All posts by Matt Bullen

Supernatural Secrets Part 1 from Mission Critical International on Vimeo.

[lightbox full=”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/d2dca10a-3f45-4e15-84e2-3ac41d306174-e1587403654686.jpeg” thumb=”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/d2dca10a-3f45-4e15-84e2-3ac41d306174-e1587403654686.jpeg” title=”Asia” /]
 
 

“You are permitted to understand the secrets of the Kingdom of God.” – Luke 8:10

Coming this week! I will begin to post videos of my 15-part series on Supernatural Secrets that I have taught around the world. See the trailer below.

Supernatural Secrets from Mission Critical International on Vimeo.

Mission Critical Crusades 2020 from Mission Critical International on Vimeo.

“Whenever the Holy Spirit sees an opportunity to glorify Jesus through you, He will take your entire being and set you ablaze with glowing devotion to Jesus Christ.” – Oswald Chambers

Read the beginning of the series HERE

When our precious Lord dropped that little African girl on our doorstep July 3, 2008 we sensed He was up to something big but never in a million lightyears could we have envisioned all that He has done this far.

Over the years Mercy Kandakai has changed our lives in more ways than we can count. She is a very big-hearted girl and we all have grown to love her more than can be expressed in words.

Stunning spiritual warfare that could fill its own book has surrounded her since she arrived in America but she has fiercely fought through it all and has arisen as a bright and shining light for Jesus.

A few Father’s Days ago she wrote me, “To the Best Dad. I Love you with all my Heart!! Words are inadequate to express my gratitude for you. Every so often I wonder what did I do to have such an amazing man for a Dad? You are such an inspiration to me, through you I’ve come to learn a lot about God’s Love. For that, I’m grateful. Thanks for always having my back. – Mercy”

Like every father of a daughter, I have prayed and prayed for the right man to come along to be a husband to my girl, but even I couldn’t have chosen a man as perfect as Bobby Peabody. Only Jesus… Mercy and Bobby knew each other as children in Liberia, Africa and then met up again a few years ago at college in Arlington, Texas. Bobby came to our big family Christmas gathering in 2016 and Lisa, all the adult children and spouses, and I fell in love with him. As we sat around the Christmas dinner table we all told Mercy, “Well Mercy, either you can have Bobby as a husband or a brother because we are keeping him!” We all laughed and rejoiced that God had answered another miracle prayer regarding our beloved daughter/sister, Mercy Kandakai Bullen.

Over the last 3 years Bobby has become like a son to me in every way. We have enjoyed so much together. Last spring we were blessed to serve together at a men’s three-day Christian retreat in Oklahoma and the Holy Spirit showed up in a mighty way. At one point, the MC announced, “If you have a father in the room and would like to show him a gesture of love, feel free to do that now.” Bobby jumped up and came to me and took my arm. “Come on Dad,” he said, and led me to the front of the room where he proceeded to take off my shoes and socks and he washed my feet. Rarely in my life have I felt so loved. Someday Bobby will have to tell his whole story and especially what God did for him that weekend. It was sweetly supernatural.

To say the least, I was crazy blessed and humbled to walk my beautiful Mercy down the aisle on July 27, 2019 and give her hand to Bobby in marriage. I know heaven rejoiced and did the Bullen family on this blessed day. With Lisa as the mother of the bride, Rebekah as maid of honor, Beverly as bridesmaid, Brooke as Bridesmaid, Misti, grandkids, Joy, Joseph, and Jacob assisting with the reception, Luke, Travis, and Oscar as ushers, our granddaughter Lily as the flower-girl and our grandson Maurice as the ring-bearer, and many many of our dearest friends present and serving selflessly, we could not have scripted a more beautiful or fulfilling wedding day if we tried. Only Jesus…

After a fabulous honeymoon in Hawaii, Mercy and Bobby came home and began preparing and this fall will be working with Rebekah and I doing three-day Christian retreats building servant leaders for the local church.

The Mercy miracles march on…

[lightbox full=”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Prayer-e1355358843757.jpg” thumb=”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Prayer-e1355358843757.jpg” title=”Prayer” /]

2 Corinthians 1:11 you also joining in helping us through your prayers, so that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the favor bestowed on us through the prayers of many.

The Bullen family and Mission Critical International is in awe of all that God has done in the last 10 years among the nations and we know that our prayer warriors have played a gigantic role in that and as we seek to impact the world for Jesus in the next 10 years we want first to say “Thank you!” and secondly to ask the Lord for many many more prayer warriors who will join us in asking Him to make His kingdom come among the nations through this ministry…

Click the button below to join our prayer team on Facebook and get immediate updates and prayer requests…

Facebook Prayer Team

And to build your faith and stir a fresh thirst for prayer in all of us, here are some encouragements from church history to pray…

Many if not every great move of God in the world began in a prayer meeting. From the pages of church history come some amazing stories of prayer meetings that God used to change the world beginning with the 120 in the upper room that culminated in Pentecost. I mention some of these prayer meetings below to illustrate.

-Moravian Prayer Meeting

[spacing amount=”10″ type=”bottom”]

Count Zinzendorf called the 300 Moravians living on his property together on the night of August 12, 1727, and they conducted an all night prayer meeting. The next day is referred to in history as “The Moravian Pentecost” (August 13, 1727) The Holy Spirit visited them in a supernatural blessing of love, unity, and power. They decided to form a 24/7/365 prayer meeting… They signed up for prayer slots around the clock, 3 praying together at a time every minute of every day… the prayer meeting lasted 110 years.

Six weeks into the prayer meeting Zinzendorf stood up and challenged their little band to go to the nations. The next day 26 of their group stepped forward and gave their lives to go to the mission field. Some of them were too poor to go so they sold themselves into slavery to get a free ship ride and to be missionaries to the slave trade.

In the first 28 years over 200 missionaries were sent out of a their little community of 600 people.

They excited a missions passion everywhere they went and inspired thousands to follow their example and go to the nations. They dramatically impacted such notables as John and Charles Wesley, William Carey, and many more.

-The Holy Club

[spacing amount=”10″ type=”bottom”]

John and Charles Wesley and later George Whitefield formed a prayer meeting when they were students at Oxford that became known on campus as the Holy Club. Later John was changed forever by his contact with the Moravians. Out of that Holy Club prayer group the Wesley’s ushered in the great awakening in England while George Whitefield along with Jonathan Edwards ushered in the great awakening in America.

-Concert of Prayer

[spacing amount=”10″ type=”bottom”]

John Erskine, a Scottish pastor in 1742 suggested a concert of prayer for Christ’s kingdom to advance to all the nations of the earth. In 1744 the Scottish leaders organized two years of concerted prayer at designated times for international revival. Word of this prayer concert reached Jonathan Edwards in America and he published a little booklet encouraging the colonies to join together in these prayer concerts. The great awakening and the American Revolution were the result.

-Union of Prayer

[spacing amount=”10″ type=”bottom”]

Following the above examples a movement of prayer began in Britain through William Carey, Andrew Fuller and John Sutcliffe—and other leaders who began what the British called “the Union of Prayer.” it was resolved to set apart an hour on the first Monday evening of every month, “for extraordinary prayer for revival of religion, and for the extending of Christ’s kingdom in the world.” Out of that prayer meeting came the Baptist Missionary Society and the beginning of modern missions.

At about the same time in America, Isaac Backus and Stephen Gano, along with twenty-three other New England ministers, distributed a circular letter in 1794, which called for a concert of prayer of believers to pray for a general awakening. Having been directly influenced by the First Great Awakening, they invoked the memory and authority of Jonathan Edwards, and agreed that, beginning in January 1795, two o’clock on the first Tuesday of the four quarters of the year would be set aside for a concert of prayer in support of the new awakening. This prayer concert would launch the Second Great Awakening… Out of the second great awakening came the modern missionary movement, the abolition of slavery, popular education, Bible societies and Sunday schools.

-The Haystack Prayer Meeting

[spacing amount=”10″ type=”bottom”]

Five Williams College students met in the summer of 1806, in a grove of trees near the Hoosack River, then known as Sloan’s Meadow, and debated the theology of missionary service. Their meeting was suddenly interrupted by a thunderstorm and the students: Samuel J. Mills, James Richards, Francis L. Robbins, Harvey Loomis, and Byram Green took shelter under a haystack until the sky cleared.

It was the first documented resolution ever made by Americans to begin foreign missionary work. In its first fifty years, the group that resulted sent out over 1250 missionaries. Today it has sent out nearly 5000 missionaries to 34 different fields, and it all began with five young men praying in a haystack.

-1859 Prayer Meeting

[spacing amount=”10″ type=”bottom”]

“In September 1857, a man of prayer, Jeremiah Lanphier, started a prayer meeting in the upper room of the Dutch Reformed Church Consistory building, in Manhattan. In response to his advertisement, only six people out of the population of a million showed up. But, the following week, there were fourteen, and then twenty-three, when it was decided to meet every day for prayer. By late winter, they were filling the Dutch Reformed Church, then the Methodist Church of John Street, then Trinity Episcopal Church on Broadway at Wall Street. In February and March of 1858, every church and public hall in downtown New York was filled.

“Horace Greeley, the famous editor, sent a reporter with horse and buggy racing around the prayer meetings to see how many men were praying: in one hour, he could get to only twelve meetings, but he counted 6100 men attending. Then a landslide of prayer began, which overflowed to the churches in the evenings. People began to be converted, ten thousand a week in New York City alone.

In America more than a million people were converted to God in one year out of a population of thirty million. Then that same revival jumped the Atlantic, appeared in Ulster, Scotland and Wales, then England, parts of Europe, South Africa and South India, anywhere there was an evangelical cause. It sent mission pioneers to many countries. Effects were felt for forty years. Having begun in a movement of prayer, it was sustained by a movement of prayer.

You can see why we are so grateful for your prayers and desperate for you to continue praying for this ministry.

God has bigger things for us and for you in store!

“Whoever welcomes one of these children in my name,

welcomes me.” – Jesus

Mercy’s House is Mission Critical’s outreach to orphans and children in need of education and homes on the continent of Africa. Our first project is a school in Monrovia, Liberia, the hometown of our beloved adopted Liberian daughter, Mercy.

We began in late 2015 with Mercy and Matt going to Liberia to see what God would have us do there. Then in early 2016 Mercy and Rebekah visited the land and we began building our school. Early 2017 Matt’s terrible accident brought a halt to Mercy’s House but then in early 2019 Matt and Rebekah visited Liberia and were reignited with a passion for this project. Since returning from Africa on January 10, 2019 we have been able to put in the dirt subfloor, concrete floors, and we have just finished the plaster and are ready to paint. We are praying for the next installment of funding ($5,000) to install the doors and windows but so much has already happened this year. Praise God!

“The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.”

– Ferdinand Foch

Read the beginning of the series HERE

When I awoke in that hospital bed in the ICU on May 4th, 2017 and began to understand how broken my body was and that I was nearly blind, one of the first things that came to my mind was, “Well Lord, I may not be able to preach ever again or go to the nations like I’m used to but I can still pray.” I lifted my right hand to my forehead in a salute and said out loud, “Yes Sir, Captain.” There was a great contentment in me at that moment but I couldn’t have known about the grand smile that must have spread across His Fatherly face at that moment because He knew that in 2018 I would set a personal record and preach on 4 continents in one year. How GOOD our God is and how unsearchable His adventures for us.

Of course, North America was the first continent in 2018 and my family and I were crazy blessed to speak at 8 different 3-day retreats with 6 different 3-day communities. Only heaven will be able to tell all of the God moments and life changes that happened at each and the life-long friends we have made but this may illustrate just two of the many stories sent to us of how God used these retreats to radically change lives. I was speaking at another 3-day retreat this month and a lady came up to me and showed me a beautiful tattoo on her otherwise clear forearm with the name and colors of her 3-day retreat last spring as she said, “This may give you a little idea of how your messages impacted my life on that weekend.” Wow! Only Jesus… Another young woman from that same spring retreat sat down with me last week and shared how she is going to graduate from university in May and found her own non-profit ministry and begin to go to the nations. Wow! Only Jesus… I am beyond humbled and blessed as I look forward to many more retreats in 2019. “Yes Sir, Captain.”

As I wrote in the last post, Asia was the second continent. Heaven only knows all that is coming in 2019 through those relationships.

