A Moment of Praise – part 5

Moment Eight
Written by: Nicole Smith

Usually when we think of God’s provision, money or food comes to mind. Recently God has shown me that He can provide in ways we don’t even know are possible.

About 2 months ago my mom went to the gym on a Friday morning when her heart rate went too high, it stopped and she collapsed. You’d probably think this is a tragedy. I did too, at first. But now, I see it as a testimony of God’s provision. Here’s why. My mom is a teacher. She was supposed to go to school that morning but the school closed that specific day because of unrest in the area. She decided to go work out that morning where she worked out with a group of people she doesn’t normally work out with. In that group was a trauma unit medical nurse and an occupational therapist who knew First Aid. When she collapsed, they immediately ran over to help. The nurse assessed my mom and said that if they don’t get her to a doctor soon, she won’t make it. They put her in the OT’s car and rushed over to the doctor’s office that was just 100m down the road from the gym. When my mom was carried into the doctor’s office, she had no heartbeat. My mom was dead for about 2 minutes. The doctor, nurse, and occupational therapist took turns resuscitating my mom to keep oxygen flowing through her until the medics arrived. Only when they shocked my mom, did she have a heartbeat again? If this happened anywhere else, my mom would not have been here today. God provided by having my mom go to the gym that morning because of the school being closed, just to workout with medical professionals who could help her and a doctor’s office that was just down the street so that she was able to get the necessary help when she needed it the most.

I can only give all the praise and glory to our perfect Father and wonderful provider, Jesus Christ.

Moment Nine
Written by: David Frey

One of the more prominent cases of God’s provision for myself this year was during our travel challenge through Bolivia. For six days our team broke into smaller teams to hitchhike through Bolivia. Nyasa and I were a team and the story starts when we made it to Sucre…

We had no contacts in the city and the person who gave us a lift to the edge of the city bought us a taxi into the heart of the city around 7 at night. This is usually the moment where faith is most tested, it is late, you are in an unfamiliar city, and you currently have nowhere to sleep. Neither Nyasa nor I felt worried, rather we took our time and went to a small coffee shop nearby to put our bags down, enjoy a warm drink, and pray about what to do next. I felt the Lord tell me that I was to walk around the corner of the block the coffee shop was on and find a man to pray for. I also felt that the Lord intended to give us a place to stay and that we wouldn’t struggle to find the place to sleep, but it would be presented to us. After paying for our drinks, we went around the corner, took another right, and only a few paces in front of us we saw an older gentleman walking toward us. Naturally (or unnaturally) I stopped him and somewhat awkwardly explained that I felt the Lord had brought us all the way from Santa Cruz just to pray for him at that moment. The man was very receptive, being a Christian himself, and asked for prayer for his church and his wife who recently accepted a leadership position at the church. And we prayed for him, nothing dramatic happened, it didn’t feel like the Spirit came down or there was some great revelation or even much of a stirring of emotions, just a quick simple prayer. The man told us where his church was and said that there would be people there praying and that we should go. Not having much else on the agenda, we grabbed a taxi to head in that direction.

This is the point where you aren’t sure if you heard the Lord correctly. Yes, we did just pray for someone and so it isn’t as if we’ve done anything wrong, but the whole experience was platonic up to this point and so it could have been the Lord, it could have also just been us finding a random person to pray for (not to say there is anything wrong with either case). But in the taxi was a lady whom we started talking to, and after only a minute or two of conversation, she offered us a place to sleep! This lady we met, Juana, blessed us far beyond anything we could have expected. She hosted us, as well as many of our other team members who wanted to come and stay at her place. She gave us money to travel into the centre of Sucre to see the city and even more money the next day for whatever was needed for our travels.

It truly is incredible how the Lord works!

There was never a moment of intense spiritual guidance or emotional high, I only felt a clear and subtle prompting, prayed a very basic and unemotional prayer over a stranger, and had half a conversation with a random lady in a taxi (and even then, Nyasa did the actual talking), and suddenly I find myself and all of my teammates need to be met. And not only were our needs met, but Juana also funded our being tourists for a day.

This was a beautiful revelation of the heart of God, not only does He meet our needs, He often loves to go above and beyond, blessing us so that we can also enjoy our situation.