Divine Appointments

On Friday night we hosted our second Friday Night Lights outreach. (For more information on Friday Night Lights check out my previous post entitled "Friday Night Lights.") I have greatly enjoyed both of these Friday nights. God has blessed us both nights with clear skies and decent weather. We have had a good team of people working together - working the grill, serving food, holding Peace Campaign signs, meeting and greeting people, ministering through music, "dj-ing", and setting up/cleaning up. We have also been blessed with a good turn out of neighbors. We have met neighbors whom we have never seen before, we have strengthened relationships with others, and we have discovered brothers and sisters in Christ. I give God all the praise for all of the above.

Going into this Friday night I told the other summer staff that I was going to pray that God would give me (& us) divine appointments on Friday night. I told them that I am convinced that when we ask God for opportunities to speak to others about Him, He always honors those requests. We just have to be ready and available to open our hearts and to open our mouths to share the love of Christ and the message of His love. He definitely honored my request for divine appointments this past Friday. Let me explain. Our ministry building contains a Community Technology Center that offers computer classes to adults & teens, and an internet cafe that provides access to computers. Over time, I have gotten to know some of the more "frequent" internet cafe visitors. Some of them I get to know by name, and others by face. I try to speak to everyone who comes into the office. On Friday afternoon I invited two of these "frequent guests" to come out to Friday Night Lights. They both took me up on it. During the course of the night I was able to have a separate conversation with each of them, Kevin and Anthony, about their faith background and about the person and work of Christ. Both of them were very open to conversing about Christ, and they come from diverse faith backgrounds (Catholicism, Islam, & Jehovah's witness influences). I am now praying that I might have an ongoing dialogue with them about the love of Christ when I see them and have an opportunity to interact with them at the center. God is good!

Another man came to the lot because he heard the music, and after listening to it intently discovered that it was gospel rap that was coming out of the speakers. A good friend of mine, Pastor Jay, had the opportunity to speak with this brother. He shared with Jay that he used to be a member of a gospel rap group, however he had left the group and had been living in "the far country." He recently came out of a drug rehabilitation program, and he asked Jay to pray for him that he would get back on track with the Lord and continue to live a life for Him. I watched, at around midnight, as Jay hugged him over the chain-link fence and lifted him and his family up to the Lord! That's God!


All of these conversations happened after 11pm, on a Friday night, in an empty lot, in what many consider to be "the hood." It is just a reminder that God is actively at work! The amazing thing is that He invites us to join Him in what He is doing. Let's continue to ask God for divine appointments, and then let's keep our eyes and ears open for how we might join Him in His Kingdom work.