighted on our treasure hunt and asked to pray for her. She was pretty excited and asked me to pray for guidance for her. I did, and we were both blessed as I went back upstairs to discover that in my absence my two partners had prayed for the woman in the leather sandals, her back had gotten partially healed, and they received a prophetic word for her which brought her to tears! God is so good. I am so excited to go back next week and be even bolder in praying for healing and in preaching the gospel. I never have shared the gospel with a stranger before, and maybe this is finally my time.

*I’ve been trying to refer to IHOP as IHOPKC now, because since they recently settled the lawsuit from the International House of Pancakes, part of the agreement was that they transition to a new acronym. One of the interesting tidbits I learned in the full staff meeting last week–yes, I count as staff. I feel cool.

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