During April I was able to join a team from BSSM on a mission trip to the Bay Area around San Francisco, and one day in Santa Cruz a few of us stepped inside a store. The lady who ran the store was positioned behind the till and some of our team struck up a conversation.
This lady epitomised the culture in Santa Cruz, spiritually seeking but with very little interest in orthodox Christianity. As we spoke to her she was open but when we talked about Jesus it was like the petals started to close up around the seed of faith in her life, and her defences activated a little. She countered with ‘I don’t really think there’s a specific god, I just want to be open to the universe’ vibes.
As we were chatting, I suddenly experienced a sharp pain in my arm, near my elbow. It stood out to me as it was such a random place to get a sudden pain, and I don’t normally have any kind of pain like that. Because I’m aware God sometimes shows us something He wants to heal in someone else, by giving us a pointer of pain like this, I asked the lady about it. I explained that sometimes God spoke through showing us something He wanted to heal, and I pointed to the part of my arm and said I had a sudden pain there when I spoke to her.
She looked taken aback and proceeded to tell our group that she had fallen over in her favourite store a couple of years ago, and really hurt her arm in that exact place. She said she didn’t normally have any pain there any more but what had really been hard is that when she fell, everyone in the store ignored her. She had felt alone and no one came to see if she was ok even though she was seriously hurt. I was able to tell her that God had highlighted this pain to me because He saw her in that moment, and she was not alone.
It struck me that the Lord knows each person’s story so well – He revealed something to this lady that emphasised He is a personal God. She didn’t need convincing that there was something spiritual ‘out there’; she needed to experience that God is personal and knows her as a person.
God sees us – because He cares, and because He’s not an impersonal force but is a personal God. We are people, made in His image.
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Adventures with God 
This is yet another great message. It’s interesting that you have skirted over the fact that the Lord spoke to your body, Jonny. This isn’t what we usually consider as orthodox Christianity but it is certainly biblical. Maybe when we’re next encountering people we may want to listen to what our body is saying. Generally speaking we might be inclined to think that if we had a pain, if must be ours rather than an ’empathy’ pain that might lead to healing and an opportunity to express the Gospel. How excited the Trinity must be when this happens!
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