I Had a Shocking Vision at Starbucks | Shane Winnings

Hey, I'm Shane Winning, CEO of Promise Keepers. And I get asked this question sometimes, how did you and your wife meet? And I kind of chuckle because it is a wild story. And this is coming from someone who I didn't grow up like aware of the, you know, moves of the Holy Spirit or supernatural things happening. I mean, I think I had heard like one crazy testimony from some missionaries in Africa, but I'd never heard about, you know, God speaking or moving in wild ways in America or to anyone I even knew. And so that's kind of the context of what I'm about to share, which is just a crazy vision that I had from the Lord. Now, a little bit of backstory. You know, 25 years, grew up in the church, had a radical encounter with the Lord where he confronted me for living lukewarm, serving in the church, living for the world. And so when God confronted me and I gave my life to Jesus in 2016, I began reading my Bible and just eating it up as much as I could. And I started to learn about words of knowledge and prophecy and healing and just everything and believing that God would speak. And so over the next few years, I really cultivated this relationship with the Lord where I would begin to hear him speak and I would move in a word of knowledge or, you know, sometimes I'd get it wrong, but I would always be pressing in, believing for more, believing that God would speak. And I went from a period of trying to hear God speak to him interrupting me during times of prayer, conversations or whatever, where I didn't even ask him to give me a word, but he just did. And so now fast forward to 2017. It's in the summertime. I had taken some time off of work as a police officer and I was down in Florida where I live now, but I was just vacationing at the time. I'd been born again for about 18 months and I'm in a Starbucks. I'm in line about to get a drink so that I can just sit down and read my Bible and spend some time with the Lord. And I see this gentleman standing in front of me and I have this vision, this open vision. I've never encountered anything like this. I haven't seen anything like it since. But as I'm looking at this guy, it's like there's a floating video in my field of view. I can still see the Starbucks, right? I can still see the people in line. And I couldn't even believe this was happening. But I see this video like pop up over this guy's head and I see him walking up the stairs of this cheap looking motel and he goes into a room, closes the door behind him. And I felt in my spirit like I was watching a filthy movie or something like that. I just felt gross. And I heard the Lord say he's going to commit adultery and he's married. And I looked and he had a wedding ring on his hand and I was like, oh, my gosh. And then I started to think, oh, my gosh, now I have to do something with this. You know, like everyone thinks it's cool to get a crazy word from the Lord until it's time to release that crazy word. And it's not very comfortable to do. But I knew that this could save a marriage. And I also knew, look, if I'm just, you know, not hearing God or whatever, you know, it doesn't matter. I'm going to go in faith. And either way, I'm believing that God spoke to me and I'm going to be obedient. And we'll find out if it's the Lord along the way. But I'm going to test this word. And so I asked the guy if he can go talk out in the parking lot. I said, look, God showed me something, I think, and I need to talk to you in private. Can we go in the parking lot? And he's like, sure. You know, he's kind of off put. And so we go in the parking lot and I said, hey, man, listen, I was looking at you and I had this vision. I saw you going into a motel room and I believe the Lord told me that you were going to cheat on your wife. And I said, don't do it. I said, the Lord wants to save your marriage. And as I began to say this, I was getting other words of knowledge. And maybe you're like, well, what does that look like? I was just getting thoughts. As I'm talking to this guy, I'm getting thoughts. And the thoughts were, he's got an addiction to pornography. And so I said, I believe the Lord wants to confront an addiction to pornography. And then I had another thought. It's causing issues with his son. And I said, I believe you've got issues. Do you have a son? And he's like, yes, I have a son. And I said, I feel like there's some issues there just because of this secret sin that's been happening. And the man just turned red and he looked absolutely caught. And I just said, look, don't do it. The Lord loves marriage. He loves your marriage. He wants to save your marriage. Don't do this. And after that encounter, I was very uncomfortable, but I felt like the Lord was I felt his heart for marriage. God loves marriage. He loves the sanctity of marriage, the purity, the holiness of it, because he's in it. The Bible teaches that a triple braided cord is not easily broken and that we form a covenant with God. So marriage is not some light thing that is just because of a piece of paper that a government recognizes. No, this is a covenant recognized in heaven. And God will stop at nothing to make sure that someone doesn't make a horrible mistake. And that's the mercy of God as well. And I was so honored that he would speak through me. And so I was like, man, this is such a cool testimony. I'm going to share this. And at the time, you know, a lot of people weren't posting crazy Christian stuff on Instagram. TikTok wasn't really happening. And so I posted it on Facebook and it actually went viral. Like every time I logged back into Facebook every hour, it was like 10,000 more views, 5,000 more views, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of comments. And I ended up meeting my wife because she commented on the Facebook video and I saw her profile. And, you know, to be honest, at that time I was single, but I was so tired of, and maybe this will give some comfort to you who are walking in a season of singleness. I was so tired of the fake stuff. Like I had lived as a confessing Christian for 25 years, but I wasn't following Jesus. And so I didn't want that in a woman. I wanted a wife. I wanted a woman of God. I didn't want someone who had shown their body all off on social media and then had a Bible verse in the caption. Like I didn't want anything to do with that. And so I saw my wife, I saw her profile and I was like, wow, that's a beautiful woman. And her page was all about Jesus. Like there was nothing that was a red flag. So I was like, Lord, can I message her? And he said, why not? He said, your heart's pure. Why not message her? And so I sent her a message and I just said, hey, and we were talking for a couple of days, just