Another thought that came to my mind that morning in the ICU was, “Well, I guess Project Shield, our safehouse initiative in Colombia for street girls, will never be finished because I’ll no longer be physically or financially able to lead the charge.” But God! Once again He must have smiled because the third continent I preached on last year was South America with my Pastor Frankie Mazzapica of Celebration Church of The Woodlands and God put a great desire on Frankie’s heart to take the lead in establishing the safehouse in Colombia! Praise God! Every two weeks he, other Celebration leaders, my dear Colombian friend Pastor Jordan, and our daughter, Ginary video conference together and plans are moving forward! Only Jesus…

Again as I lay in the ICU that morning I thought, “Well, I guess Mercy’s House, our partially built school project in Liberia named in honor of our Liberian daughter, Mercy Kandakai, will never be finished because once again I’ll no longer be physically or financially able to lead the charge.” But God! The fourth continent I was blessed to preach on in 2018 was Africa and I was able with my daughter Rebekah, friend and partner in Mercy’s House, Bruce Marshall, and director Pastor Martin Paye to visit the village where we were building Mercy’s House and meet with the chief and elders who assured me that Jesus raised me up from my deathbed just for their village because they need Mercy’s House to educate and disciple the next generation of their tribe. Wow! Only Jesus… Bruce came up with a brilliant plan where if we raise just $75 per student we can finish our school for 360 kids and change a generation and we are making progress! Only Jesus… You can keep up with all that is happening at Mercy’s House at www.mercyshouse.org

Look out 2019! “Yes Sir, Captain”

Emissary: A person sent on a special mission, usually as a diplomatic representative.

One of the things that delights my soul most is that our family gets to be the emissaries of those who love, support, and pray for us by going around the world on a special mission to bring the love of Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit and see lives transformed and hearts healed before our very eyes. It delights me that we get to be the representatives of those who help us go and to know that the fruit that we see abounds to their accounts in heaven as well. Last weekend was our 15th consecutive weekend of traveling and preaching around Texas and Oklahoma and dozens and dozens came to us with tears in their eyes saying that they will never be the same. It blesses my heart unimaginably that we get to be the emissaries of such love and that those, like you, who support us get to take part in that reward more than you will ever know until you get to heaven. Thank you Jesus for such an honor. Thank you to all of you! Please know that we are humbled and blessed beyond words to be your emissaries.

Love the Bullens

“Do you want to have a heart always on fire for God? Do you want to know the continuous anointing of the Holy Spirit? Are you anxious to be used in the service of your Lord? Would you always be aflame with the power of God? …Perennial revival is only possible where there is continuous brokenness of heart which comes from making it a point to be alone with God every day.” – Oswald J. Smith

Read the beginning of the series HERE

At the end of the last Aflame For God post I wrote, “We don’t know yet what the next chapter of Aflame For God will look like but we are confident that it will be MIRACULOUS!!! STAY TUNED!!!” How prophetic those words were!!!

Understandably we breathed a giant sigh of relief when the clock chimed midnight on New Year’s Eve 2017. It had been a crazy year of trials and miracles and we were ready for 2018, and though still in recovery and reeling some from the flood, we were excited for a new year. Then January 4, 2018 the Holy Spirit woke me up at 2:30 a.m. I prayed for an hour expecting to go back to sleep but at 3:30 a.m. I knew that wasn’t going to happen. A fire was burning in my soul to not quit, not give up, not assume that my only ministry now would be prayer for the nations. I got up, grabbed my laptop, and began to create a radical “Mission Critical To Do/Prayer List” for 2018. By 6:00 a.m. I had it finished and my heart burned so.

The item at the top of the list was a crusade in Pakistan. That had been the next place I was invited to go when I fell. In fact, two days before I fell, my son, Luke, and I sat on our balcony and he committed to go with me to Pakistan. So one of the things that I put together in my new late night list building was a budget of $12,000 to go to Pakistan. We had no money and no idea where it would come from but began to pray hard that God would allow me to preach for my first time on the Asian Continent in 2018. Rapidly, the money began to come it without us telling anyone but God and very soon we had $12,000! Then we began to realize that it would take more like $22,000 and sure enough more began to come in miraculously and my health and strength grew as well. I was so proud of my wife, Lisa, and daughter, Rebekah, as they wholly embraced this vision and began to work hard to bring it about. We put out a “fleece” to the Lord. “If our Pakistani Visas are approved we will know that this is Your will and Your plan.” Sure enough, quickly our Visas were approved. One morning as we walked into church a dear brother, Shaun Breeden, asked me, “Where are you going next?” I said, “Pakistan” He said, “J.J. and I are in! We’ll video document the trip and I’ll help fund it! Ok if I invite myself?” We said, “SURE!” Praise God!! Miracle!! The next week, through a series of miracles, we had lunch with a Facebook friend, Ruben Rasaili, from Nepal, a country that had been on our prayer list for years and while we were enjoying an anointed conversation during lunch, Ruben suddenly asked, “Nepal is close to Pakistan, why don’t you hop over and hold a crusade for us in Nepal?” We quickly crunched the numbers and realized we could do it! Long story short and numerous trials and miracles later we flew out on March 28, 2018, one week shy of a year from my nearly fatal fall and miraculous recovery to Pakistan! And then the next week to Nepal! BUT GOD!!!!!!

Oh how we prayed for a fresh anointing! We arrived in Pakistan at 5:00 a.m. on Good Friday and at 8:00 a.m. I was preaching to a packed church of Christians and the Sr. Pastor assured me that the sermon was being broadcast on their Christian television station, Isaac TV, to 47 countries. WOW! Praise Jesus. The grandest surprise came on Monday as we drove out to a more remote portion to preach a crusade among a 90% Muslim population. Imagine our thrill when we arrived and 6 men wearing black T-shirts with white letters which said “church security” escorted us to the open air meeting with AK-47s slung over their shoulders and as we walked rose petals rained down on us from all of the adjacent roof tops and people stepped out of the crowded passageway and laid sewn flowers around our necks. Nothing could have prepared us to step into the clearing and see upwards of 5,000 Muslims standing before a stage waiting to hear from us! I preached my heart out and my wife later said she could literally feel the Holy Spirit blowing across the crowd. When I asked them if they wanted to give their whole life to Jesus, all 5000 lunged forward with an audible gasp raising their hands to heaven. MIRACLE!!! The next night the same thing in another city, and the final night the same again. Only heaven knows all the little and big miracles that aligned to make this trip happen. The flames are spreading.

Next we flew to Kathmandu, Nepal then drove 7 hours through the Himalayas to a remote area and over the next several days preached among the Hindu “Ratcatcher” tribes of Nepal and once again the blessed Jesus surprised us with many many coming to Christ. Not reluctantly or skeptically but hungrily and eagerly. One day we were blessed to teach a whole church full of pastors that had come from as far away as India and the Holy Spirit moments are too numerous to name but suffice it to say that God took the trials of 2017 and turned it into the chance of a lifetime! Glory! Only Heaven knows what’s next…

Aflame for God 27 – Four Continents

“I will know by the gleam and glitter of the golden chain you wear, by your heart’s calm strength in loving, of the fire you have to bear. Beat on, true heart, forever; Shine bright, strong golden chain; and bless the cleansing fire and the furnace of living pain!” – Adelaide Proctor

Read the beginning of the series HERE

Early in January 2017 We met and all agreed that 2017 would be the year of miracles. We even made this video to share our heart’s dream… But we couldn’t have known…

In late January Levi and Rebekah headed to Zambia, Africa to minister and in early February I flew to Bogota for a 3 week pastor training and crusades in some of the hard places of Colombia. In June of 2016 my son-in-law Oscar introduced me to Carlos the head of outreach for YWAM in Colombia. Who said that he had many jungle pastors and smaller towns on the West coast of Colombia that needed help, but no foreign pastors they had asked where willing to go. Oscar said “Ha dad will go anywhere” and so we booked a trip for February 2017. The Holy Spirit flooded these meetings. We had an amazing time in the jungle training these pastors. Then came a huge city wide crusade in the big mountain town of Montelibano. They set up a large stage in the street on the first night we preached to over a 1,000 people in the street. Many gave their lives to Christ that night. The second night we preached to 1,500 people and the third night over 2,500 people showed and hundreds were saved or rededicated their lives to Christ. In total we shared the gospel with over 5,000 people in those 3 days. Brooke, Oscar, and I were bursting with joy and rejoicing at what God did in this city. Over the three weeks there, I was deeply convicted that this type of training and crusade program needs to be happening all over the world. This is my future plan for my part in Mission Critical. Thrillingly I was invited by 18 countries this year to do that very thing but then…

March was all about awesome and anointed Tres Dias retreats and getting Mercy’s House Liberia up and roofed. It was so thrilling to see the walls go up. When we got the roof on I was going to Liberia in May to hold crusades and see the project! I was also planning and praying for a trip in June to preach to tens of thousands in Pakistan, a pastor training and crusade trip to central Africa in August, and so on! But then… tragedy…

On Tuesday, April 11th, 2017 I left the house for a routine inspection of an office building to make a little money to help finance our ministry. I set up my ladder and then remembered that I needed to send the last $1400 to Liberia to put the roof on Mercy’s House. I pulled out my phone, opened the money transfer app, sent the money, put my phone back in my pocket and climbed the ladder. I don’t remember anything else but I fell sixteen feet and landed on concrete. Miraculously there was a lady there who saw and called 911. EMS had me to Memorial Herman Hospital in the Woodlands in 11 minutes but with all of my injuries the doctors told Lisa, my wife, I wouldn’t survive. Shattered face, 3 brain bleeds and a closed brain injury, 8 broken ribs, broken collar bones and sternum, busted shoulder, blindness, 3 broken vertebra, internal bleeding that eventually killed my spleen and part of a kidney and on and on… But God!!! My warrior princess wife, family and dozens of church, Tres Dias, and other brothers and sisters in Christ began flooding the hospital and prayers and messages began coming in from around the world. My son-in-law and daughter, Oscar and Brooke, flew in from Colombia, Mercy and her fiancee Bobby came down from Arlington, namely, the army of God showed up and began to pray a hurricane of prayer around me and very quickly “the tide of the battle began to turn.” I was out cold in ICU for 25 days battling pneumonia, sepsis, urinary infection, blood infection, a hemothorax lung , a pneumothorax lung and more but God’s army stayed with me and prayed continuously throughout those 25 days, Lisa posted prayers every day on facebook that electrified people around the world. My sister Michelle heroically guided Lisa through the whole process of dealing with the hospital. The people of God began giving tens of thousands of dollars to take care of me. Miracles!!!

On the night of May 3, 2017 the hospital told Lisa, “Please just put him in hospice and let him die.” She went home cleaned up and was in her prayer closet praying that God would wake me up when suddenly her phone rang and it was our pastor, Frankie Mazzapica. He had been supporting and encouraging my family through the whole disaster and he called to get the latest. Lisa told him about hospice and then said, “Pastor, if he would just wake up everything would change!” He said, “Well, we’ve seen God do many things in his favor already. Let’s pray he wakes up.” They prayed. Lisa drove to the hospital, walked into my room, and I opened my eyes and said, “Hello beautiful!” “She said, “It’s you! it’s really you!” I said, “Yes, why am I tied to this bed and where am I? BUT GOD!!! Miracle!!!!!! My doctor’s and surgeons rushed to see me and exclaimed, “Holy ________! Your a miracle! Oops excuse our language!” We all laughed. I was so happy to see my family and hear the amazing stories of all God had done to rescue me. A week later I went to rehab and 17 days later I came home to recover. I quickly improved so much that I was able to preach at my home church Celebration Church of The Woodlands on August 9, 2017 and people all over the world watched the video. Miracles!!!! Then… disaster again…

On August 17, 2017 Hurricane Harvey had pounded Houston until our kids came to our rescue and evacuated us to Willis north of The Woodlands. That night our house flooded with 5 feet of water and everything we owned in this world except a bag of close and laptop for each of us was destroyed. BUT GOD! Immediately our church and Tres Dias brothers and sisters began to help out and currently we are sleeping on a nice air mattress at our oldest son Luke’s house. There are now 5 adults and 5 grandkids 7-years-old and under living in a one bath house and we are having the time of our lives. I was blessed to preach at the second anniversary service of my daughter Mercy’s African church in Fort Worth and she gave me perhaps the sweetest introduction I’ve ever had. See it HERE. We don’t know yet what the next chapter of Aflame For God will look like but we are confident that it will be MIRACULOUS!!! STAY TUNED!!!

Aflame For God 26 – The Flame Spreads To Asia!

“You never have to advertise a fire. Everyone comes running when there’s a fire. Likewise, if your church is on fire, you will not have to advertise it. The community will already know it.” – Leonard Ravenhill

Read the beginning of the series HERE

January 1st, 2016 I spent New Year’s Day praying about what the new year would look like. 2015 had been so hard charging that I was sure 2016 would be more of a year of prayer and study and saving up money for another hard charging year in the future. Wow! Was I wrong! We started out the year with nearly no funds but I felt strongly that we should have a mission trip to Colombia in June and I had promised Pastor Ndagijimana the year before that I would come and do a large crusade in Rwanda in July of 2016 so I began to pray for these two and assume that not even those might happen this year. I made three prayer lists. 1. Daily Needs, 2. Crazy Prayers (BIG things like those two trips that I was asking God for), and 3. BIG HARRY AUDACIOUS Prayer List (Stupid crazy big things that I was asking God for but would’ve been embarrassed for anyone to know about). The spring went by quietly as I had suspected but we did get to financially help our friend Pastor Paye in Liberia put a roof on his church and get the plans and budget drawn up for Mercy’s House Liberia so that was good. Then God did some things so BIG and HARRY that they hadn’t even made it onto my BIG HARRY List!

