[the return; to or from?]

i don't know what to say.

i'm ruined. don't ask. i'll tell you anyway.

for the past few weeks, we've been really praying for a complete Jesus revolution in and around the Concord/ Charlotte, NC area.

God is moving. i'm ruined.

walmart is no longer a place to work for me [though, i do get a paycheck]. walmart is ruined for me [which, isn't such a bad thing]. walmart is a place to minister. it's a 15,000 sq. ft. prayer room. it's a massive healing center [and i'm not talking about the pharmacy...]. walmart: the next house church.

walgreens is now a place to pray and to pour out the love of God over His creation.

let me preface the following testimonies by stating that the groundwork and foundation for this complete cultural and spiritual revolution was laid by people long before i ever stepped off a bus in concord. that is to say, i am not the central figure in these stories.

i was there. i witnessed it. and in these few cases, i took part, but the glory is all God's- and will always be God's, because He paid the price for it...

a fellow student and i went to walgreens this past friday with one goal: to see God move. what happened next blessed our hearts.

we made our way to the pharmacy to see if there were people there who had a need to be healed. there was a couple named thomas and betty who were in their mid-70's. both of them had severe chest colds and you could see on betty's face the toll it was taking on her sinuses.

after the laying on of hands and a short concise prayer, we saw that betty's (who had not taken any medication for the cold- she was waiting for the prescription to be filled) face had cleared up. all the redness had gone away. when we asked her how she felt, she said she felt better than she had in a long time. when we asked thomas how he felt, he said he felt better.

feeling a bit more bold, we noticed that thomas had a hearing aide in his left ear. eddie (my friend) asked if we could pray for that, because the God who heals colds, heals deafness. eddie asked thomas how we could know that he would be healed when we prayed for him and he pulled out his hearing aide and said he couldn't hear with out it. after a shorter prayer than our first one for their colds, eddie stood a good distance to thomas' left and softly asked how he felt. thomas looked at his wife and then at us and said, he felt fine... and that he could hear out of his left ear.

thomas and betty both left praising the Lord... and, without their prescriptions.

it's odd. really. now that i think about it. not the miracle. the healings are becoming normal and expected. what's odd is looking back at the past seven years that i've been a christian, and seeing how close i've always been to walking in the fullness of God, yet not actually walking in it.

i write good stuff. some of it's theoligically sound, some of it's a bit shaky. but, for the most part, was stuff i sincerely believed in my heart and in my head, i just never actually put some of it in practice. the book i was going to write? forget that... for now. now, i'm living.

it is often easier to act yourself into believing than it is to believe yourself into acting.

so, i threw caution to the wind last week. stepped out on faith. [insert your own rhetorical colloquiallism here] and saw God come to meet me.

what works at walgreens works at walmart... or so, in theory it should. except this time, i wasn't merely in a place where i could get asked to leave, but i was in a place where i could, potentially, lose my job- my source of income [but not my source of life].

it's interesting how many opportunities we're faced with when we stop looking at our own needs and wants and desires.

a middle-aged woman named carolyn came through my register last week and i casually asked her how she was doing. [honestly, at the time, i didn't think i really cared to know. it was just something polite to say... now, i know better.] she told me she was ok, except that she had fallen the day before and could barely lift her right arm above a 90 degree angle to her waist. something rose up inside of me [or should i say Someone...] and i found myself uttering the words... "would you like me to pray for you?"

[did i really ask her that out loud?] yeah. i did. she told me she didn't really believe in God. "doesn't matter" i told her. [say what?] i told her that i believe that God would heal her regardless of what she believed. she muttered something and i told her that if she didn't get healed, then she'd have a really interesting walmart story to tell someone...

so, i prayed. all the while no one came into my checkout lane. really... how often do you go to walmart in the middle of the day and see a line with no one in it? yeah, so no small miracle there either right?

i asked her how she felt, and she said she couldn't tell. i told her to do something she couldn't do before. so she began to lift her arm... right as she came to the point where there had been pain earlier, i handed her a bag filled with tuna cans and canned vegetables... i figured, she's either going to hit me or be really excited. and she grabbed that bag and lifted it up and over her shoulder...

yeah, her face said it all. wish i had had a camera... praise God. not only was susan healed, but she went home saved... and came to church on sunday evening...

praise God, that He answered that prayer... because i don't think i'd have wanted to get a phone call from walmart asking why i handed a heavy bag to an injured customer...

does everyone i pray for get healed? i wish that were so. but i don't see why it can't happen.

it's not like it's a faith issue, like so many people want to tell you it is. that's just an excuse to fail... "well, they weren't healed so they must not have had much faith..." not so... the guy at the beautiful gate in the book of acts wasn't looking for healing... he was just looking for a handout... he just wanted money from peter and john.

physical healing was purchased at the whipping post and sealed at the cross. by His stripes we are healed is what the book of isaiah says. 1 peter says by His stripes you WERE healed. peter wrote it in the past tense. which means the healing was accomplished at the whipping post.

i could go on, but i'll stop there for now [more will come later].

so, now is the time of the return. to what? from what? the return from half-truths and religious me-ology to true christianity.

i am not the only one down here seeing people healed. i told you about eddie. and there are others, who, when they lay hands on people, see sicknesses and diseases healed.

the return. i am ruined. i believe in the revolution. i will live my life to see this area transformed and the rest of the earth harvested.

and you shall go into all the earth and proclaim the good news. to walmart and walgreens and downtown charlotte, nc and to the whole rest of the world...

ok, that's not what the bible says, but it's pretty close to what its prophetic meaning is...

...proclaim the good news, whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. and these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick and they will recover...

and that is what Jesus said will accompany all who believe and are baptized.

strange... it's a return to the Scriptures... what a novel idea...

for the world-wide renown of His sovereign glory...