REGGIE’S STORY
In Acts they talk about The Upper Room or the room upstairs, it’s the place where the Holy Spirit came to meet this congregation of people. A bunch of other super awesome/crazy things happened there too. It paints this picture for me of one of the most genuine, authentic, non-fabricated times of worship and crying out to the LORD I’ve ever seen.
It really is so beautiful to read about that these people were praying asking God to send the person He was talking about right before He ascended back into Heaven and all the sudden they hear the sound of wind and then the wind fills the room next thing you know they all have fire on top of their heads. At this, they knew the LORD came through on His promise of sending someone else to be with us until He comes back.
I’m saying all this, one, to get you to want to read more about this crazy stuff I’m talking about. Two, to make a connection to something we do here at Revolution Hawaii. On Sunday nights we have this meeting called, The Upper Room.
From 4:00PM – 5:00PM we all gather around and anyone else from the community to pray over the Upper Room meeting we’re about to have. We pray for tender hearts that are eager to worship the LORD, we pray for the Spirit to move and for Salvation to happen for someone. We pray for more things and over the speaker and the praise band. Then we go and do our jobs, last week I had the privilege to go downstairs and prepare a meal for after the meeting (It wasn’t just me.. cause yikes that’d be bad).
There’s about 60 people that come to Upper Room. Some of them are homeless people who are coming for the free meal or for the fellowship, others are people that go to the Corps regularly, others are some of the men from the ARC. We’ve got a whole assortment of people and we just go for it. In that place you can feel the spirit move and you can see it moving in people and changing their lives. It really is an amazing thing to see.
I met a guy on the street, let’s call him Dan. Dan is a really nice guy always carries around a basketball never uses it though. It’s still in its original packaging. It’s not a special ball or signed or anything but it’s his. I asked him if he played, he said he does when someone else brings a basketball so that way he doesn’t have to use his. I always see him holding on to it. I asked him if he’d come to church with me one night as he was getting ready to lay his head down for the night at the towns local park. He said he doesn’t know, then I told him about the meal and he said okay. A couple days later we’re at Upper Room and I see Dan, basketball and all. I give him a big hug tell him thanks for coming and get him a cup of coffee. We go in and sit down and the meeting starts, we start singing. I look over at Dan who knows every word and is tapping his foot to the music with his eyes closed holding his basketball. I start praying for him, I felt led to. We we’re doing something a little different that service. It was something called ACTS prayer. The speaker will say something about each letter then we will sing a song and pray over what the letter says.
Adoration was the first, then Confession and I opened my eyes to look at Dan who had started tearing up. Clenching his basketball a little tighter, I could hear him praying. He was apologizing for everything he’s done. It was breaking my heart to hear him breaking down.
Thanksgiving was the next thing. At that, he stood up and was praising the LORD thanking Him for life and grace and everything else he could think of. His tears of sorrow turned to tears of joy.
Supplication was the final thing, you pray to the LORD and ask for anything you need. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sound of the ball hitting the floor when I heard Dan say, “All I need is you and I’ll be okay”. I prayed for everything I needed the LORD to help me out with but when I saw this man sitting there wiping his tears away with a shirt that probably hadn’t been washed in a while saying that all he needed was Jesus well I was convicted.
That’s when I knew Revolution Hawaii is where God wants me to be. When I opened my eyes, I saw Dan grab his basketball and walk out. He didn’t even stay for dinner.