Testimony Unfolded: April 14, 2008
Brenton Dowdy, Josh Carroll, and Brady Bruton, three members of our worship teams, listened for God’s voice in a public place following the Prophetic Conference this past weekend:
Monday after the conference with a fresh reminder of the absolute necessity to be listening all the time, myself and two friends were having some lunch together. The restaurant was unusually busy for a Monday. A large table of twenty or so had consumed most of the attention of the under manned wait staff. It was a half hour before we received drinks and over an hour before we had gotten our food. At that moment we felt the tug of the Holy Spirit to look beyond ourselves and our inconvenience. After talk of the conference and testimony, we decided to ask God to give us some supernatural encouragement for our waitress, recognizing the pressure she was in and that she seemed to have a lot on her mind even outside of work. So instead of griping and throwing a fit, we listened.
As we waited one of us verbally chimed in along the lines of, “Lord, speak to us, give us something to give our waitress.” I immediately heard and saw “Butterfly.” I hesitantly said it out loud after a minute or two for another to say, “Get out of here, I saw that too.” We waited some more and the other with us said, “I heard caretaker.” We found it ironic, considering the condition of our service, but we all agreed with the word from the Lord. After all, an under manned wait staff was far from her fault. We had a lot of ideas of what might have been the interpretation for the butterfly, including that it was possibly just a word of knowledge of something that was specific to her, but we remained unsure. When she came to bring us our ticket I said, “We are Christians and we wanted to be able to encourage you, so we asked God for a way that we could do that and he showed us a Butterfly, we thought you might have a butterfly tattoo or a favorite shirt with a butterfly? Do any of those mean anything to you?” (We thought we might have seen these specifics, the Lord corrected me for reading to far into this one in this case or at least jumping in to quick for the answers this time. But He was gracious). She replied after a second or two of a contemplative and uncertain look, “Well, I don’t think so, but I my nick name for my daughter is “Madame Butterfly,” we call her that all the time, and I’m actually really stressed out here at work because I am needing to get home to my kids and I’m not sure if I am going to be able to get out of here in time because we are much busier than normal. My son isn’t feeling well and I have to get home soon to get him to a doctor’s appointment.” We explained that we noticed she had a lot on her mind and that we had also heard from the Lord that she was a “Caretaker.” We encouraged her with that and I shared, “I think God showed us some of this stuff to let you know that he sees you, sees what’s going on, and He loves you very much.” I had to leave at that point, but the other two guys stayed back and got to pray a blessing over her. A great experience and some growth too. It was awesome to see the Lord be gracious and it is encouraging to look back and see how some the connections could be better made next time. And! One more of God’s children got to hear how he feels about them in a personal way. Praise the Lord.