FREDDIE

“Actually, I do need prayer if it’s OK”

One sentence, said in a shaking voice by a man quite clearly hurting and afraid. Less than ten words, but it changed my outreach. Maybe even my day or week.

I'd seen him before he saw me, and it was obvious he was carrying a heavy weight. As he passed and I asked him if he would like prayer, he looked down, said ‘no thanks’ and hurried past. Seeing his hurt, I prayed to him as I waited for the next passer by and thought nothing more of it. Ten minutes later he returned; something having shifted in him, and now here he was, asking me to pray with him.

The man who said those words to me was Freddie – or at least that’s the name he chose to give himself at that moment. We met in the Bronx where we were set up doing ‘Prayer Stations’ – a YWAM ministry focused on reaching people and meeting both their perceived and actual needs. We set up tables, hang a sign and wear matching aprons to make us visible, and approach passers-by to pray and talk with them. One of the things I love about prayer station days is the full range of humanity that we meet from the homeless guy peeing two feet from you behind the parked van (which incidentally sits there for four hours and has an interesting string of people coming and going), to the cheesy pick up lines to be ignored, to banter with the local street vendors, those who know the Lord and love and appreciate the encouragement of someone praying with them in the middle of their work day, and those who don’t know what we’re doing but decide to give us free pizza anyway! Some warm your heart, others make it smile, some break it and then those like Freddie do all three and impact it far beyond the outreach.

As I began to talk and pray with Freddie, what followed was a detailed revelation from God about Freddie’s situation, how he came to be there, and his deep, deep desire to change and walk free of it all. When I’d asked Freddie what to pray for, he’d only told me ‘safety’, and whilst I never told him exactly what God was showing me, it obviously affected my prayers and Freddie was able to see through that and our conversation that although he’s walking an incredibly hard season right now, there IS a God who KNOWS, sees and LOVES him enough to put strangers in his path to comfort, strengthen and encourage him and to come alongside and pray with him.

I don’t know what will happen to Freddie. I do know he has made some bad choices and that the consequence of those is that he does now find himself in a dangerous situation. I do know too though that his heart is genuinely broken and repentant.

I know that God’s heart breaks for the things Freddie has endured, that his great love is calling Freddie to himself and that he desires to see Freddie free, healed and walking in fullness of life.

I know that by some crazy mystery and incredible privilege that I got to be part of that story. It may only have been 15 minutes of a street corner in The Bronx, but my prayers move God’s heart and he acts on our behalf, so that prayer for Freddie and the subsequent prayers of our team and those who hear and choose to pray for him too, change things for him.

I know that the same love that brought about that encounter and that is fighting for Freddie, is also fighting for each one of us and even if that whole day was just about meeting and praying for Freddie, then God will lead it and orchestrate it to bring his people to freedom.

I know that encounter with us also changed something if Freddie. It gave him the positive human contact he needed, spiritually, emotionally and physically. It gave him the reassurance that the God he’s recently met DOES know and love him, and more than that, it gave him HOPE that others also believe and want God’s best for him.

Yes, he’s only one person. But God is a God who goes after the one lost sheep, and one by one by one when we partner with his heart, we see those sheep returned to the fold where they are redeemed, restored and released.

What a privilege, and what a great, loving, incredible God.