Easy Treasure Hunting

Date: 7.2.06

At house church on Sunday night, some of us were going to do a treasure hunt afterwards at the festival in Ellwood City since it was fireworks night. A treasure hunt is when you pray and then sit there for about 3 or 4 minutes writing down anything that God puts in your mind. It can be objects like yellow cows or a red shoe or it can be words like hope, or depression, or it can be other things like places or things like ‘broken arm’ or crutches. Whatever comes to mind, you write it down and those things make up your treasure map clues. The treasure is people. Then you split up into teams of about 3 or 4 and go out somewhere—wherever you feel led to or it can be a predetermined area, and you WILL see clues on your treasure map, no matter how crazy they seem and no matter how unlikely it is that you’d see those things. The clues lead you to divine encounters with people to share the love of the Father with. There were three groups of us going that night. Two of the groups went to the festival and had some amazing divine encounters with people.

Brad and Dave were together. They were tired and they weren’t seeing many clues. Well one of the things Brad had on his list was ‘cookies’. They walked over to an area where they thought there was a bakery booth. The bakery was gone, but some girl “randomly” turned around from the gyro stand and says “Hey, cookies!” Brad asked her, “Did you just say cookies?” She says, “Yeah, here!” She hands him a baggie of three biscotti. –Nobody had any clue where she got them, or why she just gave the bag to Brad. They found some other clues in that area and got to pray with a girl who had Forlorn Hope written on her shirt (Hope was a word on Brad’s list). That was awesome, and the other group was led to a guy that Mark and me had talked to and prayed with on Friday—that was definitely not an accident. As Mark was walking and talking with this guy named Tim, the other two in that group were walking behind them and seeing all of the clues on their map which assured them that they were right where God wanted them.

My group was with Sean and Elizabeth. Before we left, Sean stood up and was wincing in pain for some reason. He reminded me of the problems he had with his knees. He said it was like arthritis or something like that, and they start hurting him pretty badly after he’d walk for a while. I told him to sit back down, and we’d pray for his knees before we left. I told him the testimony about Codell who had his knees completely healed in February because testimonies carry great power. Then we prayed a little for his knees, but not much happened. He got up and walked around a bit and said they still hurt the same. He sat back down and we prayed some more. The other two groups had left for the festival, so it was just the three of us in the room. I had my hands on his knees and after a few minutes, I felt a pop in his right knee. Then it popped 3 more times within 30 seconds. I looked at Sean and he was glaring at his right knee with one eyebrow raised. I asked him what was up, and he said something was going on in his right knee. As he was saying this, I felt what seemed to be slow moving ripples in his left knee. It was definitely different than the popping in the right knee. I asked what was going on in the other knee, and he said something was moving, but it felt different. I asked if his right knee had been hurt more or something, and he said yeah, that was the one that gave him the most trouble. As we prayed more, I still could feel stuff going on. Sean said it was like there was an electric zap being shot through his left knee every so often. We prayed some more, and Elizabeth started praying for freedom for Sean from a burden he’s been carrying—she had burden written down on her treasure map. She spoke some other words over him—some were from her treasure map and some weren’t. He said later that they were all right on. I had some words for him too that I spoke. Every so often, he’d update us on his knees. He said my hands felt really hot at one point, and he said it was like something hard tensed up and covered his knees or something to where he didn’t feel like he could move them. We continued prophesying over him and praying for him and his knees.

Then, I told him to close his eyes. I told him to picture what he would picture God to be, and then watch what happens. About 5 or 10 minutes later, Sean opened his eyes and told us about this really great vision he had that really spoke about God’s love to him in a personal way. I had my hands on his knees the whole time he had his eyes shut because stuff was still moving in there. After Sean told us about all of what he saw, I asked him about his knees. He said it felt like his knees were gone. He said it was like they weren’t there anymore. He got up and walked around a little. As you could probably guess—his knees were completely healed. Before praying, they would even bend backwards a little bit as if he was double-jointed, but now they wouldn’t! …and obviously, they didn’t hurt anymore either! It turned out that our treasure was a member of our group! It’s also interesting that Sean wasn’t actually on our treasure-hunting team. He just wanted to go to ‘observe’ Elizabeth and me. God is incredible!