The first thing God did was to gather together the largest mission team we had ever had to go to Colombia and for Lisa and I the biggest shocker was all of our children in the U.S. except Mercy were able to sign up for the trip and then God miraculously supplied their finances. It was mindblowingly awesome to arrive in Colombia and be met by Brooke and Oscar and our Colombian children Juan David, Ginary, and Heidy and granddaughter Adara. To stand in that airport with 8 of our 9 children and two grandchildren on a mission for God was craziness! We had a marvelous week with our sons Luke and Levi rotating everyday giving a wonderful devotion in the morning and then setting out for orphanages and street ministries to love and serve and share Jesus together. Our son-in-law Travis sharing his testimony with the children, and so many other things was surreal. Only God. It was heavenly! The crazy blessing of getting to stand at the top of a mountain overlooking Bogota and have this photo taken of all of us except Mercy, our daughter-in-law Misti, and some grandkids was unspeakably wonderful.

The 2nd mind blower God pulled on us began one night as we drove to go meet some precious friends for dinner. I had been praying hard for 18 months for this large crusade in Rwanda and we were now just 4 weeks away and I didn’t have a dollar to my name. It gave me a headache but as my wife drove us to meet this couple for dinner I messaged Pastor Ndagijimana in Rwanda and said, “I’m so sorry brother. I want to come so bad but I haven’t received the finances I have been praying for so I thought I should let you know now that I can’t come next month.” He almost instantly replied, “I’m sorry too. But I trust God. I’m sad though. There were many many people waiting for you to come.” I cried, pounded on the dash, and put my head in my hands. My wife said, “What’s wrong baby?” I told her and she said, “Well God’s timing is perfect. You did your best. That’s all He expects.” We arrived at the restaurant, had a wonderful dinner and then… our friends handed us an envelope and said, “This is really why we wanted to have dinner. Please open it.” Inside was a card that read, “Dream crazy dreams.” And inside was a check for $50,000 for our work in Liberia and Rwanda!!! My mouth fell open and I exclaimed, “What the heck?” They laughed. It was the most money I had ever held in my hand at one time in my life. We cried and hugged and headed home.

I quickly messaged Pastor Ndagijimana, “Hold it!!! A miracle just happened! Don’t cancel anything! I will be there!” He wrote back, “Praise God!!!” In a rapid series of other miracles my daughters Rebekah and Brooke, and son Levi were able to have provision and time to go and we flew to Rwanda July 13, 2016. Miracle!! We met with Pastor Ndagijimana the first day and he blew our minds with a status report of Mission Critical International Rwanda (MCIR). In the year and a half since Rebekah and I first came and began to back him Pastor Ndagijimana had planted 5 churches in different parts of Rwanda and the government had approved them as MCIR churches named Celebration Church after our beloved home church in the Woodlands, Texas. He had purchased two plots of land around Kigali, the capital city, for Mercy’s House Rwanda and we had crusades set up in each of these new churches and locations. Over the next three weeks so many miracles happened I can’t list them all. We preached and sang all over the country, hundreds upon hundreds were saved and over 100 were subsequently baptized. People were healed, land was donated, and on and on. When we got home we hired the contractor and started building Mercy’s House Liberia! Way bigger than anything on my BIG HARRY list… Yes…

The 3rd BIG HARRY was on my list. We had been praying for a year for our daughter Brooke to marry my best friend, now son, Oscar and God outdid Himself on August 20th, 2016 as our whole family once again traveled to Colombia, gathered in a quaint castle, and I was supernaturally blessed to walk Brooke down the aisle and then officiate at their wedding. Words can’t describe the joy and fun we had that day. A picture is worth a thousand words… Only God!

Aflame For God 25 – Miracles… Disaster… BUT GOD!

“A mighty flame follows a tiny spark.” ― Dante

Read the beginning of the series HERE

I started putting out prayer requests to let our prayer warriors know that I was going to Liberia in October. My friend Bruce Marshall called and said, “Mercy is going with you right?” I said, “Well brother, her passport is long expired and we have issues with her citizenship status and we don’t have time or money to get it all sorted out.” He said, “Matt! She has to go! Hire an immigration lawyer or whatever you have to do. I will pay for it. I will pay for her trip. She has to go!” I gulped and said, “Yes sir, I will get to work on it. Long story short, many crazy miracles came together for this trip. We had to fly her to Washington D.C. to get a Liberian passport. There were so many complications. Finally we found out that Mercy’s blood father’s brother went to law school with the deputy ambassador of Liberia. He heard about our situation. Walked into the embassy and said, “Just add a new page to her old 2007 Liberian passport and I will sign it.” And they did. By pure miracle we boarded the plane on October 8, 2015 which “just happened to be” her 21st birthday and we flew to Monrovia, Liberia! But the miracles were only beginning.

As we were preparing to go, Mercy reconnected with her blood sister, Olive through Facebook, and let her know that we were coming to Monrovia. We arrived in Monrovia and drove to a gas station out in the bush where Mercy’s blood family was to meet us. I will never forget the next few moments. Their SUV pulled into the parking lot and Mercy’s biological father, full blood sister, and two half-sisters piled out all smiles. We embraced with tears in all of our eyes. They kept hugging me saying, “Thank you for saving Mercy!” “Thank you for saving Mercy!” Then Mercy’s sister Olive came up and hugged me with tears in her eyes and said, “My American Daddy!” I thought my heart would burst out of my chest. What a beautiful night. But still more miracles were to come!

Later that week, we had a family reunion at Olive’s house and dozens of Mercy’s aunts, uncles, cousins, and other family members came but the most amazing thing was that her grandmother whom she lived with when she was a tiny girl came. Up until that day her grandmother had believed Mercy’s was dead. For years family told her that Mercy had “gone to America” to get well but her grandmother just knew that this was euphemistic for “she went to heaven.” When they met and embraced that night the angels in heaven must have been dancing and shouting. It was an amazing night. We ate and ate wonderful Liberian dishes and laughed and told many stories. The most memorable thing for me was toward the end of the night when the family had Mercy and me stand and they all lined up and came forward crying to hug me, thank me, and present me with gifts. Then they “gowned me” with the garb of a village chief and declared me an Honorable Paramount Chief of Kalabeh Chiefdom. But even more miracles were coming…

I knew that day in June 2015 when Pastor Martin V. Paye Sr. called me and asked me to preach a crusade and do pastor and youth seminars in Liberia that it was a message from the Lord but I couldn’t have known how thrilling each and every service would be. What a joy to stand on that stage night after night and see the people flood from the surrounding villages and neighborhoods to hear the gospel and then to see the altar packed each night as hundreds came to trust in Jesus. Each day we would visit a different school and share Jesus with the children, hold pastor seminars and youth seminars. The Spirit moved in power and I was overjoyed to be a part. Thank you Lord!

When Rebekah and I were in Rwanda in January we felt led along with our brother Ndagijimana to start a school and call it Mercy’s House in honor of our precious daughter Mercy. Now in Liberia I shared this thought with Pastor Paye and he was all in. God had already supplied $10,000 to buy the land in Rwanda for Mercy’s House and now Pastor Paye told me about some land in Monrovia that would be perfect for a Mercy’s House. As I held little orphaned Liberian children in my arms as they came to hug on me every day, I knew we had to do this! We finished our trip and went back home praying that God would allow us to open a school in our daughter’s home town named after her. Quickly after arriving home we went to Colombia for another wonderful mission trip and then shortly after God provided the money for the land in Monrovia. Mercy’s House was on the move to become a reality. Praise God! CHARGE HARD INDEED!

Aflame For God 24 – BIG HAIRY AUDACIOUS GOD

“Reckon then that to acquire soul-winning power, you will have to go through mental torment and soul distress. You must go into the fire if you are going to pull others out of it.” — C.H. Spurgeon

Read the beginning of the series HERE

In early 2014 I was sitting in my recliner ordering plane tickets for a preaching tour of Colombia in April. My daughter Brooke, who was working full time and in nursing school came over and sat on the arm of my chair and said, “Hey dad, I want to go to Colombia with you.” I said, “Don’t tease me like that, I would love for you to go.” She said, “I’m serious! I have the money. Please order my plane ticket.” And so I did. We flew to Colombia in early April and met our translator Oscar, whom Brooke had never met. The next three weeks were some of the most miraculous of my life as we preached all over central and northern Colombia. In one of the crusades in Bogota, I preached with an evangelist from Switzerland. After one of my sermons he said, “That is the most powerful message I have ever heard. Are you on TV or the internet?” I said, “No sir.” He said, “You will be. The world will hear from you.” I immediately sensed that God was showing me that this was my personal mission critical from now on. You can read my journal of that precious time HERE. Brooke was so blown away by the Holy Spirit on this trip that she came home, quit her job, quit school, and moved to Colombia full time. Not only that, Brooke and Oscar, my translator and best friend, fell in love on this trip and were married August 20, 2016 but I’m getting ahead of myself 🙂

Brooke began working first in a wonderful orphanage in Medellin, Colombia with our dear sister Enith Diaz, whom I call the Mother Teresa of Colombia. God supernaturally anointed Brooke as she moved into this orphanage at 20 years of age speaking only a tiny bit of Spanish in a place where noone spoke any English and within a few months she was completely fluent in Spanish with a perfect accent. Miraculous! Brooke worked there a year touching scores of lives and then moved to Bogota to work for Mission Critical on our Project Shield. Read her miraculous stories HERE!

We had another wonderful Colombia mission trip in September 2013. God continued to tug at my heart for more crusades around the globe and my phone began to blow up with requests for me to come to all 5 occupied continents. So far I had only been going to Colombia but I knew there was more to come.

In November of 2014 our daughter Rebekah had to come home from Zambia on an emergency medical flight. She had been suffering with pneumonia for months and the antibiotics they were giving her at the village clinic wasn’t helping. She could have died. She lay on our couch for 6 weeks as her mom nursed her back to health. One night in late December 2014 we were sitting on the balcony of our apartment talking and praying and she said, “Daddy, you have to come to Africa with me! I want you to see my orphanage and meet my children, you have to preach for Pastor Mbewe, meet Pastor Tendai, and we have to go to Rwanda and preach for Pastor Ndagijimana! Africa seemed to me as far away as the moon. I had never even crossed the Atlantic! I quickly figured out a budget of what it would take to do all that she asked. “Rebekah, it would take $10,000 to do what you are saying.” I said. She replied, “That’s OK Daddy. God has $10,000. Let’s pray right now.” I sheepishly bowed my head and she prayed so boldly that God would give us $10,000 soon so we could go. Then she lifted her smiling face and said, “There Daddy! We are going to Africa!” I gulped and said, “Yeah, great, sure.” We didn’t tell another soul about that conversation and yet two days later a man mysteriously wired $10,000 into my bank account!!!! We quickly bought our tickets and left for Africa in mid January 2015! Oh the miracles! Oh the crusades! Oh the joy! Below is a summary video of that historic trip.

Things began to really explode in 2015! The Holy Spirit put two words on my heart over and over again… CHARGE HARD! And we did. Rebekah and I came home from Africa, spoke at a Tres Dias retreat, then headed out for more crusades in Colombia. Then we went to Belize and preached a week long crusade in the dump on Ambergris Caye! Wonderful moves of God. Then we went back to Colombia with a mission team. Oh what a glorious trip. We went on to Medellin where we were blessed to speak in the one of the most dangerous prisons in the world! The fire fell! We came home and I received a call from a pastor in Monrovia, Liberia Africa, our daughter Mercy’s birth town. “Matt, would you please come and preach a crusade and do a youth rally and pastors training?” I instantly replied, “Yes! I have been praying for 7 years that God would let me go see my daughter’s birth home! October? Yes I will be there… Oh my! God was ramping this ministry UP!!!!

Aflame For God 23 – Mercy’s House

“The furnace of affliction is a good place for you, Christian; it benefits you; it helps you to become more like Christ, and it is fitting you for heaven.” — C.H. Spurgeon

Read the beginning of the series HERE

In the midst of this dark time I was driving one day to go preach and my then 20 year old daughter, Rebekah, was riding with me. She could see the devastation on my face. She turned to me and said, “Daddy, please don’t be so sad.” I said, “Sorry sweetie, I’m trying.” Then she said something so anointed by the Holy Spirit that it changed my life forever. She said, “Daddy, remember, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego didn’t see Jesus until they were in the furnace and Daddy, seeing Jesus is worth the fire.” It hit me like a brick! I knew she was right! We had experienced Jesus during this dark time like we never had before and Jesus is worth the fire! I was immediately healed of my discouragement. When I arrived at the place I was to preach I told them, “open your Bibles to Daniel chapter 3” and I preached a powerful message called Jesus Is Worth The Fire. I finished the sermon with the last verse of Daniel chapter 3 which is verse 30 “Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to even higher positions in the province of Babylon.” The furnace is for promotion! The only thing that burns is your bonds! You are thrown in tied up but after the Fourth Man appears your bonds are loosed and you walk out without the smell of smoke on you! This was perhaps the most prophetic sermon of my life and I have preached it all over the world. Our furnace was the launching pad for our greatest most miraculous season of ministry we have ever seen so far.

