Operation Mary Magdalene

The following is the text of an article written by Ted Hahs of Harvest Evangelism:

We are partnering together to build a canopy of prayer over the most visibly needy sector of the city of San Francisco.  Our goal is to mobilize enough saints to adopt in prayer (a la Luke 10) every homeless person in San Francisco - saints praying with faith not only that the homeless will be rescued, but that they will be raised up as agents of transformation to their own people in the city.

Question 1 - Will this do any good?

Prayer is the foundation of transformation.  When we first began incubating this idea several months ago, I put a challenge before them:  "Tell me who is the absolute worse case person you know out on the streets. -Who is the person so far gone that it would be an undeniable miracle if the Lord brought him/her back? - Let's adopt this person in prayer as a prophetic act representing our adoption of the entire city."

Everyone in the ministry immediately responded with the same name:  a woman who we will call Mary Magdalene (not her real name).  Mary was so far "out there" that no one had ever even had an intelligible conversation with her.  She was known for living in a port-a-potty, dressing bizarrely, wearing a shirt on her head, howling and screaming at night while talking to invisible people and manifesting a wide variety of personalities. -God's kind of lady!

The power of agreement

We spiritually adopted Mary and then began to fervently cry out to God on her behalf.  Evan and April are no strangers to prayer by any means, but we all felt that the Lord was inviting us into a new dimension of authority in intercession for this lady and subsequently for the city.

 

A sign

Within a few months time, Mary has undergone a dramatic transformation.  After about 2 months of fervent prayer, she disappeared and no one saw her for about another month.  Then she showed up one day looking like a new woman.  She is now in her right mind.  She has housing and is off the streets, hangs out at the ministry often, is attending church regularly, and has opened her heart to Jesus.  This is clearly divine intervention, because in this case none of us did much more than just pray for her.

Question 2 - How will we do it?

There is no exact number, but the city estimates that there is somewhere between 10-20,000 homeless in San Francisco.  We have conservatively estimated that we can gather the names of at least 1000 of these individuals.  That is ten percent.  Imagine a small army of believers each adopting one name and committed to pray daily for that individual by name and for 9 others whose names God knows even if we don't.  With as few as a thousand Christians we could adopt every homeless person in San Francisco.

Caring for the poor is at the heart of the gospel and is the key to gaining favor with the lost, both rich and poor alike.  The enclosed article is a testimony of this.  The reporter, a non-Christian with no Christian background writing for a liberal newspaper in a city often known for a militant anti-Christian attitude, succeeds in presenting the gospel in an amazingly eloquent way.

 

Part of the solution

Would you like to be a part of this army of prayer warriors adopting the homeless in San Francisco?  Click here to be brought to our contact page where you may check a box to receive by email specific information regarding the person you will be invited to pray for.

I am sure you have been grieved by recent events in San Francisco, you may even have been tempted to curse the city.  Here is a very practical, and strategic way to be part of the solution.  The prayers of a righteous man are powerful and effective.