Asif
Town – June 16, 2013
As I went to bed I prayed that the Lord would
lead me in the message I needed to share in the morning. The Lord seemed to
put an idea on my mind that would take the message I had been thinking of in a slightly
different direction. I wrote it down and went to sleep. I woke up two hours later
unable to sleep so I got up to make the changes to the message. I did not
get any more than those two hours sleep that night.
With so little sleep I was very
concerned about how I was going to preach four times that day. We traveled
about forty minutes to Asif Town on the outskirts of Lahore in an air
conditioned public transit bus. When we arrived at the bus stop in the town, we were picked up by car and
driven to the church.
There were about 50 people present at the church. I preached on Paul's statement that he considered his life worth nothing unless he spent it doing the task the Lord had given him. After the service, a number of people came forward for prayer. A number of women brought their children for me to pray for. One lady asked that I would pray that the Lord would open her womb so that she could have a child. Young men came forward asking that the Lord would help them grow spiritually. One young man asked me to pray for his education. Another, that the Lord would fulfill his desire to be a pastor.
One woman came forward with four children.
She asked me to pray for them. She told Emmanuel that she had a dream the day
before. In that dream the Lord told her that a white man would come to her
church. This man would have white hair and a beard. She
told Emmanuel that she rushed to church that morning to hear me. When she saw
me come into the church she know I was the one in her dream. I prayed for
her and her children, thanking the Lord for revealing this to her.
On the way back from the meeting, I spoke
with Emmanuel about this. We recognized that this meeting was not in our
original plan. We had planned to take time off to visit northern Pakistan. The
Lord closed that door and instead gave us more speaking engagements. We felt
that this dream was the Lord's confirmation of our decision to continue working
and not take time off.
The other thing that amazed me was that
despite only having two hours sleep that night I felt strong and able to get
through the meeting and back to Emmanuel's home by 3 in the afternoon.
There at Emmanuel's home I was able to get one hours rest in preparation
for the evening seminar.