Colorado Testimonies

Written by Banning Liebscher Thursday, 03 December 2009 11:55

I'm down here in So Cal having a blast with my family at Disneyland. Just about to head out the door for another day of rides, Churros, and parades. Instead of a blog this week I wanted to share some amazing testimonies from an incredible youth group in Denver, Colorado. A few weeks ago I was talking to Jessica, the youth pastor, and she was sharing what God was doing in and through their youth in their city and schools. I was so encouraged by what was happening out there and I asked her if I could share the testimonies with you. There are quite a few but it is well worth the read. I am hearing more and more of youth and young adults who are demonstrating the power of God in their city. Well here are the testimonies. I'm off to Disneyland.

Banning

A girl in our youth group’s teacher complainted that he had problems in his neck.  It was giving him really bad headaches and if he turned his neck to the right and left he would black out.  She was really nervous but went up to him after class and quickly asked if she could pray for him.  He said yes.  She said a quick “be healed in the name of Jesus” prayer and ran out of the room.  The next day he came up to her and said that his neck was all better.  When she prayed the pain left and now he had full range of motion in his neck.  It was totally healed.  

The Lord was speaking to one of our girls that His spirit was going to break into their school through her science class.  So she has constantly been watching for opportunities to release His presence.  They were in their lab groups one day when one of the boys started talking about how he was sick of religion so he was just going to start his own.  He asked her if she wanted to join his religion.  She said no, she was a Christian and believed that God was real and wanted a personal relationship with us.  The guy said that he used to be a Christian but wasn’t anymore.  She asked if he wanted to feel God’s presence and if she could pray for him.  He was a little wary but said yes.  So she prayed for him.  He could feel God’s presence and got all hot.  He was all undone.  She told him that God loved him and wanted him to know that he was special to him.  Since then the kids has renewed his relationship with Jesus and has been going back to church.

This same girl was working in the DECA store at school.  They guy she was working with was talking about how he had bought enough drugs so that he could get high and stay high all weekend long.  The Lord had been showing her to just ask people questions in situations where she didn’t know how to respond but wanted to show God’s love.  So she asked him “why do you want to do that?”  And this began a dialogue about what was going on in his life.  She asked if she could pray for him and he said yes.  While she was praying he was feeling the presence of God really strongly.  She began to prophesy over him and encourage him.  The next time she saw him, he told her that he didn’t do drugs at all that weekend and hadn’t since and he had no desire to do them again.  He had started going back to church and was excited about Jesus.

Another girl leads a prayer group and gave one of the Christians in that group The Supernatural Power of the Transformed Mind.  This kids is a Baptist but is totally being undone with this book.  He had a supernatural encounter while on a missions trip in Mexico and came back wanting to know more.  He asked her about prophesy and what it was.  Her response was to teach him and their entire prayer group how to prophesy.  They practiced on each other and then went out and started prophesying over kids at the school.  Now they go on encouraging word (prophesy) outreaches all the time in her school.

Another girl was on a treasure hunt one weekend and saw this picture of a knee brace with one of those dials or rather gadges. She didn’t find that person on her treasure hunt, and was so disappointed because she really felt like God was going to heal it. Then that week at school, when she wasn't even expecting anything, she saw a girl walk by at lunch with the same knee brace that she had seen. She took a friend to find the knee brace girl. They followed the direction that she went but couldn't find her and so they started to walk back. They took a moment to pray that somehow she would show up and at that instant she walked out of a classroom and almost ran into them.  So they struck up a conversation with her and her friend and then prayed for her knee and it was completly healed! She didn't want to take her knee brace off though because her and her friend were really shocked and didn't know what to think. So they just started speaking into their lives about much God loved them and had a destiny for them. then the next day they saw her and her knee brace was completly off and she was smiling the biggest smile! Since then these two girls have regularly been doing treasure hunts at lunch and have seen 2 more healings.

A group of our students do treasure hunts at a local mall almost weekly.  Here are a couple testimonies from those outreaches.

