Coming Out - My life as a Christian in the community - My New Neighborhood

Three months after I arrived in the US of A, I had the wonderful opportunity of being one of the ministers at a women’s gathering in Pittsburgh. Not a lot of women there, but my good friend told me that the teaching I gave was like my coming out. Well, she said it then but I had known it while I was preparing the message that it would be my coming out.  In that coming out message I cried out to God and told Him “Here am I, Lord, send me!” I meant it and since then He has been sending me. Well, I have had a few opportunities to share at a few gatherings and it is not surprising that everywhere I went people wanted so much to hear my story but that was not what God wanted me to share then. In any case I did not feel like I had any significant story about my own Christian life to share with the people God sent me to.

This time around, I feel that I am ready to share that story in the light of God’s word. At 99% of the meetings I have ministered on a variety of subjects, there has always been at least two or more people who came crying to me saying that God had really touched them through the message I shared. I believe that testimony alone is worth more than a million dollars and meetings of glitzy stuff. My prayer is that God will continue to speak through me as much as He wants but that I should speak only what He wants me to speak.

In June of 2008 after many months of prayer and leading from as far back as August 2006 when we were getting ready to go into Bible School, it was clear that God wanted my husband and I to serve Him in the ‘ministry of prayer’, which here in America has been identified as the Prayer Movement. I had been in America for just slightly over two years and I knew nothing about the Prayer movement. I was however very certain God was calling us to do something unique and that would probably not be received very well but which we were to do nevertheless.

The first hurdle I faced was my husband’s reluctance. He felt the call to prayer but not in the same way I did. My husband is a behind the scenes person, he is comfortable being there and will serve God with all he has within him. I am not. While in College, I was in the executive board of the Zambia Fellowship for Evangelical Students as the Secretary. My husband was literally picked to be one of the organizers because of his consistency, commitment and love for God. I on the other hand had the spirit of a pioneer, I not only presented myself, I was heard and felt for a certain kind of passion. So, we are two very different people joined by God.

Faced with the task of plunging into what God had called us to do, Brian would not be coming with me unless I made certain things very clear. I had no words clearer enough, only a strong call from God to respond to and so it was very hard for me. But through a series of lessons, I had began learning in my past life and as we were continuing in our new life, there are things which when God has sanctioned, we cannot put the burden of leading on other people. This is a subject that may draw a lot of analysis and controversy because of the diversity of people’s beliefs. I believe that men and women were created by God to serve Him and how we serve him is entirely up to Him. It is not men nor women who decide who should do what, God will gift us accordingly and it is disobedience to seek another to do our work for whatever reason we perceive or conceive. Obedience is getting the reigns and running with God no matter who I am or where I am from. I chose to obey God and do His will.

We started a Prayer Ministry with the permission of the Pastor at the First Baptist Church. Apparently God had already been talking to a lot people about it and they had been talking to the Pastor about it. God had been preparing the ground way beforehand.

Fresh from the wilderness and completely bathed in prayer, I sat before the Pastor and directly asked if we could start a Prayer Ministry and he said “Yes,” because it was clear that was what God wanted. And so in May/June of 2008 we started the work in the church. I had already done my homework through months of prayer, seeking God’s face and also preparing a kind of constitution for the Prayer Ministry two weeks prior to that.

Well, starting a Prayer Ministry in a Church, I have learned these past two years, can be one thing, sustaining it is another. Being in a Prayer Ministry like the one God Almighty gave us a vision for is like being on the battlefront with the archenemy throwing darts at you consistently. There would be seasons of ecstasy and excitement, followed by realization, settling down and finally reality.  In all this, we all have to be very weary of the enemy who fights any intentions for God’s people to come before Him in prayer. It can get ugly when we fail to see which way God is leading us and are even tempted to get in the flesh.

After the formation of the Prayer Ministry, that call began to return with a certain kind of consistency; more months of prayer and 40 days of fasting later, it was clear God did not just call us to do a Prayer Ministry in the church, we had to reach out to all Christians in the churches and neighborhoods where we lived. The ripening of this commission on November 5^th, 2008 coincided with the day Obama was clearly leading in the Presidential elections and winning. We had to pray for our President, for this country, for our neighborhoods, but my greatest belief and conviction from God was that as Christians we are capable of influencing the world through systematic, objective, consistent and sustained Prayer. I believed in that and still do; I will live long enough to obey God and see what eyes have not seen by believing this.

So, a week later, I began to go out to the churches to mobilize God’s people to pray as he had so often told me during my times of prayer. That obedience and its progress will be the subject of my sharing under this category as we continue. It is the diary of a ministry.