TREASURE HUNT!

wednesday nights we have been doing what we call "treasure hunts" with folks from our house church. basically the idea is come together and pray and ask God to give us specific clues leading us to someone in norman who He wants to reveal His love to. we ask God for specific: locations, physical descriptions, ailments (something they need a touch from God to heal on their body), names, and then we have a misc. category. we pray and individually write our clues down and then share them with our group and compile what we call our "treasure map" its often really amazing how within the group clues confirm each other, being similiar. so that is the basic idea to give you background. lainey has been participating with us for the last 3-4 weeks. wednesday everyone who came to "treasure hunt" were guys and after we divided up it just worked out for lainey and i to treasure hunt just the two of us. so lainey and i ended up going together in a group, just her and i. our location was "long john silvers" our other clues were "woman" "dark hair" "black shoes"
we walked into long john silvers. we were the only people in the whole restaurant. there was one young girl working the drive thru. we stood and waited until she finished with the orders but before she finished another woman walked out from the back and greeted us. it was an old friend of mine, who suprisingly enough was a "woman" with "dark hair" and "black shoes" on. lainey and i told her we were on a treasure hunt. she said oh, great do you want some hats? thinking we were on more of a scavenger hunt...totally understandable. i said no actually this is what our treasure hunt is and went on to explain to her how we prayed and asked God to give us clues and lead us to someone He wanted to reveal His love to tonight. lainey then pulls out our "treasure map" and shows it to her. we visit for awhile (the restaurant was totally empty) she tells us that she is to meet with a woman on saturday who will determine if she is able to see her oldest son who she hasn't seen in 4 years, amongst other things in her life. we ask her if we can pray for her. if that would be okay we wanted to be respectful of her mgmt., etc. she went to go check and see if she could step outside for a moment...i guess she wanted us to pray outside. lainey and i were totally game. so we stepped outside and she allowed us to pray for her. you guys lainey's little prayers over her were so precious and i know were so dear to the Father's heart. when we got done praying i told her i felt like God wanted her to know how much her deeply, deeply loved her and that He was thinking about her. His thoughts for her outnumbered the sands.
so we exchange numbers and lainey and leave after a bit and when we were in the car lainey said "mom, you know when you told her what you felt like God wanted to say to her?" I said, yeah... lainey said,"i heard Him say that same thing." i love treasure hunting...as Christians i believe that this is the Father's heart for us to live like this. with a constant awareness of those around us who are crying out for someone to share with them the Greatest News ever told. I love that our Heavenly Father chooses to use us, that He would choose to cross our paths with our dear old friend, to include us in revealing Himself to the world. but i think wed. night i walked away in awe of how the Lord gave me the gift of seeking the lost with my precious daughter. only He knows how much her precious heart is fully understanding. but man, He says we should be childlike and lainey's prayer for our sweet friend to be able to see her son again were incredible! i am so grateful for the gift of being her mom. its so exciting to think of our little ones and how the Lord is shaping their destinies for His Kingdom....His divine purpose. He is so very, very good to us!