Treasure Hunting on Brighton Pier
Upadate: Looking for a photo of Brighton Pier? You may want to check out this church also Church of Christ the King Brighton.
You may have read my previous posts on treasure hunting, if not let me briefly explain. Basically Treasure Hunting is a new name for having divine God scheduled adventures, something that Christians have been doing for centuries. In small teams you pray that God gives you pictures, visions (the clues) which you then write down on some paper (treasure map) and then head out looking for the people (the treasure) who match the clues. These clues can be placed in all sorts of categories including appearance, aliment, names, locations and the just plain odd. So far I have been on three treasure hunting expeditions but wanted to share the last one I went on in Brighton in a Treasure hunting seminar we did at Mobilise.
We were guided to write down anything we thought God had given us, even the stuff that you think “oh I just made that up”. The reason being that we have the mind of Christ. As 1 Corinthians 2:14-16 demonstrates if we allow God to actively renew our minds then I guess it make a lot of sense that his thoughts can be also ours.
We had a number of clues in our group, including blue t-shirt, cut of trousers, red shoes, flipflops, girl, deck chair, rainbow, elephant, dome, we also had a few ailments and two names though I can’t remember what they were now.
We decided to head off along Brighton Beach were the deck chairs were located. We saw two women and a student who loosely matched the description and took turns to approach them with two asking if they are on the map and the other two praying further away. However none of them totally matched the description on the map and didn’t want prayer so we kept marching on along the beach. Suddenly we noticed that there was a DOME on the Brighton Pier and decided to head towards it. We ventured on to the Pier wondering where on earth a rainbow and elephant would be located?? Crowded with so many people we endeavoured to keep very vigilant.
We saw a Turkish lady with shades and a crutch and decided that even though she didn’t meet our description she could have one of the ailments on our map. Two of us approached her, showed the map and offered to pray for her. Having somewhat of a language barrier she was little confused and refused. We found out later that a lady with shades and a crutch on the Pier had been prayed for and healed through another team! We had planted a seed!
Continuing on we figured that the dome was where the game arcades were located. We ventured inside trying not to be put off by all the flashing lights and noise. Suddenly one of our team pointed out an arcade cabinet with some assorted stuffed toys along with an ELEPHANT! We looked around wildly for another clue.. Our eyes then spotted a GIRL (of student age) playing with her friend on one of the arcades. She had a BLUE T-SHIRT, CUT-OFF TROUSERS, FLIP FLOPS and a RAINBOW coloured handbag was hung over her shoulder! We waited for them to finish their game eager to speak to them. At last they were finished and me and Matt approached them, explained that we were on a treasure hunt and asked if the girl could see if she was on our treasure map. The girl who was on holiday from Australia took a look and said she wasn’t, even though she was on the map! We offered to pray anyway and she again said no. We politely said thank you and then went on our way.
I guess I was a little disappointed that she didn’t respond, but God was certainly on her case a seed was planted. I have learned that part of doing treasure hunts is learning to hear God and sometimes he is quite humorous about it. The first time I did a hunt we had a clue of “candle stick” we ended up in a department store thinking that the person we needed to talk to would be near the candle stick section however there were candles sticks dotted all over the shop! I’m starting to realise that Treasure Hunting should be an every day thing, not just a scheduled activity. Though it is good to have a focused time to meet with others, there is no reason God can’t speak through you in every day situations to everyday people. I’m starting to set aside time in the morning to hear if there is anyone God wants me to meet.
