Tuesday, July 16, 2019 – Day 3 – Church Intensive Training – “Blessing”
Journal Entry
This is the word God gave me this morning – blessing. I thought I got it at 4:23 am, turns out it was 2:43 am, so I went back to bed. God joked, “We can meet whenever.” I told the Lord that blessing is pretty broad as I wondered where in His word He would send me. Genesis 12:1-3? Nope. I was then reminded of Psalm 34 (the Psalm from Sunday morning) and God said I would find it in there. I thought, “Blessing in Psalm 34? I don’t remember it.” The reality was that I could only remember “Taste and see that the Lord is good” but I could not even remember the second half of that verse.
Opening Psalm 34 again, I saw this:
Verse 1: I will extol (bless) the Lord at all times.
God said to me that we bless Him. I need to explore this concept some more. Now I thought I had it, but no …
Verse 8: Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.
Wow! How blessed have I felt these last few days? This is a spiritual blessing like Paul talks about.
Ephesians 1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
Blessings go both ways. We usually think of blessings in a physical way, but this week has been so much more than that.
Testimony from street ministry
In the afternoon we walked around the streets of the Tenderloin District in downtown San Francisco. This area is known for the many homeless people on the sidewalks and the open use of drugs without repercussion from the police. We had an hour to engage with people, looking for opportunities to pray with them and share the gospel. This is way out of my comfort zone. Fortunately, Denise and I walked around with Perry and Angie who had done this sort of thing before. We stopped to talk with a group of three men sitting on the sidewalk. Perry engaged one of the men, so I ask another if I could pray for him. His response was sharp. “No, you can’t f***ing pray for me! I’m gonna f***ing pray that you get the f*** out of here.” Well, that didn’t go the way I hoped. But since Perry was still talking, I continued to make conversation. The man really just wanted $2 so he could get some pot to help him with his knee pain. I shared how Jesus delivered me from my alcohol addiction, but he didn’t care to hear anymore. He told me to talk with Edwin, the guy sitting next to him. After a few minutes of conversation and some laughs, it was time to move on. Edwin (who was high or drunk) gave me a hug and his belligerent friend asked for help to get up. He too gave me a hug and we parted ways.
As we continued walking up and down the blocks, many people refused our offer to pray with them so Perry began to ask if we could bless them. This was always well received and we would pray a prayer of blessing over them. I didn’t clue in right away but conversing and hugging and asking God’s blessing upon these people really made them smile. We saw the joy in the faces of some people who had nothing. We blessed people and we too were blessed. Thank you, Jesus, for the laughter and the smiles of some of the most destitute. Once again, God clearly confirmed my word of the day.
