Treasure Hunt

by David Hobbs

Have you ever heard of a Christian “Treasure Hunt?” You get a piece of paper with the categories “Color, Location,” and “Message.” Then you pray and ask God to put on your heart something for each category to help you find the people God wants to speak to. For color: you might get "blue," for location: the "Sears" store in the mall, and for message: it might be “marriage” if perhaps the person is contemplating divorce. Then, after getting prayed up, you go to the Sears store in the mall and look for someone in blue clothes. When you find a person matching the description, you go up and say something like, “Hi, my name is David and you might be the person I’m looking for.”
“How’s that?”
“I believe God sent me here to pray for someone wearing blue about their marital situation. Is that you? Do you need prayer for your marriage?” When that hits right-on the results are phenomenal! People cry, they shake, they stagger… especially if they have a real need, which will be the people God sends you to.
I did this for the first time last night. But first let me tell you about Patty who was on the other team. Patty had the colors "red" and "yellow" and the location as the "Hallmark" Card store. She saw a lady in Hallmark with a red jacket on. When she went up to her, she found she was wearing a yellow tee-shirt under the jacket! Patty told her that she believed God had sent Patty to pray for her and then showed her the piece of paper with the information written on it. The woman began to cry. She said she was there with her sisters, that they were in the process of burying their mother, and someone else in the family had died recently too--it was a real hard time for them. And when they realized that God understood, that He cared so much about their situation He had sent someone specifically to pray for them. It was a very poignant time!

In another encounter, Patty found a man and after explaining how she had been led to him, asked him what was going on in his life that she could pray for. He told her he had just run into his ex whom he had left because she wouldn’t quit smoking pot. But when he embraced her that morning, his old feelings for her came back and his ex told him she had quit pot. Now he was wondering if he should go back to her. Patty was blown away. She told the man that (get this!) the exact same thing had happened to Patty herself earlier in the week. Patty had left her husband some time ago for the same reason—he wouldn’t quit smoking pot. But she had run into him earlier this week. When they embraced, all her old feelings had come back too. And the Holy Spirit had spoken to Patty and said, “Don’t give up on your dream for this man; it’s not dead! The exact same thing this man was now going through! (Isn’t that absolutely incredible!?) So she shared her story with him and prayed for him that God would help him know what was right. You see what can happen when God sets up divine appointments (and we let Him be God)?
The young fellow I was paired with was absolutely fearless about approaching people. I didn’t get anything in prayer about who to look for, and all he got was the color "black." He accosted a woman walking alone to her car in a dark place in the parking lot before we even got in the mall. I thought she’d be freaked out, but she stopped and talked with us and we all prayed together, holding hands in a circle. After prayer, she hugged me, as did the next 2 ladies we prayed for. We prayed with a Christian lady in Sears whose sister was about to give birth and was nervous about the labor. We ran into an unsaved acquaintance of mine whose wife was also about to give birth and prayed for them. We prayed for a teenager with an arm in a sling and I felt the Spirit of God all over us. He said he felt it too. We ran into a guy who was trying to break substance abuse and prayed for him and told him about our men’s recovery center. In all I figure we prayed for about 15 people in a little over an hour.

But the clincher happened after we reconfigured the teams and I was teamed up with Cheryl (our pastor’s firebrand wife, whose prayer meeting I attend 3 mornings/week). She likes to go in the darkest places so we went into a demonic looking rock music store and prayed with the young woman clerk, who was very nice. After praying for a few more people we ran into 3 people walking down the hall with an obviously “special needs” woman. Cheryl called her back and asked if we could pray for her. She began to pray over this lady, breaking the lies of the devil spoken over her, breaking all kinds of things. The woman, who at the beginning was catatonic, gradually came alive and started sobbing, silently but expressively. Cheryl waxed even bolder, put her hands on both sides of her head, speaking in tongues and praying deliverance and healing over her. The woman began to be overcome by the power of God and lurched forward. With Cheryl still praying for her, one of her companions and I eased her to the floor. She was completely out by this time, lying on the mall’s tile floor. I continued praying healing and peace quietly over her while Cheryl spoke with her companions, who, it turned out, were Christians. “Yeah,” Cheryl was saying, “when this happens I’ve seen them out for 4-5 hours.” (The mall was closing in about 20 minutes!) The other team came up, and after sharing some more and praying with the others, we left, with the lady still on the ground, out like a light. (But she had a very peaceful look on her face!) “Cheryl,” I said later, “if those weren’t Christians they might have had you arrested.”
“Absolutely!” She said. “That’s already been prophesied over me.”

So there you have it. My first excursion into Christian Treasure Hunts!