Treasure Hunters

My whole perspective on life has been changed today. You would think that I had some major revelation of God's heart, or that I was baptized in fire, or something extremely religious and godly happened and now I am forever a better person... nope. I played a game. 

It's called The Ultimate Treasure Hunt.

Here's how it works: You get a group of three or four individuals together. You have a prayer meeting. At the end of the prayer meeting each person gets a piece of paper (a "treasure map") and begins to ask God for specific words of knowledge ("clues") about people they will encounter as they go out into the community. Then, you jot down the clues (things like, "green shirt" or "blond hair" or "John" or "knee problems" or "keychains") on your "treasure map." After you've spent a couple minutes writing, you join up with your group and you compare notes and hit the streets in search of your Ultimate Treasure (the person who the Lord wants to encounter).

It's like a real life mystery. The Lord gives you specific clues about people He wants you to meet and influence, either with blessing or prayer or miraculous healing. Then, you go and find them! After all, its the glory of God to hide a matter, and the glory of kings to search it out (Proverbs 25:2)! 

Today a few of my friends and I decided to become treasure hunters. We prayed and worshipped for a little while, then we created our treasure maps. We all were incredibly unsure of how accurate our maps really were. Essentially, you're just writing down words and phrases that come into your head. You don't really know if they're from the Lord or if you're a lunatic -- but it's all a step of faith in the end (and sometimes the Lord will anoint your thoughts -- after all, we have the mind of Christ!! That's a story for a different day). But with anticipation and fears all bundled into some kind of massive hay-bale in our stomaches -- we set off for Target.

Now, we had various ridiculous words on our treasure maps. Some of mine were "eggs" and "orange tie" which never amounted to anything. Other clues did produce a Treasure, however,  only to have the Treasure reject our request of blessing. One of the words I had on my list was "injured wrist" and sure enough, in the shoe section, was a lady who had a cast on her wrist. When we ask if we could pray for her, her daughter boldly stated that "you have your beliefs and we have ours" and asks if we would kindly let them shop. So much for that.

Another lady was for sure our treasure, since several of my friends had gotten "blue button-down shirt" and "knee problems" as clues, only for us to find a lady grocery shopping wearing a blue button-down shirt and limping with knee problems. When we approached her she even added that it "fit her to a T." Unfortunately, she turned down our request to pray for healing but added that she would pray for us. 

Two other even adamantly denied that they were Treasures, giving us flat out rejection of our attempts to bless and heal them with a sharp "No!" and "I'm not a Treasure." 

However, we were determined to succeed in getting a Treasure before we left. So we kept looking. 

We were headed over to the "video game section" (another clue) when we stopped to check out the sunglasses. As we were goofing around, I overhead a conversation that caught my attention. Two apparent friends had run into each other while shopping, and one stopped to ask the other, "How's your brother doing?" I looked over to see who was talking and I saw that the lady who asked the question was standing in the middle of the jewelry section next to a stand with a pink watch inside, talking to a blond-haired young woman wearing a green sweatshirt. Now, normally this wouldn't be anything to get into a stir about - but when you have a treasure map pointing the way to a God-encounter that has the clues "blond-haired woman," "jewelry section," "green sweatshirt," "pink watch," and "brother needing prayer," things become a whole lot more interesting!

We approached the young woman and asked if we could pray for her (I later got a word of knowledge that she was a waitress and asked her if she was -- and she confirmed she was, in fact, a waitress -- then I was able to tell her that God knew her and cared for her). She accepted our prayer even though she admitted she "wasn't religious" and "didn't go to church." So we prayed for her and prophesied over her the destiny and grace she had on her life, and even though she walked away slightly taken aback, the peace of God left with her. 

It was awesome! It changed my perspective on how we do things... meaning how we minister to people. God is about love, friends. The only commandments He gave were "Love Me" and "Love Others." I used to hate the idea of "evangelizing" because it meant you had to argue or debate your theology with someone until they cracked into accepting Christ. But that's a greedy sales pitch. That's the way the world does things. The way the kingdom works is through blessing and love without accepting anything in return. Bless, and be blessed. God heals and loves whoever He wants -- whether or not they "buy" the salvation package at the end of the day. It's okay, He'll usually get them later! =)

The point is this: I want to be a treasure hunter. I want to find the glory that the Lord has hidden for me and I want to spend my life searching for the people who God has said "You are my Treasure." It's the "lost coin" parable in Luke -- the Treasure that God's lost is humankind and He will spend all the time and energy it takes getting His Treasure back. And you better believe He will rejoice once He's found it! Someone once told me that every person is only one encounter away from knowing God. If I could be that encounter... if everyone could just position themselves to BE an encounter -- we might find the REAL pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.

*For more info and awesome testimonies check out the book The Ultimate Treasure Hunt by Kevin Dedmon!