Rebekah moved to Inner City Los Angeles to work at the Dream Center for a year and quickly rose through the ranks to become a leader there. At 21 years of age she became the “Adopt A Block” leader for Nickerson Gardens, the largest government housing projects west of the Mississippi. God used her mightily there. You can read her blogs from that time HERE. I continued traveling regularly to Colombia, preaching and rescuing orphans. In January of 2012 I decided that I would take one whole day with a yellow legal pad and pen until I could come up with what I thought God wanted me to spend the rest of my life doing in one sentence. After praying and crying all day and writing, writing, writing I stepped outside to prayer walk around the apartment complex. At one moment while praying I stopped, looked into the night sky and said out loud, “Lord, I just want to know what Your mission critical is for me!” I froze. That’s it! That’s what the name of our ministry will be. I ran inside and searched to see if Mission Critical International had already been used as a ministry name and it looked clean! Later that night I identified my one sentence mission critical… “Passionately pursuing Jesus on His mission among the nations and mobilizing others to join us in this thrilling adventure!” That Spring I flew to L.A. to spend a week working in the streets with Rebekah. It was one of the most thrilling weeks of my life and we founded Mission Critical International that week. We worked one night trying to come up with a logo for the ministry with no success. I climbed into one of the bunkbeds in the Dream Center for a good nights sleep and I had a dream and saw our current logo on a billboard. The next morning I excitedly grabbed my Macbook and created what I had seen in my dream. It is precious to us. My son, Luke was so excited when I shared with Him what the Lord had showed me in L.A. He and I worked and worked to develop our website we have today.

2013 was a year of much sickness for me but God was preparing me. He was keeping me hungry for Him. I spent a third of the year in bed and finances were at an all time low but it was the beginning of the promotion for sure. In January Rebekah 24 at the time came to me and said, “Daddy, I know you love Colombia but God is calling me to Africa!” I said, “Great! That makes sense since He gave you an African sister. That has been on my mind.” She worked hard and God provided and she left for Zambia, Africa in February 2013 to live in the bush with no running water, no electricity, and help establish an orphanage! She fell in love with the people, the country, and the continent. She lived there two years. Read her miraculous stories HERE!

Our daughter Brooke, 17 at the time spent the summer in Colombia working in an orphanage. You can read about her experiences HERE.

I was planning in early October 2013 to travel to Bogota, Colombia on a mission trip with my oldest son Luke. My dear friend Bruce surprised me with an invitation to Newport Beach, California the first weekend of September to wed his two precious daughters in a dual ceremony atop a 300 foot long yacht in the harbor. The first of many miracles began when I stood at the altar of Celebration Church of the Woodlands and my pastor, Frankie Mazzapica prayed over me for healing and I never spent another day in bed after that. Then Lisa and I were at the airport getting ready to leave for Newport Beach. We knew God had to be our source because we only had $11.00 to our name, didn’t know how we would finance our stay in Newport Beach, where the money would come from to go to Colombia in 3 weeks, and more. While we were waiting in line to get on the plane I received a message from Colombia that there was violent rioting throughout the country and maybe we should’t come. We took a deep breath, asked the Lord to take over, and walked onto the plane. Everything miraculously worked out and we had a glorious trip to California and then Luke and I traveled to Colombia together and teamed up with a wonderful translator I had met on a previous trip named Oscar Useche. Read all about it HERE. We spent a week in the orphanages and then Oscar said, “I have pastors from 4 churches asking me to have you come and preach while you are here.” I said, “Great! Let’s do it. So Luke, Oscar, and I went to 4 churches in two days. I preached a sermon that God had blown my mind with a few weeks before as I was reading Mark chapter 2. The sermon was entitled The Recipe For A Miracle and God used it on this trip in miraculous ways that I had never before experienced. Whole crowds would flood to the altar at the end of the sermon weeping and crying out loud to God in desperation for Him. The anointing was so obvious that the pastors said, “Please, come back and do a trip that is just preaching crusades!” And so we started praying and planning for such a trip to be scheduled in the spring of 2014.

Spiritual and financial miracles were happening all around us and we begin to see that we were being “promoted to even higher positions in the province of Babylon.”

Aflame For God 22 – Global Evangelism Explosion

“Love is perfected in the fire of God.” – Samuel Chadwick

Read the beginning of the series HERE

Totally unbeknownst to us, my worship leader of our church I pastored was currently and had been for years systematically sexually abusing his two teenage adopted daughters, one of which was our son’s (who was away in the Navy) girlfriend. She eventually cried out to him and then to me, I discreetly confirmed everything, and then brought in law enforcement to investigate. Once he and his wife got wind of the fact that I knew the truth, the war was on! I convinced them to bring the 16-year-old daughter who had cried out to me to stay with our family and after dropping her off they fled the city. They of course were very popular in the church and launched a campaign of lies to try and cover for this horrendous sin and they successfully convinced many of the church of his innocence and that she was a rebellious lying girl and that I was totally in the wrong. It was nightmarish! The battle was terrible! Our church disintegrated before our eyes. I was out of a job as a pastor by late spring of 2010 and our family went through a terrible time. Law enforcement pursued them and eventually after years of evading it the whole story came out finally and the other daughter was rescued.

But back to the girl that they dropped on our doorstep… For the first three months she had such horrible night terrors that she would scream and try to throw herself out of windows and fight us and then pass out and then rise up to fight again. We took every mattress in our house and placed them on the living room floor in a circle around the mattress that the girl slept on and we all slept in the circle around her. Many nights frankly we sat up all night reading the scripture or singing Agnus Dei around her. After 3 months she finally had a breakthrough and settled down to a happy life in our family. After she turned 18 she married our son and they gave us 2 of the most beautiful granddaughters. Sadly, her demons still plague her horribly and she left him over a year ago to be a lesbian and now lives with another woman. We currently have our granddaughters living with us.

But back to the spring of 2010 right in the midst of this battle… Lisa (her first trip) and I went to Colombia in April, 2010 and were able to spend a week with Heidy and another girl Ginary. It was precious and magical and we made great progress in their adoptions. But the war was far from over. Shortly after we returned from Colombia, the turmoil in our home was so great that our African daughter Mercy couldn’t take it and ran away. She was gone for 1 year. Our world stopped turning. The government canceled our adoptions in Colombia. We had our last church service the next Sunday and closed the church down that next week. It was a terrible time… The darkest time of our lives… We lost everything. We lost our adopted children, we lost our house, we lost all of our possessions, we lost our health, and worst of all we lost most of our friends. But we knew we were in God’s will and we kept swinging.

I was dead inside but the only thing I knew to do was keep following Jesus and so I made 3-4 more trips to Colombia taking dozens of people and God poured out His Spirit and many lives were changed. Eventually we were blessed to help over 35 orphans get adopted into Christian homes in Houston, Texas, Praise God! You can read about these miracle stories HERE. I preached everywhere and God blessed mightily. We worked many Tres Dias weekends and we saw many miracles. But our family struggled terribly during this time. For two years I prayed that I could just go to heaven. I was tired of the war…

Aflame For God 21 – Jesus Is Worth The Fire

[lightbox full =”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Pray-Bold-copy.jpg” thumb=”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Pray-Bold-copy.jpg” title=”Pray Bold” /]

Be surrounded by prayer warriors. Someday YOU will NEED them…

MY MIRACLE

 
See previous posts in this series
 

Wow! How could I have known that when I started writing this blog series a few months ago I was about to personally experience the greatest prayer miracle of my life? But not my prayers, oh NO! rather the mighty prayers of my warrior princess wife, my warrior kids, my amazing pastor and his family and our church, my precious Tres Dias Ministry brothers and sisters around the state, and thousands of friends and family around the world. They prayed oh so very BOLD prayers on my behalf and God so tenderly heard them and literally saved my life. Praise Jesus!!!!

This April 11th, 2017 I went to do a commercial building inspection to make a little money to help fund our ministry. The first thing I needed to do was inspect the roof which was 16′ high so I extended my ladder to full height, put my camera strap around my neck, and climbed to the edge of the roof. That’s the last thing I remember…

As I am told now, I fell 16′ and landed on concrete on my left side. Miraculously there was a young woman named Renee eating her lunch in her car nearby which was totally unplanned because she usually brings her lunch to work and eats at her desk BUT that day she forgot her lunch and so drove and bought some and was eating in the back parking lot (where no one usually is) and saw me fall. If God hadn’t placed her there I would have died there in just a few minutes. She called 911 and the EMTs got me to the hospital in 11 minutes. My now hero Dr. Timothy Hodges, trauma surgeon spent the next 8 hours working on me “putting out fires in my body” as he says. I had extensive internal bleeding, 3 brain bleeds, 8 broken ribs, my whole face was shattered with scores of fractures, 3 broken vertebrae, a Hemothorax lung, a Pneumothorax lung, dead spleen, partially damaged kidney, damaged colon, and later we found out partial blindness in my left eye and total blindness in my right eye.

My family rushed to the hospital and began to pray! Soon over 40 Christian brothers and sisters flooded the ICU waiting room that first night and prayed! Doctors told my family to prepare themselves because there was no way I would survive this. But they prayed! The next morning Dr. Hodges was shocked to find me still alive when he came in. I ended up with pneumonia, sepsis, a urinary tract infection, and a blood infection. I lay unconscious in that ICU for 25 days. My wife Lisa and my daughter Rebekah rarely left my side. My pastor, other pastors, and many friends and family came every day to pray over me. Many drove from Dallas and other parts of Texas. My daughter and son in law, Brooke and Oscar, were flown in from Colombia by my daughter Beverly, my daughter Mercy and her fiancee, Bobby came from Dallas and stayed, my mother and brother and family came from Missouri. A mighty wall of prayer surrounded me and rose up to heaven and pulled me back from the edge of death. Messages came in from around the world where I have ministered of people praying for me. One day my wife received a message from the radio host of an underground Christian radio station in Pakistan assuring her that 2.7 million Christians in Pakistan were praying for me!

Not only prayers but funds came in from precious brothers and sisters everywhere. Tens of thousands of dollars for medical bills came in. People would bring my family so much food and waters and Gatorade as they camped in the ICU waiting room day after day that my wife began to distribute the extra among other families with a loved on in the ICU and then she would go around and pray for each of them and share Jesus with them. Mighty miracles began to take place in that ICU with me and with others. Some of my Tres Dias sisters went way beyond in helping Lisa to protect me and to get me the best possible care. Others created artful fundraisers with a theme from one of my sermons of the past “But God…” It was beautiful the love, prayers, and help that was poured out on us.

Finally on May 3rd, 2017 the doctors told my wife she needed to put me in hospice to die. I just wasn’t going to get any better. She said,”ok but we are praying that he will wake up…” The next morning she had gone home to shower and change and was kneeling in her prayer closet begging God to wake me up when her phone rang and our pastor, Frankie Mazzapica said, “tell me what’s new.” She explained about hospice and that she was kneeling in her prayer closet praying for me to wake up. Pastor Frankie prayed over the phone that I would wake up. Lisa drove to the hospital, walked in my room and I said, “Good morning beautiful!” I was wide awake and my mom was holding my hand. Everyone started coming to see me and I knew each one and I was so happy to hear how I got there and that God had raised me up!!! I was moved the next day to a new room in the hospital and then a week later to Rehab to learn to walk and talk and such and in 3 weeks I was so back to normal that I got to come home!!! On the day I woke up when Dr. Hodges came to see me I took his hand in my two hands and said, “Thank you for saving my life.” He cursed accidentally and said, “YOU ARE A MIRACLE! sorry for my language” and then left. We laughed and praised God!

I’ve been home 5 weeks. Have loved attending church and many precious friends coming by and my pastors encouragement and time with my AMAZING family. Still praying for my left arm to work again and my right eye blindness to heal but filled with unspeakable joy because it is obvious that I will be strong enough soon to preach again and someday to travel and minister again and God did it all in answer to the promise that He loves, He hears, and He answers bold prayers!

 
[quote]”Every time you pray the tide of the battle turns” – Frankie Mazzapica (Psalm 56:9)[/quote]

A big thank you to our dear friend and ministry partner, Shannon Arnold, for prompting this series…

[lightbox full =”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Pray-Bold-copy.jpg” thumb=”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Pray-Bold-copy.jpg” title=”Pray Bold” /]

Become a prayer expert. Study prayer and prayer warriors.

Most importantly PRAY

One of Satan’s greatest strategies in my life is to downplay the importance of prayer and I have a suspicion that he works similarly in your life as well. As a defense against this diabolical ploy, I maintain a full quiver of books, quotes, and stories about prayer to remind me that prayer is vital and indispensable to my life.