messaging back and forth. And I ended up finding out that she was going to school up at Lee University. And I had about two days left on my vacation in Florida before I flew back home to Washington all the way across the country. And I remember one night I woke up in the middle of the night and I had a thought. The Lord spoke to me and he said, how far away is Lee University? I woke up from a dead sleep at like two in the morning and I'm now I'm on Apple Maps looking up Lee and it's about an eight hour drive. And I was like, OK, it's eight hour drive. And I said, Lord, could I take her on a date? And he said, why not? Your heart's pure. You're looking for a wife. You're not looking for something else. And I said, OK, I'm going to ask her. And so the next day I asked her, I said, hey, this might sound totally crazy, but can I come up and just take you to dinner before I fly back home to Washington? And she said, I said, I want you to pray or I think I can't remember if I said, I want you to pray or she said, I want to pray. But we both wanted her to pray about it. And so she said, I'm going to go pray. And she came back later and she said, you know what? I was praying and I feel like the Lord just said, why not? And it made me laugh because I hadn't shared with her that that had been his response to me up to this point. And so I said, cool, I'm going to come take you to dinner. And sure enough, I drove up. We went to dinner one night. I flew to Washington back home the next day. We did long distance for nine months and we got married in 2018. We've been married for six years. We've got two beautiful boys. Life with the Lord is incredible. But it's really funny when people ask me, how did you meet your wife? And I get asked that all the time by unbelievers. And what do you say to that? Like, what does an unbeliever say when I told them that the way I met my wife is because I had a vision in a Starbucks of a guy who's going to cheat on his wife? It's crazy. But this is the life with God. He does crazy things that we would never even think. And let me tell you that it's available to everyone. I'm not a professional Christian. I haven't arrived, right? Like, I've never even been to ministry school. I got born again on my bed and I began to read my Bible. And I've come under the teaching of some incredible leaders and preachers and pastors. But I want to encourage you that hearing the Lord and allowing Him to speak into your life. And when I say allowing the Lord, what I mean is you are removing distraction. You are killing your flesh to give room for God to speak. Because the truth is that He's always speaking. But you have to make room in your life and in your mind so that you can actually hear Him. You have to give permission for God to interrupt you because He's a gentleman. And when you're doing this life with Him, you know, if you tell God, Hey, I'm too busy. I'm too busy to pray or I'm too busy for you to speak to me. I have noticed that people who do that, the Lord will back off a little bit. Now, maybe not at first. You know, we see this in the story with Pharaoh. God is constantly reaching out by way of the plagues, trying to get Pharaoh's attention. We see this through the Bible where God will come and He will try to influence us to do the right thing. But the Bible does teach at some point, you can harden yourself. You can quench the voice of the Holy Spirit to the point where He won't bother you anymore. And so if you're watching this and you're like, maybe I've been a little too busy. Maybe I've tried to hush the voice of God because I've had my own stuff going on. Or maybe you're watching this and you're like, I've desperately wanted to hear God, but I didn't even know He could speak like that. I didn't even have a grid for stuff like that, but I wish He would do that in me. I want to pray a simple prayer right now. I don't believe I'm going to impart anything to you over the camera, although I do believe that God does stuff like that. I believe that a simple prayer where you will come into agreement by faith, believing that you were created by God for God, believing that you can hear His voice, that you can experience manifestations of God like open visions. I just want you to come into agreement to say, God, I believe you can do anything. I believe you could give me a vision. I believe you could speak to me. I believe you could do this or that. Would you come into agreement with me right now as we pray? Would you just lay down maybe any preconceived notions of what being a Christian is like? You know, I was raised in churches where I really didn't believe in this stuff until it started happening to me. And I realized, man, I put God in a box. And so if that's you, let's just pray right now that God would be able to move freely through your life. Isn't that what you want? Don't you want to see miraculous things? Don't you want to be used by God to potentially save a marriage? Come on, if He'll do it through me, I was a lukewarm Christian who got saved and then He started doing all these miraculous things. I don't have some crazy background. I didn't go to ministry school. I didn't do all this. If He'll do it through me, won't He do it through you? Let's pray. Father, I thank you in the name of Jesus. I thank you for this person on the other side of this screen, God, that you know them, that you love them, and that your word says, my sheep know my voice. God, we couldn't know your voice if you weren't speaking. And so we just come into a place of agreement, even for some by faith who say, God, I choose to believe that you still speak today. God, I'm asking that you would help whoever is listening and watching this to lay down any preconceived notions of what it looks like for you to speak into their lives. God, would you expand our minds? Would you remove any strongholds, any wrong ways of thinking that would limit your ability to communicate with us, whether it's through words of knowledge or visions or signs or wonders. God, whatever it is, if it's from you, we say, I want that. And I pray over this person who's listening and watching, God, that they would begin to hear your voice more clearly than ever. I pray, Lord, that there would be a gift of faith that would even come over some who have struggled in unbelief in this area. Father, I pray that you would speak to them, move through them in a mighty way. Show them, Lord, that you are God, and that means nothing is impossible with you. I thank you, Lord, that because of Jesus Christ, we have the ability to belong to you as sons and daughters, and because of that can be filled with your Holy Spirit and can hear you when you speak. And so I bless every person who's listening and watching in Jesus' name. Amen.