There is no amount of blogging I could ever do that would bring justice to the shear amount of “moving” God has been doing in the last couple weeks. God has been so incredibly faithful, sharing his heart with me daily. If you have ever asked God to share his heart with you, you soon learn that it is a blessing, but isn’t easy. There are moments when I sought his “thoughts” and “heart” for specific people, and ended up in tears overwhelmed by his love. I always thought that it was near impossible to survive and feel all the feelings that girls seem to feel simultaneously, but now I know that God feels immensely more than women do.
God’s pain for people was felt long before I ever felt for them. These people first broke HIS heart. Somehow along the walk I got this idea in my head that I wanted to share my burden for these people with God. But then I realized the reason I am burdened is because God first shared his feelings with me. The weight of God’s goodness is intense, good, but intense.
A major part of how God is moving in my soul is found day to day in the relationships he has asked me to build. Often times we don’t even bother asking God what he wants us to do day to day, week to week, or even year to year, however, it’s even more rare that we expect God to tell us to “go ahead” with what we are doing. I visit a coffeeshop down the hill a few times a day. The owners are two young Indian women from the Punjab region in India. Breaking into their lives has been blessed by God. While sitting down and reading God has asked me to share parts of my life with them. We share meals together, in a sense breaking bread (samosas). It is over this relationship that God is breaking into their lives.
All too often in my life I try to do relationship on my own and I find God telling me “Let me do the work.” He is faithful in this too. One morning I felt God speak to me about these ladies. He used Mark 10 and the story of blind Bartimaes. At the very end of the story Jesus tells Bartimaes, “Go on your way.” This I knew, immediately, that God was blessing my endeavours with Sandeep and Coledeep. That moment has been fresh in my mind for two weeks now. Did God really tell me that my endeavours were blessed? Undoubtedly.
I believe that in those relationships I had finally given them over to God. He loved them first; they hurt Him first; He desired relationship with them long before I did. By giving them to God, it became God’s work through me to minister to them. I listened to God’s prompting better and walked in His truth through the relationships. It turns out that when you are closer with God you are more away of what the Spirit is doing in the lives around you. Further prompting guided me to share part of my story with Sandeep one evening. The Gospel was presented through my life, directly to her. Pray that Satan would not sweep in and steal the seeds being planted.
Often in the mornings, when the fog is still sitting through the treetops and over the houses in the city I get this sense that the work there is not finished. That God is planning something larger in their lives and graced me with being a part of His work. The process is like that of a puzzle. Some people get to do the edge, the easier parts, others put together sections of the middle. God has a big picture of their lives, He just let me do the edges.
We leave for Thailand on Friday and the excitement is simply tangible. The need for prayer is constant but already abundant. Praying really does change the world. Recently I walked past somebody in the coffeeshop. I felt the Spirit tell me I needed to talk to her. And so I created the space and time for it. The prompting, easily hidden under my love for meeting new people, had the potential to be ignored. But after speaking to her I asked the team to pray for her. Giving them no information we prayed. After all, if I heard God wrong, there’s still no harm in praying for someone you don’t know! I wrote up the things that God asked us to pray for her and mailed it to her. Having not received an email back for weeks, I left it with God in His hands.
Last night I received an email from her. She had received the note late because she doesn’t read her mail often. God spoke to her heart, down to the very marrow of her being. It came unexpected to her, but perfectly timed with what God was doing in her life. Prayer changes the future of the Kingdom.
–Thomas
ps. Here is a family picture with the Indian family. They asked me to the coffeeshop on Halloween to see their kids dressed up. 
It’s blurry because one of the husbands took it.