Here are some of the voices that continually remind me of the importance of prayer, the deadly soul destroying dangers of a prayerless life, and help me drown out the lying voices to the contrary.

 
[quote] “The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray.” – Samuel Chadwick[/quote]

[quote]”Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.” – Oswald Chambers[/quote]

[quote]”There is no power like that of prevailing prayer, of Abraham pleading for Sodom, Jacob wrestling in the stillness of the night, Moses standing in the breach, Hannah intoxicated with sorrow, David heartbroken with remorse and grief, Jesus in sweat of blood. Such prayer prevails. It turns ordinary mortals into men of power. It brings power. It brings fire. It brings rain. It brings life. It brings God.” – Samuel Chadwick[/quote]

[quote]”We give too much attention to method and machinery and resources, and too little to the source of power.” – J. Hudson Taylor[/quote]

[quote]”It is in the field of prayer that life’s critical battles are lost or won.” – J.H. Jowett[/quote]

[quote]”Prayer is the first thing, the second thing, the third thing necessary to a minister. Pray, then my dear brother; pray, pray, pray.” – Edward Payson[/quote]

[quote]”Praying men are the vice-regents of God; they do His work and carry out His plans.” – E.M. Bounds[/quote]

[quote]”Oh, for determined men and women who will rise early and really burn for God. Oh for a faith that will sweep into heaven with the early dawning of morning and have ships from a shoreless sea loaded in the soul’s harbor ere the ordinary laborer has knocked the dew from the scythe or the lackluster has turned from his pallet of straw to spread nature’s treasures of fruit before the early buyers. Oh, for such.” – Homer W. Hodge[/quote]

[quote]”No learning can make up for the failure to pray. No earnestness, no diligence, no study, no gifts will supply its lack.” – E.M. Bounds[/quote]

[quote]”Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons, but they are helpless against our prayers.” – J. Sidlow Baxter[/quote]

[quote]”Satan does not care how many people read about prayer if only he can keep them from praying.” – Paul Billheimer[/quote]

[quote]”0h brother, pray; in spite of Satan, pray; spend hours in prayer; rather neglect friends than not pray; rather fast, and lose breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper–and sleep too–than not pray. And we must not talk about prayer, we must pray in right earnest. The Lord is near. He comes softly while the virgins slumber.” – Andrew Bonar[/quote]

[quote]”Satan trembles when he sees the weakest Christian on his knees.” – William Cowper[/quote]

[quote]”As is the business of tailors to make clothes and cobblers to make shoes, so it is the business of Christians to pray.” – Martin Luther[/quote]

[quote]”True prayer is measured by weight, not by length. A single groan before God may have more fullness of prayer in it than a fine oration of great length.” – C.H. Spurgeon[/quote]

[quote]“What the church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use — men of prayer, men mighty in prayer” – E.M. Bounds[/quote]

[quote]”You are only ONE PRAYER away from a totally different life.” – Mark Batterson[/quote]

Suggested Further Reading: What Happens When Women Pray, by Evelyn Christenson>

 
See previous posts in this series
 
A big thank you to our dear friend and ministry partner, Shannon Arnold, for prompting this series…

[lightbox full =”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Pray-Bold-copy.jpg” thumb=”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Pray-Bold-copy.jpg” title=”Pray Bold” /]

Borrow the faith of prayer warriors of the past and then PRAY BOLDER

Hebrews 12:1 (NLT) Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.

Someone once said that testimonies are so powerful because when we hear them we are able to borrow from the faith of those people for our own situation. I love that. One of the greatest inducements in my life to keep praying bold are the many stories from history of bold prayers that changed the world because I know that God is no respecter of persons and He will answer us in similar fashion if we will cry out as the saints of old did. Here are some of the stories that keep my soul fire burning brightly.

Moravian Prayer Meeting – Count Zinzendorf called together the 300 Moravian refugees he had allowed to live on his property on the night of August 12, 1727, and they conducted an all night prayer meeting. The next day is referred to in history as “The Moravian Pentecost” (August 13, 1727) The Holy Spirit visited them in a supernatural blessing of love, unity, and power. They decided to form a continuous prayer meeting. They signed up for prayer slots around the clock, 3 at a time praying together in their little chapel every minute of the day and night. That prayer meeting lasted unbroken for 110 years.

Six weeks into the prayer meeting Zinzendorf stood up and challenged their little band to go to the nations. The next day 26 of their group stepped forward and gave their lives to go to the mission field. Some of them were too poor to go so they sold themselves into slavery to get a free ship ride to be missionaries to the slave trade.

In the first 28 years of the prayer meeting over 200 missionaries were sent out of a their little community of 600 people.

They excited a missions passion everywhere they went and inspired thousands to follow their example and go to the nations. They dramatically impacted such notables as John and Charles Wesley, William Carey, and many many more. Oh! that we could catch a little of that Moravian fire!!!

The Holy Club – John and Charles Wesley and later George Whitefield formed a prayer meeting when they were students at Oxford that became known on campus as the Holy Club. Later John was changed forever by his contact with the Moravians. Out of that Holy Club prayer group the Wesley’s ushered in the Great Awakening in England while George Whitefield along with Jonathan Edwards ushered in the Great Awakening in America. Countless souls were swept into the kingdom and the world has never been the same! Oh God! Meet us today and draw us to BOLD PRAYER!

Concert of Prayer – John Erskine, a Scottish pastor in 1742 suggested a concert of prayer for Christ’s kingdom to advance to all the nations of the earth. In 1744 the Scottish leaders organized two years of concerted prayer at designated times for international revival. Word of this prayer concert reached Jonathan Edwards in America and he published a little booklet encouraging the colonies to join together in these prayer concerts. Soon followed the American Great Awakening and ultimately the American Revolution. More than any other thing our nation and the world today needs Christians to join together in a concert of BOLD PRAYER to God.

Union of Prayer – Following the above examples a movement of prayer began in Britain through William Carey, Andrew Fuller and John Sutcliffe—and other leaders who began what the British called “the Union of Prayer.” It was resolved to set apart an hour on the first Monday evening of every month, “for extraordinary prayer for revival of religion, and for the extending of Christ’s kingdom in the world.” Out of that prayer meeting came the Baptist Missionary Society and the beginning of the modern missionary movement. What He did for other He can do for us!

At about the same time in America, Isaac Backus and Stephen Gano, along with twenty-three other New England ministers, distributed a circular letter in 1794, which called for a concert of prayer of believers to pray for a general awakening. Having been directly influenced by the First Great Awakening, they invoked the memory and authority of Jonathan Edwards, and agreed that, beginning in January 1795, two o’clock on the first Tuesday of the four quarters of the year would be set aside for a concert of prayer in support of the new awakening. This prayer concert would launch the Second Great Awakening! Out of the Second Great Awakening came the modern missionary movement, the abolition of slavery, popular education, Bible societies and Sunday schools.

The Haystack Prayer Meeting – Five Williams College students met in the summer of 1806, in a grove of trees near the Hoosack River, then known as Sloan’s Meadow, and debated the theology of missionary service. Their meeting was suddenly interrupted by a thunderstorm and the students: Samuel J. Mills, James Richards, Francis L. Robbins, Harvey Loomis, and Byram Green took shelter under a haystack until the sky cleared.

It was the first documented resolution ever made by Americans to begin foreign missionary work. In its first fifty years, the group that resulted sent out over 1250 missionaries. Today it has sent out nearly 5000 missionaries to 34 different fields, and it all began with five young men praying in a haystack.

“In September 1857, a man of prayer, Jeremiah Lanphier, started a prayer meeting in the upper room of the Dutch Reformed Church Consistory building, in Manhattan. In response to his advertisement, only six people out of the population of a million showed up. But, the following week, there were fourteen, and then twenty-three, when it was decided to meet every day for prayer. By late winter, they were filling the Dutch Reformed Church, then the Methodist Church of John Street, then Trinity Episcopal Church on Broadway at Wall Street. In February and March of 1858, every church and public hall in downtown New York was filled.

“Horace Greeley, the famous editor, sent a reporter with horse and buggy racing around the prayer meetings to see how many men were praying: in one hour, he could get to only twelve meetings, but he counted 6100 men attending. Then a landslide of prayer began, which overflowed to the churches in the evenings. People began to be converted, ten thousand a week in New York City alone.

In America more than a million people were converted to God in one year out of a population of thirty million. Then that same revival jumped the Atlantic, appeared in Ulster, Scotland and Wales, then England, parts of Europe, South Africa and South India, anywhere there was an evangelical cause. It sent mission pioneers to many countries. Effects were felt for forty years. Having begun in a movement of prayer, it was sustained by a movement of prayer. What are we waiting for???!!! Let’s PRAY BOLD!

 
[quote] “Each prayer is like a seed that gets planted in the ground. It disappears for a season, but it eventually bears fruit that blesses future generations. In fact, our prayers bear fruit forever.” ― Mark Batterson[/quote]
 
[quote]”Prayer is the mighty engine that is to move the missionary work.” — A.B. Simpson[/quote]
 
[quote]“When we depend upon organizations, we get what organizations can do; when we depend upon education, we get what education can do; when we depend upon man, we get what man can do; but when we depend upon prayer, we get what God can do.” – A. C. Dixon[/quote]
 

Suggested Further Reading: The Passion For Souls, by Oswald J. Smith>

 
See previous posts in this series
 
A big thank you to our dear friend and ministry partner, Shannon Arnold, for prompting this series…

[lightbox full =”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Pray-Bold-copy.jpg” thumb=”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Pray-Bold-copy.jpg” title=”Pray Bold” /]

Pray Desperate, Pray Daring, With Or Without Words Just Keep Praying

Psalm 34:6 (NLT) In my desperation I prayed, and the lord listened; he saved me from all my troubles.

1 Samuel 1:10, 12-17 (NLT) Hannah was in deep anguish, crying bitterly as she prayed to the lord… As she was praying to the lord, Eli watched her. Seeing her lips moving but hearing no sound, he thought she had been drinking. “Must you come here drunk?” he demanded. “Throw away your wine!” “Oh no, sir!” she replied. “I haven’t been drinking wine or anything stronger. But I am very discouraged, and I was pouring out my heart to the lord. Don’t think I am a wicked woman! For I have been praying out of great anguish and sorrow.” “In that case,” Eli said, “go in peace! May the God of Israel grant the request you have asked of him.”

Romans 8:26-27 (NLT) …the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.

I believe the most important thing we can bring to our prayers is desperation. I believe nothing touches the heart of God like our desperation. I have preached a sermon all over the world called Recipe For A Miracle. It is the most favorite sermon the Lord has ever given me. I wish I could preach it to every person on the earth. I contend in this sermon that the recipe for a miracle is three ingredients, 1. Desperation, 2. Daring, 3. Divine Encounter. I illustrate that these three can be found in every miracle in the Bible including the greatest miracle ever, the cross.

Every answered prayer is a miracle and I believe these three ingredients are critical to praying BOLD and sometimes words don’t suffice to express desperate prayers. Hannah’s prayer follows this pattern. 1. She begs God out of her desperation. She’s so anguished Eli thinks she’s drunk. 2. Her desperation drives her to make a daring bargain with God. 1 Samuel 1:11 And she made this vow: “O lord of Heaven’s Armies, if you will look upon my sorrow and answer my prayer and give me a son, then I will give him back to you. He will be yours for his entire lifetime, and as a sign that he has been dedicated to the lord, his hair will never be cut.” And what was God’s response to that BOLD bargain? Samuel, Israel’s greatest prophet who anointed Israel’s greatest King, David, the ancestor of Jesus Christ! WOW!! That’s quite an answer!

Some prayers are so desperate that words fail. Praise God in those moments the Holy Spirit Himself groans with us. I love the story of the four men carrying the paralyzed man in Mark 4:3-5 & 11 Four men arrived carrying a paralyzed man on a mat. They couldn’t bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, (DESPERATION) so they dug a hole through the roof above his head.(DARING) Then they lowered the man on his mat, right down in front of Jesus. (DIVINE ENCOUNTER) Seeing their faith, (WORDLESS PRAYER) Jesus said to the paralyzed man, “My child, your sins are forgiven… Stand up, pick up your mat, and go home!” MIRACLE!!! These stories are all over the Bible! The woman with the 12-year hemorrhage in Mark 5 has no words nor friends to carry her to Jesus. She’s so DESPERATE, having spent all she had on doctors who couldn’t heal her, she claws her way through the crowd (DARING) and grabs Jesus’s robe (DIVINE ENCOUNTER) and is instantly healed! MIRACLE!!!

How about the blind man in Mark 10:47-52 When Bartimaeus heard that Jesus of Nazareth was nearby, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (DESPERATION) “Be quiet!” many of the people yelled at him. But he only shouted louder,(DARING) “Son of David, have mercy on me!” When Jesus heard him, (DIVINE ENCOUNTER) he stopped and said, “Tell him to come here.”
So they called the blind man. “Cheer up,” they said. “Come on, he’s calling you!” Bartimaeus threw aside his coat, jumped up, and came to Jesus. “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked. “My Rabbi,” the blind man said, “I want to see!” And Jesus said to him, “Go, for your faith has healed you.” Instantly the man could see, and he followed Jesus down the road. MIRACLE!!!

