God is Real

I got out of the car, iPod in hand, Bible open. It was time for worship. I strolled into the church, looking around at the different people standing outside and inside the lobby. My thoughts weren't even on what was going on - my eyes were glazed over with passion.

Earlier that day I had sat in on a guy speaking. His name was Shawn Bolz. And he brought it. That afternoon he taught all of us oldschool Pentecostals how to hear God accurately, and speak those words over people.

"You gotta realize that God speaks in parables," the 6-foot-something, 35-year-old single pastor from Hollywood spoke over the microphone, "and we're not supposed to just give that parable, we're supposed to interpret for them. That's like speaking in tongues without giving an interpretation, they won't understand what the heck God's saying to them!"

He waited for the mmmmm's and the ohhhh's to come from the crowd, and, giving a slight smirk, continued: "What's more powerful for someone - saying, 'I see an elephant, and he's coming to crush you, but God says jump on his back and ride it,' or 'You've been in a season of your life where you feel like there hasn't been a way out, but God is saying that He wants to use this situation to get you to where you need to go"? Or better yet, when you get the picture and a vague interpretation, start asking the Lord for a more specific interpretation. Ask Him for the first names of the people involved, the field of interest they're in, and ask them about it! Learn to hear God!" And then went on to demonstrate how this is done and we echoed it back to him. I was sitting forward in my chair, my legs going up and down like a dog wagging his tail, being filled with hope and passion.

The second I got out of that afternoon training time, I went and found the first person I could on the street of Meridian. He was a scruffy-looking hippy guy with a long beard and glasses. I pulled over. God said he's a man of power, and that he has more power over his current situation than he realizes. His eyes light up as I tell him this. "Yeah, I just got a DUI, and I dont' know what to do about this situation," he said, "Man, you just made my day!" I talked with him and walked beside him for a while as he shared more of his life and I told him about how God had impacted mine when I was addicted to drugs just a few years ago. I was pumped that it had worked so well.

I'm convinced that even if you completely mess up and get it wrong, thinking that God is speaking to you when you're not hearing Him at all, the simple fact that you want to bless people and love people, stepping out and being bold makes an impact on people. This is especially true when your motivation isn't "get people saved" - it's just having fun and revealing a supernatural God to those that don't really know about His existance and how He actually interacts with people and is real. And trust me, God is real.

That night at the church, I walked in and saw a woman with a cast on her arm. Her name was Molly. She told me how she had dislocated her thumb and it had caused her pain. I prayed for her. 25% gone. I called over my friend Sam. Sam has a lot of God inside of him, and it's really obvious. We pray together. Molly is in shock. The pain is completely gone.

She gets up on stage later (because I called her out to the pastor!) and says, "Not only was I healed," she holds up both of her thumbs, side-by-side, the tops of them level, "but one of my thumbs was half an inch shorter than the other one, and now they're both the same size!"

"Whoah!" I say, and Sam started his Holy-Spirit-drunken laugh. If God was real, He definetely showed it that night.