Treasure Hunting

Every Monday a group from church meets at the offices to go treasure hunting. Anyone can join, so Danielle and I went for our first time yesterday. Here's how it works. We worship for a little bit, pray, and wait to hear from the Lord. We write down anything we think He is telling us that could be clues to people He wants us to find. The people are the treasure!

Sound crazy? It's really fun, but I was definitely intimidated. I'm sitting there praying and people around me are writing down all sorts of things, and I have nothing at all. Someone then shares with the group that we should write down things that come to mind, even if they sound random. Why? 1 Corinthians 2:16 says, " 'For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?' But we have the mind of Christ." As a group, we prayed this verse and asked for God's favor.

After about 10 or 15 minutes, we split into two groups and began to make our "treasure map". This included everyone sharing what they heard, writing down other's clues, and making a plan. For example, a couple of people had clues for a location, ie. the Cathedral tram stop and the Waterstone's bookstore, as well as descriptions of people, such as someone in a mobility cart, someone who had fallen on the ice (it's been snowing hard here) and been hurt. The object is to go to all the locations the Lord tells you and find people with these descriptions. Then ideally you approach them, pray for them, and share about the Lord and His love.

It was raining when we began our journey, but we made the best of it. We didn't really see anyone at the Cathedral tram stop that fit our descriptions, so we moved on to the bookstore. When that didn't work out, we were getting pretty discouraged. On the way to our last location, an older man riding in a mobility cart passed my group (he was going the opposite way) and all of our heads turned at once. We had a clue for someone in a mobility cart!

However, everyone just stood there and watched him pass as we contemplated if we should talk to him or not. Why as Christians are we so hesitant?!?! Finally I said we should talk to him, and my friend Izzy and I ran after the man. He had gained a lot of ground on us, so it was quite humorous doing this. We were holding hands, laughing, and trying to catch up to this man in the downtown area of Sheffield. We introduced ourselves, kind of told him what we were doing, and asked if there was anything he would like prayer for. He said no, so I asked if we could just pray for him then. He said he had some shopping to do....bummer. I got his name though (Peter) and we prayed for him when our team met back up. It seemed disappointing, but I have to remember it was good. Even though Peter didn't want to talk, it was a win/win situation because he heard that the Lord loves him, that he's treasured, and he got prayed for anyway.

We met back up with the rest of the group at the church offices and shared stuff. They ended up praying for someone who had fallen on the ice and broken their foot. Praise God! That was one of our clues! This was a great first experience at treasure hunting, and I look forward to growing in this type of evangelism. I realized how I'm lacking in boldness (there was one time in the bookstore when I wanted to talk to someone and just opted not to). I don't want to be like that, but sometimes it's just easier/more comfortable.

Since we do this every Monday, I will hopefully be updating with some cool stories of how God is working in this city. I'm so excited to be part of it.