Is it possible that we are way too dignified, distracted, doubting, or indifferent for a miracle answer to prayer? God help us! Someone once asked me how to get desperate if we aren’t. I thought about that for awhile and I think first a great need will make us desperate, also fasting helps make me desperate, but also picturing what could be if I will pay the price of travail before God makes me very desperate. How many times those whom Jesus healed must have dreamed and hoped beyond hope of being healthy again.

From the time my wife and I met our freshman year of Bible college and married the next summer at 19-years-old for me and 18-years-old for her we had dreamed of having a family of warriors for Christ making a difference in the world. We read literally hundreds of books, listened to literally hundreds and hundreds of cassette tape sermons and Bible studies, we taught and trained and worked in the Lord’s vineyard and prayed for our 6 children and did our best to pass on our faith and passion and vision for shaking the world for Christ. We gave everything we had to Christ’s mission (you can read our story HERE) and yet in 2013 it appeared that this vision was as impossible as walking on water. First, we had lost everything and everyone through church splits, unbelievable Satanic attacks on our family, the financial collapse of 2008, and battles that we took on because we knew we couldn’t look the other way and still name the name of Christ. Second, I had spent a third of the year in bed with terrible Lupus flare ups. Third, many of a our children were bitter, cynical, and wanted nothing to do with church or ministry again. One daughter was a missionary in Africa with another ministry but another daughter was estranged from the family and another daughter was running around with a very bad crowd and becoming a girl we didn’t recognize and another daughter married a man that year that none of us knew was a meth addict and five months after their wedding he went to prison for a long time and she crawled into a bottle to deal with the pain and ended up in jail and one son was away in the Navy and made it clear he was never coming back and for sure he was never working in ministry again. And fourth, the stress and discouragement of it all caused my wife to retreat into a depression that also took her health.

From one perspective, it could’ve appeared that Satan had won and that God’s promises had failed us. But another thing was also happening. Something I believe Satan is quite frustrated at today. We were becoming CRAZY DESPERATE. And that desperation was driving us to be CRAZY DARING in our prayers and in our actions. We got mad at the devil. We threw caution to the wind and began to run after God like never before, we got ahold of the hem of His robe and refused to let go. We gave our kids to God and began to put every minute and every dime and all of our energy into pushing out the borders of the kingdom of God into dark places. I would get on a plane every 90 days wether the bills were paid or not and go preach the gospel to desperate people. Lisa and I began to spend more and more time in prayer and we began to pray crazy prayers. I remember stomping around the neighborhood at night wrestling with God like Jacob at Peniel and many times I had no words at all. I would walk for hours just saying, “Oh God!” or “Mighty God!” or “Come on, Lord!” I didn’t know what else to say. I’m grateful the Holy Spirit was saying it or groaning it for me.

In the fall of 2013 our oldest son and I had a supernatural trip to Colombia. God met with us in ways I don’t have room to tell you about here but neither of us have ever been the same. Today he and his wife are an integral part of our ministry. In the spring of 2014 our youngest daughter and I had a crazy supernatural trip to Colombia. She had a DIVINE ENCOUNTER that so transformed her life that she came home, quit college and her job, and went to Colombia full time as our missionary. On that trip she also met my dear friend and translator and a deep friendship developed between the two of them. They were married this last August and God is using them in ways my wife and I never dreamed we would live to see! In the fall of 2014 in the midst of putting her life back together our middle daughter went to Colombia with my wife and me on a supernatural trip and recommitted her life to pursue Christ among the nations. She and her family is a huge blessing to our ministry today. Also, while we were on that trip our daughter who was formerly estranged from the family came home and we have had the sweetest relationship ever since. She is now serving in our ministry and also serving in a church in the DFW area. She is nothing short of a miracle and our inspiration for much of what we do around the world. In the winter of 2014 God miraculously called our daughter in Africa home to give herself to our family ministry around the world. She is a mighty warrior princess for Christ and a powerful leader in our family and ministry. My wife and I watched in awe as God answered our desperate prayers in ways we hadn’t even imagined. I was thrilled and grateful beyond words but anytime someone mentioned our son in the Navy and when was he going to come home and join the family ministry I would shake my head and say, “No, that one will never happen.” He was extremely successful and loved what he was doing and he had made it abundantly clear that he loved us but he would never put himself through the pain of working in ministry again. BUT GOD! In the fall of 2015 through a series of Book of Acts like miracles and Damascus Road revelations, God made it clear to this last son that he needed to come home and join the family ministry. Wow! Words cannot express the inexplicable joy that we have experienced this year as we have traveled the world with these amazing children of ours on God’s mission. Many a night this last son and I have sat on our balcony and laughed and talked about the crazy things God is doing for us and through us and he always says, “Dad! Look at the crazy lengths God went to to get me home working in this ministry! I’m so glad I didn’t miss out on this.” This Sunday he will be preaching in a church in the bush of Zambia, Africa… DESPERATION + DARING + DIVINE ENCOUNTER = MIRACLE!

 
[quote] “The Kingdom of Heaven is not for the well meaning; it is for the desperate.” – James Denney[/quote]
 
[quote]“The condition for a miracle is difficulty; the condition for a great miracle is impossibility.” ― Angus Buchan[/quote]
 
[quote]”We pray not out of discipline, but out of desperation.” – Paul E. Miller[/quote]
 

Suggested Further Reading: Breakthrough Prayer, by Jim Cymbala>

 
See previous posts in this series
 
A big thank you to our dear friend and ministry partner, Shannon Arnold, for prompting this series…

[lightbox full =”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Pray-Bold-copy.jpg” thumb=”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Pray-Bold-copy.jpg” title=”Pray Bold” /]

Pray, Record, Rejoice, Pray Bolder

Psalms 116:1-2 (NLT) I love the lord because he hears my voice and my prayer for mercy. Because he bends down to listen, I will pray as long as I have breath!

David says quite tenderly that his love for the Lord and his commitment to pray is significantly bolstered by the fact that God hears and answers his prayers. I know exactly what he means. One of the most encouraging things you can do and one that will become an impetus for bolder praying is keeping a prayer list and marking down the dates when those prayers are answered. Oh my goodness! I can’t count the times I have gone back and looked at my old prayer lists and realized that God had answered some HUGE prayer request but in my frail humanity I had already forgotten that I prayed for it or at least that I had written it down. And oh! the joy and the upbuilding of my faith when I go back and read those old prayer lists and see all that God has done. It makes me want to pray all the more and it makes me want to PRAY BOLD because I know He hears me and He answers.

When our children were young we had a spiral notebook in which we wrote our family prayer requests. We would sit down periodically, review the former prayer requests, write down the answers that had come, pray over the ones not answered yet, and write in the new requests on a fresh page with that day’s date. It was stunning how specifically and supernaturally God would answer those prayers. Eventually it was many pages long and we would go back and just rejoice in seeing the crazy answers God had given. Our children didn’t have to be convinced that God answers prayer. They witnessed it firsthand! And talk about life impact! Many of the dreams/prayers we wrote in that spiral notebook we are living today.

On January 1, 2013 I wrote out 6 items in my Evernote App that for the most part seemed totally impossible to me at the time but were heart desires that I wanted to ask God for in 2013. I wrote them, closed the app and frankly forgot all about that note. I didn’t see it again until December of 2013 and I’ll never forget the way my heart leapt into my throat when I ran across it again because God had stupendously and miraculously answered each one and I had forgotten that I even wrote them down. My oldest son Luke and I did have a miraculous mission trip to Colombia together that forever changed both of our lives. On that trip was born the idea for our current Global Evangelism ministry. Also on that trip we cemented our relationship with a young man by the name of Oscar Useche who is now my son-in-law and our director of Mission Critical Colombia. And Rebekah did go to Zambia 2 months later and lived there for 2 years and was instrumental in establishing an orphanage that is changing the lives of children every day and gave us the idea for Mercy’s Houses all over Africa. I love the Lord because He hears my voice…

Well, you can bet I have made a similar list at the beginning of each new year since and you can bet that they have gotten larger and bolder… much BOLDER. And you can bet that God has and is answering them in stupendous ways. On January 7, 2014 I wrote a list of 21 things I desperately wanted from God. Not all of them have been answered yet but some of the most outlandish ones have been answered in vastly more outlandish ways than I even asked for. There were names of some of my children on that list who at the time were VERY far from God with only one word “Awakening” written next to their name. Praise our blessed Savior!!! They are all on fire for God and working with us in the ministry today. MIRACLE!!! OUTLANDISH CRAZY MIRACLE!!! I can hardly type right now for the tears in my eyes. I love the Lord because He hears my prayer for mercy… In 2015 I named the list “My Crazy Prayers 2015” (See Photo). You can see the answers in bold type next to the prayer request (PTL is Praise The Lord). The requests with nothing after them are as yet unanswered… I love the Lord… He bends down to listen to me…

I have 4 Evernote prayer lists going right now called “Personal Prayer List”, “2017 Prayer Budget”, “Crazy Prayers”, and “BIG HARRY AUDACIOUS PRAYERS” (BHAP)… You don’t get to see the last three. Those are for our (superlatives fail me) God’s eyes only! I can tell you that the BHAP prayer list starts out like this, “Written on October 15, 2015 on the porch in Liberia looking out at the sea…” I can tell you the Crazy Prayers list starts out, “Written on the balcony of Dian Fossey Hotel, Rubavu, Rwanda July 20, 2016.” I can tell you that the 2017 Prayer Budget is over a half million dollars and that $36K has already come in this month for projects in South America and Africa solely by prayer alone. The answers are not all about money either.

The miraculous money answers are just easy to cite but He has healed people, saved people, dramatically called and sent people into the mission field, literally saved lives that were about to perish, paid the rent at the last moment straight out of the blue on numerous occasions, and on and on solely by prayer. And He has done it in ridiculous ways that can’t be explained apart from answered prayer. So even having 4 prayer lists with each one escalating in ridiculousness, God gave my wife and me a wonderful gift this year that was so crazy it didn’t even dawn on me to ask for it or to put it on any of those lists. That gift was our entire family, minus one daughter and one daughter-in-law, ministering together on the same mission trip in Colombia in June. He even answers prayers we haven’t thought of or don’t have the faith to pray.

I hope you know I am only sharing these things because I want YOU to PRAY BOLD. We’re dumbfounded and humbled by what God is doing in our ministry and family and we never ask for money except from the Lord. No one has ever seen these prayer lists until now, not even my wife. But I knew when I started this blog series that I would have to show some of them because He deserves the glory!!!! We also have a journal that we sit down as a family and just like back in the day review previous requests, marvel and rejoice at the answers, write down our new requests, pray over them (sometimes this gets pretty wild, lots of tears, agonizing, and lasts a long time), and then we charge ahead trusting Him to carry our burdens. I have prayer notifications on my phone that go off everyday at 7:00 a.m., noon, and 9:00 p.m. that remind me to pray for certain people or things on other lists. And at the end of every day I wish I had prayed more. I plead with God to make me a mighty man of prayer because I know that the greatest need of the thousands of people I love is more of Jesus.

Many a night as I fall asleep, I can see my wife’s candle flickering under the prayer closet door and I know she is shaking heaven’s door off the hinges. Many a morning when I awake, I can see her candle flickering under the door and hear her cries for God to move on our behalf and I know craziness is about to ensue. I’ve watched God answer so many HUGE prayers for my daughter Rebekah that I tease her, “Please, just don’t ever pray against me about anything!” In January 2016 our son Luke stood up at a Mission Critical meeting and said, “We just need to write down every crazy thing we want to do for God this year and pray and believe it.” And we did and God heard and gave us the best year of our lives. When my daughter Misti decides God wants her to pray a little boy out of foster care in Florida and into her home in Texas, better get a room ready. Sometimes the answers to my son Levi’s prayers are so sudden and showy they scare me a little and I look over at him like, “Dude! That was you wasn’t it?” When my daughter Brooke starts beating the floor and marching around and singing while she’s praying for someone, get ready! You had better get ready!! When my son Oscar says he is praying about a preaching tour with me through Colombia, you better get some sermons ready and pack your bags! When my daughter Mercy tells you she asked God for a school for Liberian orphans, watch out! When our daughter Beverly writes down big crazy prayers on yellow poster board and hangs them on your living room drapes, get ready for your ministry to go to whole new levels! When your son Travis says he is praying about going on a mission trip with you, get ready for the whole family to get in on he idea. When your son Juan David that you adopted out of the streets of Bogota, Colombia tells you he’s praying for you, your heart just melts and runs out onto the floor… BOLD Prayer is REAL, POWERFUL, and REQUIRED. He hears us and He acts. He alone has done these things and is doing these things in answer to the feeble prayers of a little family from Texas… and He will do it for you. We will PRAY as long as we have breath…

 
[quote] “So take Jesus at his word. Ask him. Tell him what you want… Write out your prayer requests; don’t mindlessly drift through life on the American narcotic of busyness. If you try to seize the day, the day will eventually break you. Seize the corner of his garment and don’t let go until he blesses you. He will reshape the day.” ― Paul E. Miller[/quote]
 
[quote]“If you are not praying, then you are quietly confident that time, money, and talent are all you need in life. You’ll always be a little too tired, a little too busy. But, if like Jesus you realize you can’t do life on your own, then no matter how busy, no matter how tired you are, you will find the time to pray.” ― Paul E. Miller[/quote]
 

Suggested Further Reading: A Praying Life, by Paul E. Miller>

 
See previous posts in this series
 
A big thank you to our dear friend and ministry partner, Shannon Arnold, for prompting this series…

[lightbox full =”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Pray-Bold-copy.jpg” thumb=”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Pray-Bold-copy.jpg” title=”Pray Bold” /]

Read Part I HERE

Pray, Risk, Pray Harder

1 Kings 18:36-37 (NLT) At the usual time for offering the evening sacrifice, Elijah the prophet walked up to the altar and prayed, “O lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, prove today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant. Prove that I have done all this at your command. O lord, answer me! Answer me so these people will know that you, O lord, are God and that you have brought them back to yourself.”

