The Spiritual Readings Tent!

In the Spirit of Revelation 19:10, "...the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”

As an intern with Campus Christian Fellowship on Western Washington University's campus, one of my assignments was to do some sort of public outreach event on campus (in addition to our more ongoing outreach) at some point during the year. I had the urge to do...something you don't see every day! I got the idea from a campus we send one of our missions trip teams to each spring break (California State Stanislaus). I'd heard the stories and figured we had to do it on our campus some time. So what did we do?

We got a big tent, made walls with bed sheets and put it out in Red Square (the busiest most central part of campus) with a big sign across the front of it that said "FREE SPIRITUAL READINGS". The idea is that people are hungry for something spiritual...anything! So they stop by... God gave us a great day of sunshine in the 70's and the tent was full (with two visitors at a time) from 10am-3pm!

When people stopped by, we'd ask them if they were a "spiritual person" to get an idea of where they were at. We'd then explain that (to one person's great disappointment!) we weren't going to read their palms or use a crystal ball. But, we would say that we believe God is real, knows them personally, and can speak to us! Some would be surprised at this. Then we would say we'd start by praying for them. I was surprised that nobody had a problem with that! We would then ask God to show us things about their lives to encourage them and to show His love to them. As we prayed for people, God would always give us things to encourage them with and reveal to us things about their lives. 1 Cor. 14:24-25 says that if all prophesy and an unbeliever enters, the secrets of his heart will be disclosed and he will fall on his face and worship God and declare that God is really among you! And we saw this happen...

We prayed for Grant and Shelby together in a 2-for-1 spiritual reading session. They said they believed in a creator, but were not involved in a specific faith and had never really encountered God. God gave us images and words for Grant about a difficult but rewarding journey he was on to Oregon, that he was a person very respected by others and that he had a gift of leadership in his future career. Surprised, he told us that he was planning to move to Oregon after college to start a business! We then prayed for Shelby. God showed us about her gentle heart, and her love for music (turns out she played at least 5 instruments!), and how she likes to dance. She was also shocked at the accurate words. Grant then asked, "So, wait...how did you say you know this? Can anyone hear from God like that?" We told him that God speaks to all that know Him! I then felt the need to tell Grant and Shelby that God can also heal people. "Wait, like, broken leg healed?" he said. I then shared with him some testimonies of healings I've seen, including God growing out short legs. Grant was fairly excited at this point to tell us that his leg was about 1/4" shorter than the other and asked if we'd pray for him. Of course we did!

We had him sit around the fountain and hold out his legs. Sure enough, one was barely shorter than the other. I prayed for him and then asked him what was happening. He said he wasn't sure if he was making it up or not, but his leg was tingling! We didn't tell him that he may feel anything beforehand. I then had him hold both of his legs out again and they were completely even! Praise God for loving Grant and Shelby so much to encounter them like this!

Overall, it was a packed day and the grace of God was so tangible. We had SEVEN people accept or recommit their lives to Christ! Thank you JESUS!!

Jim & Shaaron Coleman heard good things about a recent Outreach at Western, so they asked Jonathan Taft to write up a testimony about it.