• We went on an outreach to the Southwest Plaza Mall and the night before I was praying and asking God what he had planned for the outreach. God told me, "The time for Revival has come. It is time to take back your authority and claim your land. As you claim what has been given to you, the foundations will tremble, the walls will fall, and fire will come down. Everything that is shakeable will be shaken." As I was praying God told me that when we walk around the mall we need to retake authority and claim the land. So as we were walking around the mall during the outreach we all prayed together and took authority over the mall. We didn't see anything amazing happen while we were walking around. As we where all gathering back together, something amazing happened. there was an earthquake were we where standing and the ground began to shake for a few seconds. God said he was going to shake the foundations when we take authority and he literally did.

• We ran into this one girl and gave her a prophetic word.  She was a Christian but hadn’t been going to church and was backslidden.  She started crying as we prophesied over her and prayed for her.  God’s presence was all over her.  After we were done she thanked us and was so happy.  Now we see her almost every time we go do an outreach because she is always at the mall with her friends.  She runs up to us each week and tells us all the good things happening in her life.  She has gone back to church and renewed her relationship with Jesus.  We are like a support system for her coming back to Jesus, and it is really awesome.

Another high school girl was talking with two of her friends when she felt like she was supposed to ask one of them if they wanted to “feel” God.  She was really nervous and kept chickening out.  Finally she got the courage up and asked.  The girls looked at her like she had 3 heads and said they didn’t have time.  She said it would just take a minute, and said “put out your hands”.  She began to pray and asked her if her hands were hot.  She responded, yes but it is hot out her.  So she prayed for it to spread.  It did and then her hands began to shake.  The other girl was standing there with her mouth open.  She prayed for more of God’s presence and the girl began to shake more.  She then prophesied over her and talked about how much Jesus loved her. This girl was a Christian but said she didn’t know if God was real but now she knew he was.

• We have tons of testimonies like this where they ask someone if they want to feel God, and then pray for them and God shows up big time.

A group of girls were at Clement Park worshipping and praying for the dance outreach show they were going to put on the following Saturday. They were singing oh How I Love Jesus and felt the Holy Spirit come so were really excited. As they were packing up and heading off one of them got a text from a guy in our youth group saying that God is healing backs today (he got the word of knowledge and was texting everyone he knew and they were sending the texts to others…so I got like 5 or 6 texts about the word of knowledge). So they started praying that God would bring them to that person. So as they were walking to their cars they saw a man sitting reading on a bench and just knew that was him. So they went up to him and asked him if he had any back problems. He was like yah I just had surgery on it. So one of the girls told him that God was going to heal his back today.  He asked us how we picked him out and we told him God told us. So he was like yah I'm a pastor and I have had surgery on my back 4 times. So they laid hands on him and prayed for his back. They asked him if there was anything he could do to test it out. He said there really wasn’t but he said he had told God he didn't want to have another surgery and that God works in mysterious ways. To him it was a sign that God answered his prayer.

A couple weeks after we got back from JesusCulture in July, a girl was in her art class where they were supposed to draw pictures of dreams they had.  She hadn’t had any dreams recently, but she went to heaven in Redding so she decided to draw what she had seen in heaven instead.  Towards the end of class they were going around describing their dreams and showing their art work.  When it got to her she said that she hadn’t had a dream recently but had been to heaven so she had drawn that.  There were a couple kids who scoffed, including a self professed agnostic who sat next to her.  But as she began to describe heaven, the presence of God came into the room and there were stunned looks on the kids faces.  When she was done there was total silence and she had the attention of everyone.  It was really awesome.  After everyone shared, the agnostic said that she had never heard anything like that but wanted to know more.  How did she go to heaven…can anyone go…etc.  So this girl was able to share Jesus with her and pray for her that Jesus would take her to heaven.  The agnostic girl has not gone to heaven yet, but she is always asking this girl questions about God, etc.

Another girl saw an angel outside one of her classrooms.  She told her mom about it that night and her mom said that we need to commission the angels to do what they are there for when we see them.  In that class there is a kid who is a really big bully.  Even the teacher is afraid of him, and this kid is continually disrupting class.  So the next day when she went in to that class and the boy started acting up again and she thought “I wonder if that angel is stil there”.  So she asked the Lord to send the angel into the classroom and bring peace if he was still there.  Instantly peace filled the room and the bully was totally peaceful and the class could tangibly feel the peace.