I said in our last post that often we don’t PRAY BOLD because we have never allowed ourselves to get into a situation where we REALLY need God to show up. Praying bold requires RISK. Elijah’s prayer is all the more bold because he is standing on Mt. Carmel in front of the leaders of Israel and 450 false prophets with an altar that has been doused with water three times and if God doesn’t answer in the next few seconds, he is going to be cut into little pieces! Nothing elicits bold prayers like getting yourself in a jam that only God can get you out. BOLD PRAYERS go hand in hand with BOLD RISKS for God.

1 Kings 18:38-39 (NLT) Immediately the fire of the lord flashed down from heaven and burned up the young bull, the wood, the stones, and the dust. It even licked up all the water in the trench! And when all the people saw it, they fell face down on the ground and cried out, “The lord—he is God! Yes, the lord is God!”

Looking back on the greatest personal stories of answered prayer in my life, I’m amazed that so many times it was when I had felt the nudge of the Spirit to step way out on a limb for Him and I was absolutely in trouble if He didn’t come through. That will make you pray bold prayers! The Holy Spirit and I have some things in the works right now that scare me to death! Whether BOLD PRAYING or just terrified CRYING OUT best describes it, I can’t quite tell but I am knocking hard on heaven’s door right now!

What little nudge or perhaps giant push from the Holy Spirit have you been shrugging off because it seems foolish, scary, ridiculous, irresponsible, or maybe even “calling fire down from heaven” level absurd? Maybe God in His tender lovingkindness wants desperately to show you an astounding miracle if you will just trust, step out… and pray like crazy. Jump out of the boat! You might just find yourself walking on water…

I’ll never forget the time my wife and I needed to travel 800 miles to preach somewhere. We counted up our nickels and dimes and realized we had only enough gas money to travel 600 of the 800 miles and no money for food. We decided that we would head out anyway. We would fast and we would pray that our little car got the best gas mileage of it’s life or that God would give us a strong tailwind all the way. We prayed like crazy. But God didn’t do either. As our fuel light was blinking 600 miles in, we pulled over to a little truck stop in the middle of nowhere to use the restroom, lay hands on the car, and pray until God showed up. When I came out of the restroom I saw three rough looking men speaking to my wife and she looked concerned. I walked over and introduced myself. They asked us to sit down at a table in the diner with them and we reluctantly agreed. They began to ask about our ministry and it was then I realized we were both wearing matching ministry T-shirts. As we told them about what we were doing for the kingdom they became very excited. One of the men asked if we had eaten and could he buy us dinner. I said, “Oh, no thank you. We are fine.” I felt my wife kick me under the table. Of course, they knew nothing of our current situation. We talked a little longer and then we told them we had to get back on the road. As we stood to go, the same man reached into his pocket and handed me the exact amount of money we needed to get to our destination. He said he felt the Lord wanted Him to invest in what we were doing. We thanked him profusely, walked outside, and began to dance around the car praising God! That trip lead to over 1 million people hearing the gospel. To this day I half believe that those three men were really angels but I don’t know. All I know is God shows up when we PRAY BOLD, RISK BIG and PRAY HARDER.

 
[quote] “I love the recklessness of faith. First you leap, and then you grow wings.” ― William Sloane Coffin Jr.[/quote]
 
[quote] “But God doesn’t call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn’t come through.” ― Francis Chan, Crazy Love[/quote]
 

Suggested Further Reading: Hudson Taylor: The Man Who Believed God by Marshall Broomhall>

 
See previous posts in this series
 
A big thank you to our dear friend and ministry partner, Shannon Arnold, for prompting this series…

[lightbox full =”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Pray-Bold-copy.jpg” thumb=”https://missioncriticalintl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Pray-Bold-copy.jpg” title=”Pray Bold” /]

Shameless Audacity

Luke 11:5-8 (NIV) Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Donʼt bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I canʼt get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your SHAMELESS AUDACITY he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.”(Emphasis Mine)

This passage never ceases to shock me every time I read it. God is telling us to approach Him with shameless audacity. Really? Wow! That stuns me. And it completely stokes my passion to pray. The Greek word here is anaideia. Other translations are “unembarassed boldness” or “shameless persistence.” Jesus is taking the gloves off here. He’s saying to you and to me, “Come at Me, what you got? Be brazen, ask Me for anything and don’t stop asking Me until you receive it.” Wow!

Some things in this story, that Jesus seemingly makes up off the top of His head, that I love are, 1. The man has a great need that drives him out into the night, 2. The need is to feed others, 3. He refuses to go home empty handed and so he gets “as much as you need.”

Many times I believe we don’t Pray Bold because we haven’t allowed ourselves to become involved in the mission of God in the world to the point where we have a great need that drives us out into the night. As I type this my heart is in my throat thinking of all the things I need for the people I am ministering to here and around the world and I’m thinking about how I will march around our apartment complex tonight with my hands raised toward heaven shamelessly begging God to give me what they need.

When is the last time you went before God about a great need and wouldn’t go home empty handed? How about tonight. Start with walking the block and just tell the Lord your needs that come to mind and then go back home. Try it. I dare you!

For two years my daughter Rebekah, who was living in an orphanage out in the bush in Zambia, Africa, pleaded with me to come to Africa and spread our ministry there. Though I had been working in South America for a few years already, I had never even crossed the Atlantic before. Going to Africa felt like going to the moon for me. Because of chronic health challenges I didn’t even know if I would survive the 24hr journey to get there. But Rebekah prayed and pleaded with shameless audacity. One night in late December 2014 while she was home for Christmas we were sitting on our balcony and she braced me one more time about Africa. I quickly figured out a budget and announced to her that it would take $10,000 we didn’t have and didn’t know where to get. She grabbed my hand and said, “Let’s pray daddy. God can give us $10,000 easy. Reluctantly I bowed my head and prayed, “Lord, if you send us $10,000 from somewhere we are not expecting and give me strength, we will go to Africa.” Rebekah happily looked up, “There! It’s done. We are going to Africa daddy.” We didn’t tell a soul about our prayer. Three days later a man who had never before sent us money wired $10,000 into my bank account. I was stunned and a little scared. We immediately booked the trip and went in early January 2015 and God poured out a waterfall of grace on our heads the whole trip. Not only that, He also healed me. Not only that, He also laid the foundation on that trip for our current ministry in 5 African nations, two Mercy’s House schools/orphanages, 5 churches planted, hundreds of precious souls added to the kingdom, multiple other trips, and we are just getting started. PRAY BOLD, BELIEVE BIG, and CHARGE HARD.

 
[quote] “Bold prayers honor God, and God honors bold prayers. God isn’t offended by your biggest dreams or boldest prayers. He is offended by anything less. If your prayers aren’t impossible to you, they are insulting to God.” – Mark Batterson, Pastor, National Community Church, Washington, D.C.[/quote]
 
[quote] “God loves with a great love the man whose heart is bursting with a passion for the impossible.” – William Booth, Founder, The Salvation Army[/quote]
 

Suggested Further Reading: Answers To Prayer by George Mueller>

 
A big thank you to our dear friend and ministry partner, Shannon Arnold, for prompting this series…

Placing roses on the mass graves.

Almost exactly a year ago today I received a text message while at work at Baxalta; it said that dad had been in a car accident and totaled the only vehicle that my family had. I informed my boss of the situation and he being the amazing human being that he is, may God have mercy on his soul, told me to go home. On the way home I was praying and fighting with the Spirit regarding how I felt about the situation. I arrived at the freeway exit and hit a red light, while waiting for it to turn green so I could turn left to get home; I felt God ask me why I didn’t join my dad in ministry. I responded angrily and tearfully while beating the poor steering wheel of my car yelling, “My dad gives to the poor, loves people, and if anyone has ever trusted You in faith he does!” “Yet he is always broke, always abandoned by his friends, and can’t even own a car!” “If this is how you treat those who give everything to You and trust You in faith then I want no part of it, no thank you God, I don’t have enough faith and you don’t take care of my family enough, to abandon all my hard work for You.” I was expecting Him to respond in anger or condemnation but instead I felt the Spirit ask me what it would take for me to join dad in the ministry; I asked for a salary. I told Him that if he could match 60% of my Baxalta salary I would quit my job and join dad in full time ministry, but the money couldn’t come from donors, couldn’t come from Mission Critical, and couldn’t come from dad’s business; it had to be free of all strings and just magically appear into my account every month. If God could answer that one simple prayer and show me that He does indeed take care of His children who trust Him at all times then I would walk in faith to wherever the Spirit led.

Less than a week later I felt spiritual warfare all around every aspect of my life. I could sense demons stalking me everywhere I went and I could sense angels praying for me and encouraging me. Obviously I was terrified and oddly curious as to what was going on. I spent hours in prayer, reading the word, and doing everything I could to minister to anyone I ran across. The spiritual presence intensified to the point that I walked outside at 4 in the morning with my hands raised in the air yelling at God, asking Him what the heck was going on! He responded, “trust me at all times, abandon everything and follow me.” A few short hours later I parked my car at an unknown location in downtown Atlanta and simply walked away from it, threw my keys off a bridge, threw my phone on the ground shattering it, and threw my wallet into someone’s mailbox; odd I know. The spirit strongly encouraged me to perform a miracle and told me, “We will walk and not grow weary, we will run and not faint.” So I walked, ran, walked, and ran all over Atlanta without saying a word for the following 28 or so hours. Never grew tired, nothing hurt, never grew hungry, and had no sore muscles the following day. While walking I saw many signs and wonders as well as many visions, some of which have been explained since, most of which are still a mystery to me. However, at the end of the walk I could not remember my name or where I left any of my belongings so I was committed to a psych ward. I have no idea how my family found me but they did and came and collected me.

Several months later after applying for veteran benefits I was declared disabled both physically (bone spurs on my feet and loss of hearing in my left ear) and mentally (PTSD). I received a disability pension that equaled 80% of my Baxalta salary and at that moment I knew God loves His children and can indeed do mighty miracles through those who trust in Him at all times. So I joined Mission Critical full time as we started planning several trips for 2016.

The first trip was to Colombia and I wrote 2 blogs of my experience there and I highly recommend to anyone who wishes to please read them, one was about the children in poverty there and around the world,  the other was about veterans here and abroad.  Both were written from the heart and difficult to write but expressed what the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is doing around this world with both children and veterans from my point of view. While those blogs came from the heart and were hard to write both pale in comparison to the experience I had in Rwanda.

Rwanda, oh how I could write from now till Jesus returns about the blessings and trials that country is and has been through and it wouldn’t cover a fraction of the feelings I have for that country. I read many military briefs and summaries of Rwanda while I was in the Navy, both of the failure of the international community to step in during the genocide and of the massive accolades that Rwanda has received for it’s humanitarian work since then. When I started working for Mission Critical and I heard that we had a contact in Rwanda who was working to build a Mercy’s house there and how he wanted us to come and preach there my first response was; who are we that Rwanda has anything to hear from us? We are not worthy to set foot in that sacred country; on that sacred ground. Yet in July of 2016 Rebekah, Brooke, Dad, and I stepped off a plane onto the tarmac in Rwanda, and THAT story alone is a miracle that needs to be told on another day. When we stepped off the plane, the same angels that I heard praying for me in Georgia were singing praises to God for us around the airport. I never felt closer to God than the day I went walking in faith in Atlanta, and stepping off the plane in Rwanda.

