Come Alive with Jesus, a beautiful new journal produced by Jesse and Kara Birkey, is now available here.
It was a typical hot, humid morning and my partner and I were responding to a woman with an unspecified injury. It was the first call of the day and sometimes that first call brings a little anxiety as I resume the role of a professional healthcare provider after a 48-hour break. But not on this morning. This particular morning my focus was on something different.
So there I was standing on a balcony overlooking an almost empty street in Madison Wisconsin, a microphone in my hand with instructions to share a testimony. A few college kids were milling about not really paying much attention to the strange guy clearing his throat.
Portion adapted from Life Resurrected, Extraordinary Miracles through Ordinary People by Jesse Birkey. Get the paperback or ebook version at www.reflectministry.com or on Amazon here.
I was standing outside of the fire station one bright afternoon minding my own business when a homeless man approached me. He made some very brief small talk and asked me if I would be willing to buy him a hotdog from the 7-11 across the street.
The gym can be a very interesting place. Many different people with many different personalities gather to attempt to get into some sort of shape. For the most part people keep to themselves and go about their business. But things get much more interesting when God points out someone who needs His love right then and there.
The thing about transparency is that you have to be willing to be transparent. Not just in the good times but also the bad. Maybe even the ugly. But I've found that God can do amazing things when we share our failures. Sometimes it’s our ugliness that helps people in the ways they need most.
What Do You Need the Most?
There are times when we approach someone ready to minister God’s love, that we are so sure we know exactly what that person needs the most. We see a need, whatever it might be, and determine it to be the most important thing.
Unexpected opportunities to minister the love of God can be challenging. For example, you pass an acquaintance in the grocery store and in an effort not to be rude you ask them how they are doing. You fully expect to get the standard, “Fine how are you?” response but instead they begin to cry and pour out their hearts. How do we respond to those situations? How do we shift our focus off of whatever we were do
For some of us the very idea of praying for a stranger is enough to make us sweat. For others, it’s the idea of praying for a specific need or illness that causes us to quake. Specific “mountains” that make us wonder if our God is indeed big enough.
It’s interesting how God seems to bring us opportunities to minister to others in the exact areas we’ve experienced pain and trauma. God builds testimonies in us for the benefit of not only us but for others who have experienced or are experiencing some of the same things.
One night I found myself in front of a man handcuffed and laying on the stretcher inside of my rescue (ambulance). He had been arrested for breaking a window when he found his wife with another man. He had cut his arm and required medical attention.
