God Orchestrates and Students Play

Doing What The Father Is Doing

I lead the youth at our church, and one of the great things we do as a group of middle school and high school students is that once a month, on a Friday night, we go out and walk around our city. We ask God what he wants to do that night and walk around for a couple of hours.

One week, we were praying as a group and felt that God was saying a few words that we were putting together. One word was that there would be a guy at Starbucks that we should talk to. The other word was that someone would be charging their phone or laptop. And someone else got the name “Jackson.” So we put those together and stopped at Starbucks. And there was this guy charging his laptop.

There were 25 of us. We were nervous and didn’t really know what to think. But we took the risk. A few of us went in and asked, “Does the name Jackson mean anything to you?”

And he said, “Yeah. My name is Mike Jackson.”

My students’ minds were just blown.

So we got his story. Mike started to tell us about himself. He had been going through a lot of stuff. He had lost his family through a tragedy and was dealing with a lot of stress. He hadn’t been to church in a long time and had been crying out to God.

We had the opportunity to pray for him right there in Starbucks. He ended up coming to our church two weeks later and stood up and gave his life back to Jesus. A couple weeks after that, we saw him at our community outreach service. Mike’s in a small group now, getting connected.

A Courageous Encounter

The next month, our students ended up going to the grocery store near our church. We were asking God for words and praying for people.

One of the ladies that we approached had a shopping cart full of stuff, and one of my students said, “I have a word for her.” But he was really scared. I encouraged him. I said, “You have to go tell her!”

So he got brave. He went. He told her that God wanted to bring peace back into her life. And then we walked away. It was cool, but it didn’t really seem like she was affected much by it. She wasn’t upset, but didn’t really have much of a response.

It was pouring rain as we walked out of the grocery store…and the lady suddenly came out running after us toward our van. She opened the van door and told us her son just got back from serving in the Army and had had PTSD and committed suicide. And she was down in Florida visiting her mom because she just found out her mom has cancer. She was bawling and said all she had been praying for is peace. Praying for peace, praying for peace.

[bctt tweet=”And here comes this kid, this random student, giving her a word from God for exactly that. Saying peace is coming.” quote=”And here comes this kid, this random student, giving her a word from God for exactly that. Saying that peace is coming.”]

She told us never to be afraid to speak out like we had that night. And then she prayed for us too. She was crying. We all were crying. It was such a moment, to see God moving that way. It was such a powerful moment for her and for us, and especially for the student who was brave enough to go talk to her. The lady wasn’t even a local; she was just in Florida for her mom. But God orchestrates. He knows what we need and loves us so much.

Malike Adigun is the student ministries pastor at Cape Coral Vineyard in Cape Coral, Florida.