Encountering God through Intercession

During the year, I led a prayer meeting centered upon praying through the Lord’s Prayer (Mathew 6:9-13). It was about 4 weeks long and great stuff happened. I wanted to share one testimony that happened during the course of those meetings.

We were centering our prayer around asking God to let His Kingdom come and His will to be done on earth (and Mesa!) as it is in heaven when a student came up. We had just asked God to touch student’s hearts and bring them to turn back to Him when Matt (name is changed to protect his identity) came where we were praying on the campus in front of the LRC.  I had known Matt only in passing having met him during one of our “on-tempo” meetings (our weekly large group gathering where about 20 students typically gathered). He proceeded to tell me that he had just found out that he was going to be a father from a relationship that he wasn’t even part of anymore. I was a bit thrown off and didn’t know whether he was a Christian even or not. I found out some more details and saw that this guy was a bit beat up as he was trying to figure out what to do.

As you should already know, I was facing the same choices that this guy was now facing about 7 years prior. Here he was going through his choices. He wasn’t with the girl any more, should he get back with her, is it even his kid, should he marry her, should he go through with having the child at all, and who knows what else (this is a list and may not be very accurate by the way). I was trying to figure out what to do and even was reminding this guy that he has responsibilities now. I felt a bit hypocritical but at the same time, I knew there is still a right thing to do even if I hadn’t quite figured it out back during my time. I actually shared with him about my journey and tried to encourage him to do and seek out the right thing.

I had a feeling this guy wasn’t really walking with God much, but could see that God was interacting with him and even using me. It was a crazy, but great place to be. He was openly confessing that God felt distant and He couldn’t hear from him. It wasn’t long before he mentioned a hip-hop song that he felt was coming to his mind lately that related to what we were talking about. What he said reminded me of this: “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and for the gospel’s will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul” Mark 8:35-36? So, before we knew it “on-tempo” was going to start. Before it started, I knew this guy was getting tugged on by Jesus and I wanted him to get touched. I challenged him to come to our group to hear from God and he decided to attend the talk. Amazingly, the very message we were learning from that night was from Mark 8 and consisted of the passage with those very verses we had just been discussing. At the end of the gathering I went to him and made sure to emphasize that it seemed God had been speaking to him.

It was amazing to see God pursue and bring broken students to Himself and even use another broken (but mending) person as His instrument. I have to say that I didn’t see any change or response come from Matt in responding to God that night. Yet, I do now.  Later I was stoked to find out that he was and is intentionally pursuing a relationship with his son and his ex-girlfriend. Matt didn’t run away or deny his child but is pursuing what seemed to be the right thing. I am proud of him.

Please join with me in asking for his heart to be completely soft to Jesus and following Him. Please pray for Him to find God’s will. Please pray for him to give his life up in the name of following Jesus.