Answered prayer and many attacks of the enemy!

Wow, God answered many prayers this past week; while again, we are awaiting many other answers.  I have many kids that come in throughout the week, mostly 8-11 year-olds.  The drama in their little lives is amazing – so different from when I was a kid.  First off, many of them roam the streets from morning to night – from the library, to my place, to the splash pad/park, to stealing from the various stores (mine too) in the area.  That is their usual day.  One little 8 year-old usually spends the entire day with me.  I feed many of them breakfast and lunch.

What’s interesting is that I spent most of the winter/spring time ministering to many adults and some children; now it is mostly children.  We spend our days doing artwork, talking about character development, integrity, honesty, Jesus, etc.  I am seeing such a change in many of them.  One girl came in last week and told me how she realized she had done wrong by getting into a fight with her cousin and punched her – now she wants to go to her cousin and apologize.   Another couple of girls had a serious fight that has grown out of proportion – one wrongly accusing another of stealing (when she herself steals from others AND hides money from her family) from her when the first gave her money because she felt sorry for her.  An adult came in and said God gave her a vision and now she wanted to apologize to us and make amends (due to a few situations the past few months), and so on and so on.

God also answered in a big way last week when we had almost no food left in the cupboards or fridge – one of the ladies that comes in frequently came in one day last week with two gallons of milk saying she just joined WIC and had extra to share (we kept one at the store for the kids),  we went to the food pantry and got a few things, William’s brother gave us a few things and the biggest blessing of all, was that our neighbors who are just as poor as us, brought us several groceries – all within two days of each other!  Plus, last week, my pay from IWU just barely paid our car payment and got us caught up again on that.

On the side of still needing prayer answered:  William hasn’t worked in a couple weeks and we were on shut-off notice with the electricity at the store and we got it extended to tomorrow (that was a prayer answered – the extension); however, when William thought he had a job for today, showed up at 8:30, waited until 10 – the guy never showed up, he came home, tried another job lead and that didn’t pan out either.  There are still two others he is following up on, but as of today, we have no $$, almost no gas in the car, neither of the rents are paid and our phones are off due to lack of payment (I have paid on those phones for 10 years without ever being off).

We are still believing for healing over a guy that came in last week – he actually had a form of leprosy!  What’s even more amazing, is that when I told William of my encounter with the guy (I told him of our wonderful conversation, his other various diseases he was suffering from and how I prayed over him believing for healing; however, what I didn’t say was about the leprosy) when I came home that night, he went to prayer over many matters and God gave him a verse about laying hands on those with leprosy – we talked again the next day about God’s revelations to him (there were many) – I remembered how the guy had mentioned that, “If these sores on my body weren’t being treated with certain medicines, I would have leprosy.”  We both felt that God was telling us something very special – that night at prayer meeting, we went into spiritual warfare for this guy (I had told him about coming to prayer meeting every Sat. night, but he didn’t show) along with praying against the hinder spirits coming against us.  I believe that guy will come in again healed!

We know that God sent us here to minister to the people, which we are doing; however, we also know that there are hindering spirits trying to block us at every avenue – it has increased greatly the past month.  Just as Daniel had to pray and fast for 21 days (ch. 10) before breakthrough, we are seeing where we have to pray and fast more and for more specific directions in many areas – not just within the ministry house in dealing with the many kids that come in (some days there are over 20 in there), but with the music and art festival coming up in 3 weeks and the community garden we are trying to start.

The community garden has been a great frustration – I have many plants started on my front porch at the apartments still awaiting ground to plant.  From the beginning, it has been a fight – sure, we have had a couple people actually come to help bring some manure to the site, build a small area for compost; however, it has been a great struggle to get much more than that – including a tractor.  We finally had one guy say he’ll bring over his tractor and plow the ground, but as of this date we are still awaiting for that to happen.

William had an insight from God about the garden; in that (Is 9) harvest/planting – symbolism between community garden/spiritual warfare with what we are doing overall in this valley – water hard to get to the garden/flow of water – power of God needed for the harvest, tilling the hard ground to prepare the hearts – submitted to the Spirit of God to be used,  God is Lord of the Harvest – scripture – tilling the fallow ground – to hard to receive the seed – surrender the heart, church unwilling to do the hard work of repentance and prayer, death and dying in order to live, ground doesn’t soak up the water – heart needs to be flooded by the Holy Spirit, bread of life – life in soil (heart),  city taken over by witchcraft/greed, no one in church has courage to preach – hide behind closed doors, church looks to circumstances rather than what God is doing, hard times do not mean God’s hand isn’t on you – disciples/Paul – poverty, lack of money doesn’t mean lack of God’s favor, etc and etc.  There is a lot to expand upon in each and every one of those issues above.