Night Strike Friday February 26, 2010

Friday February 26, was turning out to be a not so good day weather wise. It rained and hailed during the day. One thing is certain though about Night Strike, God always orders the weather to be still for us. We arrived in San Francisco to a nearly cloudless sky. Above us the heavens beckoned with the twinkling of stars. The weather was absolutely beautiful for this evening.

My friend Joe decided to come out this evening. There was also a team from Celebration (Livermore) about 15 people. A lot of young people high school age. For that reason, I sent Leah on her last trip to Polk St., with Tim (from Cornerstone) as her assistant. We had no people tonight for the Polk St. team since the majority of the team members were minors. This was Leah's last night leading since her and Elyssa are moving to Texas. God's got new ministry plans for them there.

Leah and I had intended to extend Night Strike and find a bar or a Starbucks afterwards to try out dream interpretation ministry, but my schedule didn't work out.

I led my team with half of the members from the Celebration team. Scott, the leader from Celebration were on my team. Bill Boehner had the other half of the team and he led them to the Tenderloin district. I decided to walk in the Spirit and see where it led us. Which would eventually lead us to 6^th and Mission St. There were a lot of people on the streets coming out of their small cells (tiny rooms in state run hotels).

As we left the UN Plaza, my friend Joe ministered to a man named Mark, or Ghost as he wanted to be called. Ghost said he lived on the streets nearly all his life and that he had bone cancer. Joe asked if he could pray for Ghost to heal. Ghost denied the offer. Ghost was a bit lonely and talked our leg off. I was concerned that Ghost didn't want us to pray for his cancer to vanish. So I asked the Holy Spirit to reveal to me something about Ghost that would catch his attention. The Holy Spirit told me to ask him about his poems. At first I thought I wasn't receiving the info correctly. So I tried again and received the word on poems. I flat out asked Ghost if he wrote poems. He said yes and then diverted his conversation to tell us all about his poems. Ghost didn't catch or ask me how I knew. He just wanted to talk to someone he was lonely. Maybe that was the point. God just wanted us to chat with him. We gave Ghost some food and then he proceeded to tell us he read the Bible. A friend of his came by and gave us a blessing because he knew we were Christians.

We left Ghost and proceeded down Market and then over to 6^th Street. On 6^th Street there were a lot of people outside socializing. This is the flophouse hotel street and like I mentioned earlier, these aren't rooms they're cells. Incredibly small rooms. Some kitchen pantries are bigger than these cells.

Our team ministered to the people on these streets and prayed over quite a bit of people here. The team was comprised of high school age kids. Most of the kids were giving the jackets off their backs to people who needed them.

Once we finished up on 6^th Street I asked Scott if it would be ok if I led the team into the Tenderloin district which is a notch up on the surreal scale for these kids. But they were doing great so far.

Once in the Tenderloin, I think I was on Goldengate and Turk, where I saw the Holy Spirit point out to me a man that was a having a demonic attack. He was sitting on the ground shaking. I couldn't walk on, I saw the man looking at me so I directed the team to walk over to him. This man sat on the ground on the sidewalk, he held his hands out and they were shaking. The way the fingers curled in while he was shaking I could tell he was having a demonic attack. He couldn't respond to my request to pray for him. He looked at me and shook with no control over himself.

I put my hand on the man and prayed for him. I bound the spirit shaking his hands. And ordered the fingers to release. They were curled in. As the fingers released the man reached out to hold my hands. The Holy Spirit told me to involve a young high school girl, named Leslie, to assist me in the praying. I told her it was lab time and she came over and assisted me in praying. Leslie asked the man what she pray for. The man started making motions for us to pray for his jaw. Leslie and I prayed for the man's jaw. I demonstrated to Leslie how to use kingdom authority as we bound the demonic attack. The man started trying to talk to us as the demon was releasing him from the attack. He had a hard time speaking but he was doing better. The man started praying for his hands and jaw to release too. We heard him utter, release.

I wanted to further the attack and pray for his gnarled finger tips to straighten.We prayed for him as much as we could and it was time for us to move on. As we left I explained to our team of prayer warriors what was going on with the curling fingers and why we were binding. One of the young men on our team turned around and looked at the man as we walked off and he said the man was looking up at the sky talking to God.

A few blocks up the street, we stopped and prayed for some people on the streets. A black woman saw Leslie and said she had a word for her, Ephesians 6:12. Leslie is the girl the Holy Spirit pointed out to me to teach her how to pray with authority.

Ephesians 6:12

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Leslie was blown away by the events this evening.

We had one last interesting encounter on the streets with a Muslim man. He was a character. Joe ended up giving the man his beanie. We had some doctrine issues when praying with the gentleman. Namely, when we used in Jesus name. He stopped us and told us Jesus was only a prophet. So I rebooted the prayer with blessings from God the creator, God of Abraham, Jacob and Joseph, and he answered YES! YES! in our praying. I think we spent about 10 minutes with this gentleman. He was a lively character and I think he enjoyed having fun with us. I enjoyed his request from us to pray for him to get better at billiards.

At the end of our ministry, back at the UN Plaza we prayed and then I addressed Leslie again about what she thought about tonight. She knew she was being shown about spiritual warfare firsthand and that God was speaking to her about it. I love the fact that she was at ease with what she was shown.

Joe and I had another great night of ministry too. I was glad he was able to make it out. As for the wine glass Joe, will we ever know?