I'm an answer to prayer

It is soooo cool when you see God use you as an answer to prayer. And even cooler when you see God's people living life as the church. I called one of my buddies today just to see how he was doing. We talked about a couple of things and then he shared some of the things that he had been struggling with. I just took time to listen and encourage Him. I then asked if I could be praying for him regarding anything specfic. he just told me to be praying that God would give him wisdom regarding his decisions. He then thanked me because I had been used as an answer to prayer. he was praying that he could find someone that would understand what he was dealing with or the things that he had been thinking about regarding life, ministry, school, and some other descisions. He said that it was even an extra blessing to have that call today - it happened just when he needed it the most.

thank you God that you use us in crazy ways. that you use us to impact each others lives and that none of your people have to live this adventure on our own!

Loving Neighbors = Lives Changed

God is working hardcore in Hope's (name changed out of respect) Life.

A bunch of months ago our passionate life group (small group on caffiene) ended up inviting Hope out to dinner - our treat. Our goal was to get to know our neighbors, build a relationship with them and share with them the unconditional love of Jesus through our lives. We had also heard that she was having a rough time. Little did we know God was going to use this dinner to radically impact a woman's life.
Hope had dealt in the past with the death of 2 husbands, had just broken up with her boyfriend, was living in an apartment attached to his house, was contemplating suicide, had the electric and utilites turned off in the house, did not have a job, was so depressed she wouldn't even go anywhere (in fact this was her first time out of the house in weeks), and so much more. After that night, Hope continued to hang out with us, came to our worship gathering on sunday mornings, would stop by the house frequently just to talk and share what was going on in her life and then quickly leave. Throughout these months you could see God working on her hardcore. She usually would refuse prayer (would not let us pray for her) but would still come by and talk. She actually would even invite people to worship with us on Sunday morning or just hang out with our community. One of those people was Jolly (an indian man from California who is not yet a Christian but finds community in our group) and the second was a family whose car broke down in front of our house (their 6 year old granddaughter has cancer and we have kept in touch with them).
Anyway, throughout this time you could see God working in her life but she was still struggling very hardcore. But recently, she had begun to let us pray for her (still slightly resistant), she went and did something nice for someone (said it impacted her life to be able to love someone like that), has been giving God credit/praise for the cool things that are going on in her life, and she thinks that someday God is going to use her for some big stuff (this is a big deal because she has always been very self focused.)

Recently, she has gone out to seek medical help, she was blessed with four new tires for her car (she had been driving on a spare for six months), wants help, is realizing that she must die to herself to be healed, is seeking out God, is beginning to understand that she does not have to live this life on her own (saw a picture of that in our church and another who was helping her out) and is thanking/praising God for all that he has done and is doing.

Keep praying for Her

Thank you Jesus!!!!!

Homeless Impact?

A couple of us guys were hanging out for "Passionate Life Group" (our small groups on caffiene) and we were talking about what we wanted to do as guys to encourage and challenge each other to live passionatly and radically for Jesus. As we were talking one of the ideas we came up with was to go and try to impact someones life each time we meet. The way we impacted their life can totally vary and these people would include people we know, people we don't know, people we run into, etc.

Anyway, as we were talking a very very drunk homeless man asked us for money because he was hungry, so we ended up taking him to arby's and buying him some burgers. The guy was very drunk: he was very scattered in his talk, didn't always make sense, switched subjects often, cryed, laughed, ran into walls and also the door at arbys. He told us he had been in prison, he told us he might not live through the night, that his girl was up north and he hadn't talked to his family in a long time, and that he was living in the woods near UC. We tryed to talk to him about Jesus but he seemed to like the president more - he avoided going into too much details on Jesus but spent a lot of time just talking.

I don't know why God set up this divine appointment but for whatever reason God gave us this opportunity to pray for him, impact his life, give him a meal, listen, and allow him to have fun (he kept telling us he was having so much fun).

God blessed this man with food, good conversation, a fun time, people to pray for him and gave us the opportunity to begin our group impacting someones life.

IT WAS INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!