Do You Believe What I Said Was True?

Yesterday I did something I haven't done in a while but should do more often. Every Friday night, my church meets at skid row to have church and pass out food and clothes. I decided to go this week even though I was tired after a long week and a long day at my internship. I kind of thought that I was going to help other people, but you know how it is when God is involved. It's never what you expect. We were out there on the streets, hearing the word of God as it was meant to be heard: in the open. That night the preacher was a man named Mercy, and he was talking about the method God uses to deliver us from oppression. He said that once God pronounced something dead in your life, it was gone. Forever. I had to admit, as much as I struggle with doubt, and uncertainty about God, and weather or not He's really on my side, I have been delivered from things. Things that will not come back. Mercy said that if we were willing to follow God, he would continue to mold us and shape us, and free us from our oppressors, but we had to be willing. At that moment, a woman passed by, and interrupted Mercy as he was speaking. She gave him some money. She said she wanted to thank him for being out there, and to thank God for telling her this week that she needed to give up her addiction to cocaine. Mercy stopped, and seeing how visibly upset she was, asked if we could pray for her. She said yes, so we gathered around her. We weren't at church anymore. We were never at church. We were on the street. we were in the lives of people who needed our God. They were our brothers and our sisters. As we prayed over this woman, her body started to shake. She kept shouting her needs out loud, and the ways she wanted to return to cocaine, and she begged God to set her free from it. When we were finished, she looked up. A few tears glistened on her wrinkled face, like diamonds under the dirty street lights on the corner of Winston and Wall. She kept trying to give us more money. All her savings was tucked away underneath the strap on her bra, less than fifty dollars. She wanted us to have as much as she could give. I looked around at the crowd, all these rich people (myself included, though sometimes I pretend like I'm poor) from Irvine, Los Angeles, and Orange County. Didn't we have enough (more than enough) to completely support what was being done here? Didn't we come here to do just that? We didn't need her money, if we could just be more generous. God didn't need her money. "I-I've been drinking, I know I've been drinking," she tried to stammer through her appologies. "I know it's wrong, and I-" Mercy didn't let her go on. "Do you believe" he asked, "do you believe that what I said was true?" "Do you smell the alcohol on my breath?" She said it in a sort of half whisper, half accusation. Again, Mercy asked "Do you believe that what we prayed for you was true?" He reached over and hugged her. She started to cry. "I believe you, I believe you, I believe you," she said over and over again. Mercy said that God sent that woman, not only so that she could be healed, but so that we could see God through her. She learned something last night that I haven't yet learned. I come to God with my excuses and my appologies for why I'm not what I'm supposed to be, or why there are things that tie me down that I should never have become involved with in the first place. I think, for some reason, that God expects me to clean up my act, and get myself back into order, to bring Him glory. But what about prayer? What about miracles? If it were actually possible to fix ourselves, how would that prove that God answers prayers, and works miracles? I think I need to wait, and trust. I need to believe that what he said was true, and that my help will come, not my my own efforts, but because God, who cares for us; God who gives us what we need; God, who never wastes our pain; God will be my help. My prayer. My miracle.