In my hotel room in Austin at our Cru National Summit, I pray that God would send me forth as a “royal priest” (1 Peter 2:9) to bless and minister in the name of the Lord wherever I went. I had been teasing people that, although I’m not rich in money to bless others, I’m rich in verbs and Bible verses. I’m rich in faith and hope. I can bless people with verbs, right?
I often tell God that He can use me whenever and however, and I give Him what I have: verbs and faith.
And then strange things happen. You know this if you’ve read this blog for a while.
I travel down to the lobby much earlier than I need to arrive for breakfast, and I sit next to a friend who holds the sign to direct folks to our prayer room. Suddenly, a woman attending a medical conference in a different part of the hotel approaches us. She saw the sign for prayer.
She needs prayer, and the tears fall so fast they drip off her chin.
How can I help? How can I bless and minister?
She shares how she fears she might fail out of school. She explains that she cannot write well enough. She needs someone to teach her to write at the graduate level. That’s her prayer.
The tears keep falling.
Someone to help with writing? Someone who understands graduate students, who just happens to serve with Cru to help graduate students? That’s me! I’m the one! God made me for this, for you, for now!
And there we sat in the lobby: she was God’s answer to my prayer; I was God’s answer to hers.
She had asked God to send someone to help her with her writing, and God brought me to Texas from Pennsylvania to answer her prayer.
I sent her my writing book and my list of vivid verbs, and the story that began in Texas continues now through the wonders of FaceTime and email.
God answers prayer. I’ll never forget that sometimes, I’m the answer for someone crying out to God for help. I want to pray and listen so I can step forward every morning as that royal priest.