But what was it specifically about Rwanda that is so hard to write about? Is it the genocide that happened? The fact that that genocide happened during my lifetime? The fact that I remember watching it unfold on the news as a kid? Yes and no. On our first day in Rwanda, my first time ever visiting Africa, we ran many errands to finish the final preparations for the many crusades that pastor Ndagijimana had planned for us, also on our first day in Rwanda we discovered that not only had Ndagijimana finished and finalized the paperwork to make Mission Critical Rwanda a legitimate entity in Rwanda but that he also planted five churches under it. So now not only are we a mission team in Rwanda trying to start building an orphanage there, we are the heads and representatives of five new churches in the country, shocking news to us. After running many errands to finish preps for the crusades he planned we visited the genocide memorial. Let me say that nothing prepared me for what we were about to see.

Preaching in Nygatare

We arrived at the museum and I noticed that they were selling roses to place on the graves, the proceeds for the sales would go to the families of the survivors. “Magically” there “happened” to be 5 roses left for sale, there were 5 of us, so I bought them and we walked down to the graves. I had no idea what to expect from this visit or what the graves would look like but as we walked down the steps I saw 5 large slabs of concrete surrounded by black walls with red roses bushes, the blocks of concrete looked like half finished basketball courts to me, rough and just sitting on the ground with no edging. When it finally hit me what those blocks of concrete were; I audibly gasped, I started shaking, and had to remind myself to breathe. I was looking at the unmarked unfinished tombstones of 250,000 people. My dad happened to be nearby and I grabbed him violently so I wouldn’t collapse. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, and couldn’t walk. He gently but forcibly shoved me forward trying to remind me, I guess we haven’t talked about it since, not to make a scene at this place of remembrance. At the bottom of the steps, there was a wall with many names on it. I thought at first how odd it was that SO MANY of their first names were the same, then I realized that they listed the last names first. Because this was a genocide of a specific ethnicity of people and of course they wiped out whole families, so this wall has at one spot 26 last names that match, the entire family. The rest of the museum is dedicated to laying out the history of the country, the theology and colonial history that led to the genocide, the actual daily events of the genocide, and the aftermath of the genocide. Before colonialism Rwanda did not have different ethnicities, just a social caste system that presented titles to different Rwandans based on their wealth or social standings. The Belgians took this caste system and made it, forcibly, into different ethnicities in order to more efficiently rule over the Rwandans. After Rwanda became free this social order remained and the church even got in on it by teaching Hamitical theology to support the idea that some Rwandans were born lesser than others, children of Ham. This entire situation came to a head in the 90s where the government spent at least 10 years planning the genocide as a final solution to the problem of the children of Ham and set in motion the Genocide. 1 MILLION people killed in less than 100 days, faster and more efficient than the Nazis. Afterward the “children of Ham” took over the country and wiped out all records of ethnic background and basically forgave the perpetrators of the genocide. Sentences were handed out but in our eyes would be considered very lenient. How do you punish 2/3rds of your country for killing the other 1/3rd of the country, there wouldn’t be enough jails or gallows to hand out actual justice.

THIS is the Rwanda that shocked me. As an American I’m used to stories of gross injustice where a hero rises up and overcomes evil. While that story IS there, the oppressed people rose up and using sticks and stones defeated the government forces who had guns and tanks and stopped the genocide, but the ending surprised me. How can you forgive, how can you move on, how can you let people who machete’d unarmed men, women, and children in the streets return to normal life after only repairing a road here and a house there? How does Rwanda today set the example of humanitarianism in Africa only 20 years after the genocide which had deep systemic racism for the 150 years before that? Obviously from my point of view God worked a miracle but these aren’t the kind of miracles I was taught in American churches. I’m used to the miracles and stories of God stopping injustice and punishing the sinners who abuse the innocent. I’m not familiar with the stories of how God seemingly turns a blind eye to horrible horrendous offenses and then FORGIVES the offender. I’m familiar with the God who protects the innocent, not the God who allows the innocent to suffer so that He wins over the abuser.  While I earnestly believe that every victim of the genocide was and is dearly loved by God who comforted them in the afterlife for their suffering. I also learned from Rwanda that the same God forgave and loves millions of the perpetrators who committed the genocide and comforted them in the afterlife from the guilt of their actions. That is why the visit to Rwanda shocked me so badly that I had to remind myself to breathe, but also took me months of reflection before I could write a blog about it.

The blue choir

What does my story in Atlanta have to do with this? Minutes after throwing my keys off the bridge I was led into a tunnel that had beautiful murals on both walls of African women in blue dresses who were staring at me, their eyes and expressions followed me through the tunnel; as if to say, “don’t give up Levi, we need you.” Two weeks after visiting the museum I was scheduled to preach a sermon to our new church in Nyagatare, a border town in the North East of Rwanda, and as I stood up to preach I realized I was preaching to the choir from Kigali, Rwanda’s capital and our base of operations in East Africa. They were all beautiful Rwandan women wearing blue dresses who were staring earnestly at the American who was about to deliver God’s word. During my sermon I was reminded of that vision so I forsook my notes and mentioned it to them. I don’t know entirely why God wanted me in the ministry, I have nothing to offer, but I do know that during the genocide which rocked Africa and the entire world in 1994, He knew I’d visit that museum and learn something about how He truly works and what forgiveness actually looks like. The story of redemption in Rwanda, redemption in my life, and the Bible for that matter is not a story of an underdog who overcame evil and stops injustice from happening. It is a story of an innocent defenseless man who is brutalized, tortured, and killed and yet forgives all involved. Just like Rwanda is a story of a group of people who were brutalized, tortured, raped, and killed and yet forgave all who were involved. Rwanda could have easily rejected the Gospel of Jesus which was taught hand in hand with Hamitical theology for 150 years and returned to their tribal ways which were very peaceful for thousands of years. Instead on that museum etched in the wall are written these summarized words, “While the Europeans brought racism and genocide, they also brought modern medicine and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and for that we thank them.”

Probably the most chilling and yet amazing words I’ve ever read.

Your prayers and support have helped us to usher many into the kingdom! This will bless your heart! Click HERE to see all that God did.

When I was a boy I watched a movie called “Behind Enemy Lines” and in that movie there is a very brief scene that made me cry uncontrollably and still affects me to this day. There are these rebels holed up in a warehouse and the military blows in the walls with tanks killing almost everyone, when the troops breach the wall the camera pans and in the foreground for about 10 frames you see this little girl probably 4 years old playing with a doll, gently talking to it and stroking it’s hair, oblivious to everything that is going on. As a boy and now a man that scene affected me, all I wanted to do in this life was pick that girl up and give her a hug, to take her out of that horrible situation and give her a normal life. Well obviously the movie is fiction but the reality is that all over this world that little girl’s story is real and in June 2016 God took me to a place that is so incredibly poverty stricken that I was fighting back tears the entire time I was there. In fact as I type this up the tears are finally pouring out.

This is Suba, we were visiting a privately run and inadequately funded orphanage named Colombia Chiquita. When we first arrived the orphanage owner gave us a brief tour of the 3 story building where they house dozens of abandoned children. These children had some of the most precious smiles I’ve ever seen as they greeted us, before we started the day of playing and testimony they wanted to take us to the girls’ house which wasn’t far from the main building. So we walked down the streets of Suba and my God the poverty was intense. Most of the families in the area recycle trash in order to feed themselves. While we were walking to the girls’ house I spotted a boy about the age of 7 sitting on the “curb” playing in the sand with a stick and his, I presume, sister sitting beside him playing with a piece of rope. She couldn’t have been older than 4 years old and she was gently talking to her brother while stroking the end of the rope like it was a doll and that was it’s hair. I had to look away as hot tears filled my eyes as I was reminded of the above mentioned film. Somehow God had brought me full circle from being moved by scenes depicted in fiction to seeing the real thing in real life and knowing that there was not going to be a happy ending. That girl was probably not an orphan and I will never know her whole story but I do know that there is never going to be a knight in shining armor that comes along, picks her up, gives her a hug, and tells her the whole world was going to be ok. I still hope and pray for her even though I don’t know her name or story, but honestly she was just there to remind me of how cruel and torn this world is; how viciously cruel this world is to children: especially to little girls.

Most children in Suba from the age of 4 dig through trash piles with their parents and family members looking for plastic or anything recyclable, they then load this trash onto carts or bags and haul it I don’t know how many miles to recycling centers where they sell it for next to nothing in order to survive. These kids’ education is so bad that they don’t even know the difference between letters and numbers. Their education level is so horrendous that they aren’t even qualified to go to public school, the public school system in Colombia is horrible btw, so they will spend their entire lives either gathering trash day to day or end up having to enter a life of crime. These mind you are the lucky ones with parents and family willing to give them a home.

God wasn’t done making a grown veteran cry that day. We walked back to the orphanage and took the kids out to the nearby “park” to play with them and make them laugh all day. We had a great time with these kids yet the entire time I was struggling with tears for these orphans. Suddenly, at the end of the park a door opens and these two kids run out of this “house,” maybe 7 and 5, and start playing in the street. I’m using quotation marks because if you could have seen the conditions of this neighborhood the terms curb, park, and house are too nice of words to describe the horrible condition this place was in. This town literally looked one strong breeze away from falling down, it looked like a card house project gone wrong. So these two kids a boy and a girl are playing, they looked like they haven’t showered in a month, the rags they wore were so dirty that it looked like if you shook them too hard you could collect a bucket of sand from their clothes. The little girl, the 5 year old, knocks on the door and to my incredible surprise a 2 year old answers it and decides to come out and play with his siblings. The poor thing had on sweat pants and a t-shirt and the sweat pants were soaked as if he had been peeing in his pants for days. At that point I looked back at the orphan kids we were playing with and my tears held back, I could justify staying emotionally neutral because these kids all had on clean clothes. Yes they were orphans with no hope, yes they lived in a horrible part of town, yes their education level was sub-par to the public school system, and yes their parents had all been killed in the civil war or drug violence; but at least they had on a fresh set of clean clothes so Levi didn’t start crying on the spot because Levi could see that they had on clean clothes.

When we returned to the orphanage God wasn’t done breaking my heart. I learned that some time before we arrived the water company sent a man to shut off water to the orphanage due to lack of payment. When the meter man arrived and saw the children he couldn’t shut it off out of conscience. I also learned that their food budget ran out and they were trying to sell broken bikes they had stacked on top of their roof to get the next month’s food. With tears rolling down my face Rebekah asked me to pray over the orphanage owner for the money they so badly needed. Angry at God but trusting in His good will I prayed like I never prayed before in my life for the funds for them to stay open, feed their kids, have running water, and basic necessities.

When we returned to the hotel my brother Luke and I stayed up until about 1 in the morning praying and talking about God and His plan for our ministry. Honestly I was dying inside and losing hope for the immense task ahead of us. Luke needed some prayer and discussion so I kinda kept it all together for him. We talked about everything we had seen that day and the day before. All the little signs that God gave us letting us know we were doing His will. I kept everything that I’ve shared here to myself until writing this but there were many other signs up to that point that I talked with Luke about.

The next day I was supposed to lead a devotion on a topic of my choice. Honestly, I was so broken hearted for those kids and so incredibly helpless to do anything about their condition that I really didn’t want to lead the devotion, I didn’t want to be there anymore, I wanted to go home and pretend that kids are only in those conditions in fiction. I really wanted that little girl in the movie to be the only problem I’d face like that. But God was still working on me and led me to the book of John once again. He led me to where Jesus commands us to ask Him for anything and it will be done. The day before Luke had taught on being helpless before God so I decided I’d teach on praying helpless before God. If God is indeed like the judge in the parable that Jesus taught about, only good instead of evil, then the best way I know how to get someone to change their mind is to show how helpless and desperate the situation is when pleading my case. I believe that God showed me these things in this way to show me where true power lies, in being helpless and completely dependent on Him. People with money don’t need God, people with nice houses don’t need God, people with busy lives are too busy for God. God also reminded me of the story of Lazarus and the rich man, He reminded me that the little girl I saw was Lazarus, and that while in this life she isn’t comforted, while in this life she doesn’t have dolls, and while in this life no one is coming to give her a big hug and let her know everything is going to be ok; in the next life Jesus has every doll she will ever want, in the next life she will be comforted, and in the next life she will never cry again. I felt strongly that if I’m even to see a glimpse of what awaits her I needed to get busy doing what Jesus commanded us; caring for the orphans, the widows, and the sick in their time of need. It’s easy to pass on a picture of Christ carrying the cross on FaceBook saying, “would you help Jesus up, share if you would, ignore if you won’t.” It’s hard to do what Jesus said is helping Jesus in His time of need, that if you so much as give a glass of water to one of these little one’s you’ve done it unto Him.

The last thing that broke my heart that day was when we were walking back to the orphanage I learned that Dad was giving the place all we could afford as a donation and I thanked him. He said, “yeah son, this isn’t slum tourism, we are doing all we can to help.” I literally lost it when I gave him a hug for saying that. Mission Critical can’t even begin to be a drop of water in the bucket of the problems we face and see in Colombia and around the world, but we can make sure that their stories are heard, show that their pain is real, and maybe give some water to 40 or 50 orphans here and there in the name of Christ. This ministry is two parts, sanctifying ourselves by seeing the desperation and helplessness in others, and making a real difference in the lives that we possibly can.