“You’re the God of this city, You’re the king of these people, You’re the Lord of this nation..You are.

”These are words that we have been singing at Segue for months now.  Declaring victory, in the name of Jesus, in San Antonio.  These words of declaration also double as a promise.  Not only are we proclaiming that we believe Jesus is moving and will move in big ways in this city, we are committing to being used by God in this city.

This past Saturday morning three of us loaded into my little white honda and drove approximately two miles from where Segue meets each week.  Travis Park is a park downtown that is well-known for having a rough environment.  Even before I had ever been there I had heard that “it’s a place where a lot of drug deals go down.”  It was also originally described to me as “a park downtown where a lot of homeless people hang out.”

Those descriptions struck me because it immediately seemed obvious that this is where Jesus would probably want to hang out.

Saturday we went to Travis Park and our only goal was to be intentional with people. The three of us going talked beforehand about how we were excited to meet people and hear their stories.  How we want to build relationships with people in our city that are in need so they will trust us to meet that need someday.  How we want to be the best representatives of unconditional love that we can be.  We had no agenda other than praying for the people that would be hanging out in the park. Asking God to show us what He is already doing in the hearts and lives of people in this city and asking Him if we can be a part it.

I sat down in the middle of the park for a while and a man in his late thirties came over and started talking to me.  He told me he was just rebuilding his life after being in prison for twelve years.  He has a job and a place to live and told us that he’s now able to try and help some of his friends that are living on the street.We talked for over an hour about his life and his family.  His impressions of San Antonio,  his job, and what life was like for him when he lived to the street; we got to know him.

He asked us several times when the next time we’d be back would be and we said this Saturday.  Although he only gets one day a week off, he works at a restaurant not far from us so we’ll probably go say “hi” soon.  So our new friend has started to gather his life together physically, hopefully God will continue to open doors for spiritual trust and conversations.  Hopefully he’ll be encouraged by a great conversation with three strangers on Saturday morning.  I guess what happens next will be the promise part of the song that we sing. Committing to consistently invest is sometimes difficult; it involves a lot of work and sacrifice. However, as with anything that follows in the footsteps of Christ, I walked away from Travis Park feeling as though I had been infinitely more blessed than any person that we went to invest in.“

Greater things have yet to come, and greater things are still to be done in this city.”