In 2000 my friend Chris and I were pastoring churches. We would meet halfway between our homes to pray with each other, encourage each other, and hold each other accountable to Christian living. We both felt convicted that we needed to get outside the four walls of our churches and into the communities where lost people were. Thus we began a period of more than a year in which we would get together in the same town and go out into the streets to be led by the Holy Spirit.
Early in this process, we were led to three different homes in one afternoon. At one home we learned that inhabitants were out of groceries. We went to a local grocery store, bought bags of groceries, and came back to deliver them. They welcomed our offer of prayer and before we knew it, people were coming out of the woodwork. There were about 15 people standing in a circle with us ready to pray.
At another home, we met a woman named Bernadette who had just finished her first day of a new job. She was required to wear black shoes for work but did not have any that fit her. Her feet were hurting because she had worn her daughter’s shoes. Needless to say, the shoes were too small for her. I needed to get home that day but Chris was staying in town a little longer. He took her to Payless Shoe Source and bought her a pair of new shoes that fit. He called me later and told me what happened. When he dropped her off at her home, she started to cry and said that we could come back and have a Bible study with her whenever we wanted. Interestingly, we had not even mentioned anything about a Bible study to her.
We began to go back and visit her on a regular basis. During a typical visit with her, we spent a significant amount of time listening to what was going on in her life while we mixed a bit of scripture into the conversation. One thing that was constant is that we always ended with prayer. During that time, the Lord taught me the truth of his word in Matthew 6:25-33 which states that we should seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all “these things” will be added onto you. In saying, all “these things”, Jesus was referring back to the earlier part of the scripture that tells us to not worry about what you eat or drink or wear. We found that as Bernadette’s spiritual life was put in order, her outward material life was put in order. Her house got cleaned up. She broke up with her deadbeat boyfriend. She moved back to her hometown in Mississippi. And sometime later she sent me a letter with pictures of her in a wedding dress in a church. She explained that she had met a Christian man and gotten married to him. She wrote that this time she had done things the right way.