God speaks. Don’t believe it? I pray that this will help shatter a bit of that doubt. I have known and heard the Lord’s voice prior to training camp, but never to the extent that I have experienced it here. The Lord spoke to our group through a set of challenges and Shoeshine. Allow me to explain with the following story…
Each of the four teams arrived at the Atlanta airport. The leaders then gave us a challenge: in groups of eight, find the Atlanta safe house. Our group hopped on MARTA and, success! We arrived. Our next challenge: spend the night homeless in downtown Atlanta.
We hadn’t been given specific instructions about how to spend our night. Our group decided to pray that the Holy Spirit would lead us and speak to us so that we would spend the night doing what he wanted us to do. At the time, our group didn’t know how the Lord was planning to speak. We soon encountered an answer to our prayers…
As we walked and looked for people to speak to, we met a homeless man who called himself Shoeshine. As we spoke with him, he encouraged us to walk in faith and trust in God. He left almost as quickly as he had come. However, the impact and the message he left lingered long after his presence.
Our group looked at each other and just smiled. We thanked God that he would so obviously answer our prayers and speak to us through this joyful man. We were humbled that God would choose to encourage us through this man because, in our pride, we had expected to encourage the people we met. In his love, one of the ways in which God speaks to us is through people. I thank God that he used Shoeshine that night to help us remember this.
In his goodness and mercy, the Lord continually speaks to us. He pursues us. He is our shepherd and we are his sheep. He desires that we listen for and hear his voice. We then can walk in obedience. You are never too far away from God that he won’t reach you. He is near to you. The God of the universe speaks to us and expects us to hear his voice. I want to listen, don’t you?
