Following the Voice of God in New Orleans

We started off our “Ask the Lord” afternoon in downtown New Orleans. My group of 6 found a shady spot in the grass as I explained what an ATL is. It’s pretty simple: we ask the Lord what He wants us to do today, giving Him space to guide and lead us. We then took some time to pray and listen for His voice.

After spending about 10 minutes praying, I asked the group what they heard/saw from the Lord. Jace saw a homeless man wearing a brown hat, Jack saw a butterfly, Elissa gave us a word from the Lord, Mandi didn’t really see anything, Wes saw a black and white checkered pattern, and I saw trees with artwork around them. I also saw the color red, but ignored it because Elissa was wearing a red shirt and thought that was why I saw it.

So at this point, we hit the streets looking for and listening to what the Lord had for us.

As we walked, we would get to a street corner and stop and ask the Lord which way—and then head where we felt the Lord lead.

As we were walking, Wes saw a hat with a black and white checkered pattern on it in the front of a storefront. We decided to go investigate. I told the group just to walk around the store and see where the Lord led them. As we walked, we hit the back. Low and behold we see it, a huge stuffed animal butterfly just hanging from the ceiling, two of the items that the group had seen. The group was pumped. We walked around the store to seeing whom we needed to talk to or what our next step would be. I also encouraged Wes and Jake to go and talk to the store owner since they were the ones who saw our two items.

After talking to the storeowner for a few minutes, the man thanked us for what we were doing and asked for prayer over him, his wife with asthma, for their son, and for the decision of whether to stay in New Orleans or move away. Wes asked if I would pray over the gentlemen so I did. After praying, the storeowner encouraged us and thanked us again for what we were doing down in NOLA.

Back out on the streets again, we walked and asked God where He was leading us. After a while, the group began to get a little discouraged, so I had everyone stop and spend some time with the Lord again to see if there was something else He had to tell us.

Once again, I saw the color red and this time I listened to the Lord and shared it with the group.

Back out again we go walking the street to see what path to take. At this point, it was getting close to when we are supposed to meet up with the other groups and I saw IT: trees and art work and a homeless man with a brown hat on and his dog is sitting on old red milk crate. I got the group together and get them all to look over at what I had seen.

I asked Jace to go over and talk to the man but he didn’t feel comfortable enough, so Elissa and Wes went over to talk to the man. Rodney asked Elissa and Wes to get the whole group to come over because he wanted to do a spoken word over us. We came over, and then off he went, telling everyone around us that the Jesus people had come to New Orleans and the Jesus people the Jesus people were here to share the good news of Christ.

After Rodney got done with his spoken word he told us a little bit about himself and the fact that in the world’s eyes he should be dead after being hit by a bus, being in a coma for 4 months, and being partially crippled.

But, he said, by God’s eyes it wasn’t his time to go yet, because God had bigger and better things for him to do.

We prayed over Rodney and thanked him for his spoken word over us.