Connect Ignite Inspire Transform - Gracepoint Community Church

ULTIMATE TREASURE HUNT
T
reasure hunting. Children love it,
pirates are romanticized because of
it and A&E cable network has a television
show about it.
I admit that I love
treasure hunting too. A few years ago, a
friend introduced me to geocaching.
Geocaching is a world-wide treasure
hunt; with only a handheld GPS, some
coordinates and a few clues anybody can
participate. I used to take my son with
me; we saw some amazing secret places
together in search of our treasure and
even now, he sometimes looks around
the woods to find treasure that might be
hidden.
Recently I’ve discovered a different kind
of treasure hunt: The Ultimate Treasure
Hunt by Kevin Dedmon.
In his book,
Kevin describes the parable of the lost
coin (Luke 15) in
which a woman lost a
coin and searches
carefully until she
finds it. Upon finding
the lost coin she
rejoices with her
neighbours (community). The coin is her
treasure and the story reminds us that
God rejoices when lost treasure is found.
The parable likens people to lost
treasure.
If people are lost and God wants to find
them, how can he reach down to find
them except to use those willing to
participate in the Ultimate Treasure
Hunt?
In the last issue of Connection
Point, I posed a question to myself and
other Gracepointers, asking what it
would look like to spread God’s love in
Surrey. Since then, I’ve discovered that
treasure hunting is a piece of the puzzle;
and it’s fun, to boot.
For a long time, I approached
evangelism in the same old way – meet
a pre-Christian, become friendly, wait
for an opportunity to share the Gospel in
a relevant but
n o n -
t h r e a t e n i n g
way and then
hope
whomever
that
w a s
“evangelizing”
w o u l d
u n d e r s t a n d
their part and
I
pray the sinner’s prayer, be grateful that
now they are saved, and I could move on
to someone else. Treasure hunting is
different; it’s exciting and relevant in a
I will give you the treasures of the
darkness, riches stored in secret
places so that you may know that I
am the LORD, the God of Israel, who
summons you by name. Isaiah 45:3
way that meets
s o m e o n e ’ s
need
right
there in the
moment.
I conducted my
first
treasure
hunt a couple of months ago. I was with
2 other women; some of our clues (over
3 different maps) included Chocolate
Shoppe, red hair, glasses, sinus infection,
brown jacket, left side, foil-wrapped
candy (we had other clues that didn’t
lead to treasure also). My son refers to
the toy store down the street as the
candy store where he buys foil-wrapped
candy, so I suggested we try there first.
When we arrived in the store there was
only one customer.
And, guess what?
She had red hair, glasses, wearing a
brown jacket and was on the left side of
the store.
By Andrea York
We couldn’t believe it! We found
treasure. We were so excited. But
then all of a sudden fear filled me. Now
what? I was ready to call it quits and
say, “Thanks God
for the thrill, but I
didn’t actually
think we’d find
treasure and now
I’m scared and
want to go
h o m e . ”
Thankfully, that
wasn’t what we
did. I was
nominated to approach the woman. I
started out by saying, “This is weird, but
we’re on a treasure hunt and we think
you are our treasure.” She was skeptical
but intrigued and then we showed her
our treasure maps. We asked if she had
a sore right shoulder (it was one of our
clues), but she replied no. I then asked
her if she had a sinus infection. She said
yes and that it was recurring. We asked
if we could pray for her, which she
allowed us to do. She wasn’t healed
instantly but I’ve connected with her
since and have confirmed that God did
heal her of the sinus infection.
This first hunt built faith in me and the
women I was with. We couldn’t wait to
do it again. We learned some things as
well. We learned we edit God when he
speaks. During the clue-gathering time,
I heard, “left-side” but I didn’t write it
down. Likewise, my friend heard,
“brown jacket” and she didn’t write it
down. Thankfully, the clues we had
written down were enough to intrigue
the treasure enough so that we could
continue to engage her and ultimately
minister to her.
Page 9