The Overcoming Anointing
Truth is: we should always be ready. You never know when a God-moment is coming your way. Take yesterday, for instance. I’m coming out of the gym all hot and sweaty and Susan says, “let’s go to the barber.” Well, OK, we had barely talked about it when, before I know it, in a flash, I’m in a barber’s chair and meeting Theo, the barber.
As Susan is taking in the “guyness” of her first barbershop experience, I’m chatting it up with my new friend as he chops away. Pretty early into our chat I get that familiar feeling that this isn’t a typical conversation when I began to feel the “God pull,” a Holy Spirit vortex, that He’s about to move and somehow my boldness will be required kind of thing.
It didn’t take long to discover that his four kids were born in the same hospital as I was in good old Hackensack, New Jersey, and that he attended barber school there as well (in Hackensack, not the hospital, ha!). Then things took a serious plunge as we discovered we both were single fathers of four kids with the same six-year span of ages. Though our circumstances into single parenting were different, me losing Jackie to cancer and he divorcing a wife who had become a heroin addict three months after their marriage, I knew that my God-anointing was for a holy purpose.
As I got out of the barber chair and Theo got Susan’s enthusiastic, positive response to his high-fade handiwork, I reached in my pocket and gave him all the cash I had (almost double the amount he asked for and money Susan had just put in my hand as we walked into the shop) and I said, “Theo, can I share something with you?” “OK,” he nodded. When he looked expectantly in my eyes, I knew God had him in His sight.
I told him, “The greatest thing that’s happened in my life is to come to a relationship with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. He was the only reason I was able to have any hope, any wisdom, any power, and any grace to raise the four kids he gave me. They’re all world-beaters now and it’s because of his grace and power in me through Jesus. Theo, I pray that for you now, that He will be your hope and joy and grace and wisdom and the same for your kids, too. That you all will become great because you found such hope in God.”
Theo thanked me and pulled me close for a strong guy hug. Then he thanked me again with moist eyes as he walked us out the door.
Friends, when you overcome some trial in your life, there’s a strength, a compassion, and an ability to identify that SPEAKS. It is a God-anointing to minister that overcoming power to someone else who’s in the place you used to be.
I remember a friend who recovered from a back injury and then he told me he kept running into people with that same injury and he was able to encourage them through his own experience. Simply put, God chooses to use people. He chooses, amazingly, I know, to work through us to bring His truth, His courage, and His hope.
For years now I’ve noticed my heart starts beating fast whenever I run into another man who’s been widowed or divorced. Been there, done that. My heart goes out to him.
My fast-beating heart and the burning feeling, that Holy Spirit vortex is for a PURPOSE. Love and God‘s power, like an archer‘s bow, are meant to hit a target. That love and power, though meant for us, is also meant to impact God’s target which He’s brought to us in the present moment.
Saints, be ready and on guard. Your “Theo” maybe waiting for you later today. The overcoming anointing is meant to flow through us for the iridescent glory of God.
-Chris