Friday Night Report
January 21st , 2005
We had about five people go out this Friday Night. We spent an hour soaking in the presence of the Lord before going out and we arrived at the Galyan’s parking lot about
Kate and I went over to a group of kids that were sitting on a rock wall. There were about 15 younger guys and 3-4 older adults. I walked right into the middle of them, said hi, introduced myself and started talking. A big guy behind me was perturbed that I was even there and he whips out a buck knife from his pocket. He just sits there, glaring at me, playing with this extremely sharp 4 inch bucknife. I was a little intimidated and then I remembered what Jesus said,
So I walked over to the guy, get a few inches from his face and say, “You don’t like me much, do you?” He looks at me sheepishly, avoiding my eyes and then scampers off to another group of guys. What he didn’t know is that Tommy,
Kate and I stayed with the group of younger guys. They asked us why we were there and I told them that we were asking the Lord for supernatural words of knowledge. They asked if we were psychics and we told them no, we are Christians. One of the big old boys in the group started to get all agitated. He told us that he was a Southern Baptist, a Christian and he didn’t think we should be doing what we were doing. He said that we should keep our religion to ourselves and leave everything at church. I told him that he was ignorant and didn’t know the Bible. I said, “If Jesus had kept the message inside the church, you and I would have never heard the Gospel. He went outside the church, like us”. This really started to tick him off and he walked away. I started calling him a chicken, saying that he should stay there and talk with us. I told him, “You’re not a very good Christian, are you?” This sent his blood pressure skyrocketing. He started telling everyone there that we were all cultish and possessed. He started talking about how great his pastor was and how great his church and the people in his church were.
I told him that I was a pastor and that if he were apart of my church, I would be depressed. He cussed me out to which I replied; “Now I know you’re not going to heaven!” This started him on an obscenity laced tirade against us, our church, our religion, healing, the power of God, etc. We had been speaking to the guys about the
Here’s the scene, 25-30 excited, angry young people gathered around mocking, cussing, jeering and taunting us. They are calling us every name in the book and the ringleader, our Southern Baptist friend won’t stop railing on us. I get Tommy and we kneel down to pray for the kid’s ankle. Before I start praying I tell the whole group, “Hey hush up, listen to me!” They get quiet for a minute and I continue, “We are going to pray for this guy, Jesus is GOING to heal him and every single one of you mocking devils is going to get born again!” This sent them into the stratosphere. Now, they are all angry, mocking, cussing and agitated. We begin to pray for the guy’s ankle and the only ting I can think is what David Hogan told us. He says that we Americans think that the situation has to be perfect for the Lord to move, that the “Spiritual Airwaves” have to be clear for God to do a miracle. He says that they regularly see the dead raised with witch doctors in the room! So I am glad that I have listened to David Hogan at this point…
Before we pray, I tell the kid with the hurt ankle that his pain and discomfort is on a scale from one to ten, with then being the highest and 1 being the lowest, his pain is at a ten right now. I ask him to demonstrate how he can walk. He trudges off, takes a few painful steps and has a major limp, we get him back over to the truck and we start to pray. I am begging the Lord to do something. If God doesn’t heal this guy, we could all get beat up! We pray for a minute or two. I feel nothing, but pray, “In the Name of Jesus, be healed!”
We tell the kid to check it out. He takes a few steps with a noticeable difference in his walk. We ask him to rate the pain and he says, “It’s a six or seven”. I ask him “Which is it? A six or a seven?” To which he replies, “A six”. I say, “Ok! 40% healing in two minutes, let’s pray again!” He comes back over to the truck and we start to pray again. This just ticked the whole crowd off and now they are really pouring on the language and curses. They are mocking us, telling us we are frauds, that the whole thing is fake, etc. We pray for a minute or two and tell the kid to check it again. This time, he walks with almost no limp at all! We ask him to rate the pain and he quietly answers, “It’s a 4”.
Two kids walk up to him and ask him if he is just putting us on, I mean, you’re faking it, right? The kid with the hurt ankle looks at them, perfectly serious and says, “No guys, it feels SO much better, there’s almost no pain at all”. In about one second, the entire crowd goes from full on mocking and ridiculing to complete and total silence. 25-30 people now are silent as a church mouse. I tell a couple other folks with us to pray for the guy’s ankle and finish it off, they go back to praying. Now, I have a captive audience. Where once they were mocking, now they are silent and ashen faced. They could not believe it! This guy was being healed right in front of their eyes! I start giving them the good news of the Kingdom. I tell them that Jesus is king and that He has all power over every sickness, disease and injury. I tell them that now they have proof! They have seen it with their very own eyes! I tell them that they must give their lives to Jesus and make Him Lord and King over their lives.
I look to the basketball coach and his wife and tell them, “This is real, you know that, right?” They say, “Oh yeah, we know it’s real. We go to First Baptist Woodstock”. I tell them, “You don’t see much of this kind of thing over there, do you?” They say, “No”. Them they start to tell the kids that their basketball player was hurt very badly before we started to pray, that he could hardly walk and then they tell the kids watching that they need to listen to me. About this time, they ask the kid how his ankle is and he rates it a 3. He says that there isn’t any more pain, just the ligaments are stiff.
Everyone there, the kid with the now healed ankle included is scared. They know that once this kid is completely healed, they are all going to have to get saved. So they start breaking up and walking away. Of course, we follow them a round a little bit and call them chickens. I go around telling them, “A deal’s a deal right? He gets healed and you all get saved, right?” The kid with the hurt ankle gets in his truck and takes off and most of the other kids scatter. But we are left there with a few kids. They are asking serious questions about Jesus. We spend the next 30 minutes or so preaching to them.
We didn’t pray with any of those kids to get born again that night but I can tell you this: 30 young people from Woodstock were confronted with the Gospel. They saw the power of the Gospel in action and they heard the good news about Jesus. In Acts it was those who heard and believed that were waved. Who’s to say they all didn’t believe and were born again? We don’t know yet…
