treasure hunting in a muslim country

before I continue with this post, I want to encourage you to get a copy of Kevin Dedmon's book, "The Ultimate Treasure Hunt" (Destiny Image). This book may "capture" better than any other book since John Wimber's "Power Evangelism" the essence of ministering to the lost in supernatural power - it is incredibly practical too, which makes it one of the most practical books I've ever seen about "doin the stuff" (as Wimber used to say).

anyway, last night we introduced a group to "treasure hunting" - we started by waiting on the Lord to give us pieces of the "treasure map" - we wrote down conditions that we felt He wanted to heal (neck pain, lower back pain, knee problems), places we felt He wanted us to go (i.e. a restaurant with a red and yellow sign), and things we were to look for (red convertible with a man named "Khalid", man in a bright yellow shirt, etc.). We broke into two groups and headed out to find these "treasures".

I won't go into all the details of what happened because this would become way too long, but suffice to say God surprised us - as He always does. Another value that I always articulate before taking anybody out to "spill" (by "spilling", I mean releasing God's supernatural Kingdom on people), is that we don't come back until we've seen miracles - I call it "the miracle back guarantee". Somehow knowing how outrageously good God is, He always does miraculous stuff even at the 11th hour. (by that, I can recall several times when we were heading back to our cars at the end of an evening to go home (having seen NOTHING) and seeing God give an accurate word of knowledge and heal someone in the parking lot).

Here are some of things we saw happen - the first shop we walked into with the "red and yellow sign" (it wasn't a restaurant), was where it all started for one of the groups. We left that shop after the Syrian muslim manager's knee was healed (we had "knee problem" on our treasure map). A Lebanese woman had a stomach problem that she let us pray for after we gave her a word of knowledge. She was a bit skeptical but when the Lord showed me that it last hurt two days before, she let us pray! One of the shop employees thought we were psychics - that's always fun.

The women also began to find their treasures - and saw several people healed. One woman from Sri Lanka had abandoned her Christian faith to marry a muslim man. After she was healed, she decided she wanted to follow Jesus again! So much for the power she found in islam! One of the girls who went out was getting word of knowledge after word of knowledge for people. My wife was amazed as this was the girl's first official treasure hunt.

Sometimes the treasures we find don't seem to want to cooperate. For example, we had "red convertible sports car" and the name "Khalid" (which were two words from two of us that we felt went together). We looked all night for a red convertible sports car. In the natural, in this rich Gulf Arab country you will often see many cars like that - especially on a weekend night. However, last night we didn't see a single one, UNTIL near the end of our treasure hunt, one of the team said, "there's a red convertible" (it was actually more like maroon colored, but it was close enough). Comically, we followed this car through a parking lot on foot. Finally, I walk up to the car and ask the driver, "Is your name Khalid"? He said, "Yes, it is". Basically I asked him like 2 more times, because being the great person of faith that I am, I didn't believe him the first time. Anyway, we showed him our treasure map (with his name and car description written down) but he didn't want anything to do with us. We went away rejoicing anyway because God had spoken and we had heard Him clearly!!!

At the end of the evening, I think everyone was just encouraged to see how much of the treasure God enabled us to find. At the same time, we got to pray for others who weren't on our treasure map, but that we got to meet while wandering around. Also, we met some people in need a major miracles (mostly muslims) and got to offer the Kingdom, gave our phone numbers and are waiting for the phone to ring for follow-up. One Gulf Arab muslim man in particular had an ankle problem that I was looking for all night - it wasn't a word that we got before leaving on our adventure, but one that I kept getting while we were out. I asked like 4 people throughout the night all who didn't have an ankle problem (and who thought us to be quite weird). However at the very end of our time, I see this man with crutches coming up and sure enough it was for his ankle. I spoke with him briefly and he explained that there was a tumor in his ankle (he was to find out the next day what kind of tumor - i.e. malignant or benign). I was able to share the testimonies of several cancer cases we have seen healed and he took my number.

Anyway, if we can treasure hunt in muslim countries, you can do it too! By the way, we openly did this for several hours and faced no problems whatsoever - except for people who thought we were strange. Which of course we are because our citizenship is from another world!!!