Since our visit with the Maasai in Lesiret, where the people
heard the Gospel of Jesus for the first time, we have been involved with other
ministries, as you can glean from our prayer card. While with Pastor Wilson, we
spent the majority of our time at a boy’s rehab school known as Osiligi Farm.
After that, we spent a day rafting the Nile River in Uganda and took a bus to Tumaini Miles of
Smiles Children’s Home in Western Kenya--not far from the Ugandan border. This
is where I lived for several months back in 2008. These experiences also
warrant their own blog, and I will get to that soon. But for now, you are caught
up to speed with where we have been. God continues to heap His blessings on us
and lavish us with His unmerited favor.
I wanted to use this blog to discuss something that I
briefly highlighted in an earlier post from our trip. I mentioned once before
how people here are much more inclined to believe that the sick can be healed,
demons can be cast out, and all sorts of miracles are possible with faith in
our powerful God. I was wondering about how many Christians really think Lazarus
from the Bible was actually dead, put in a tomb, and then called back to life
to walk out of his own grave. I mean how many of us actually believe that?
Sure, we believe with our minds. Many of us have learned Bible stories since we
were children and could tell you about Lazarus or about Noah’s Ark or even God
parting the Red Sea through Moses. I don’t know how to get this across in
writing, but I am wondering if you really believe these things happened? Even
the story of our Savior, Jesus Christ. I have been asking myself do I actually
have faith that Jesus was dead and buried as a lifeless human being, and then
was literally raised to life again to later ascend into heaven.
Out here, I am much more frequently confronted with
questions and conflicts of faith. After spending much time thinking about the
above stories, I hope I am to the place where I am certain all of these events
occurred. My point in writing this is not to call you out or even to say I have
achieved a certain level of faith, but I just want each of you to ask
yourselves whether what the Bible says transpired really happened on this
earth. Do you believe? Or are you like me and the man in Mark 9 who says to
Jesus, “I believe; help me in my unbelief.” So don’t be discouraged if you have
not wholeheartedly committed to the truth of these stories, but be encouraged
that many men and women of faith throughout Scripture had serious issues with
trusting God and taking Him at His Word. I love John the Baptist. Here is
someone who spent a great deal of time telling of the coming of Jesus and
calling people to repentance and faith. He was a messenger and forerunner to
Christ. But check out what he asks before he is killed. He sends his followers
to Jesus, asking in Matthew 11:2 if he should “expect someone else as the One
to come.” Wow.
It is liberating when we grasp the truth in this verse.
John, given to the proclamation of the coming of Christ, now is making sure
before he dies that Jesus really is the One John was preaching about. I am
comforted that I can be a man who has doubt but still be a man of God. Life is
often a battle between faith and doubt, and we need the Spirit daily to help us
in this battle. Don’t feel like a little Christian because you don’t always
believe everything God has declared. Most of us have struggled with that at
some point, so let’s all be vulnerable in expressing the things we question.
And those of you who no longer doubt, that is awesome as well, and I praise God
for your faith. Even that is a gift from Him alone. But consider Gideon, Moses,
Peter, Mary and Martha, and many other children of God who seriously doubted
but were still used in His Kingdom. Having said all that, Scripture elsewhere
tells us that we must not doubt. So, while God understands and expects us to
doubt sometimes as human beings, He wants to grow us into believing that truly
anything is possible with faith (Mark 9:23).
And even if you believe all of these stories once took
place, do you believe that God can still work the same miracles today? We know
that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8), so
please join me in expecting God to do huge things when we ask according to His
will (1 John 5:14). And I am also encouraged that Scripture teaches it is the
object of our faith that is much more important than the size of our faith. If
we even have the faith of a tiny seed, and it is directed towards Christ, we
will see mountains moved (Matthew 17:20). So in the midst of your doubt, keep
believing on the Lord Jesus, and He will answer you.
I bring all of this up because of a conversation Steve and I
had on the bus ride back from Tanzania a couple of weeks ago with a wonderful
family of missionaries in East Africa. Again, it is amazing how God
orchestrates everything in life to bring glory to Himself and to build our
faith in Him. Steve and I spent literally all 6 hours of the 6-hour drive to
Kenya talking with these children of God. And we will never be the same because
of it.
Now these were not strange people. They were perfectly normal people who loved Jesus more than anyone or anything on the planet. So when I present this next story to you, don’t wonder about their sanity, but ask yourself whether you really believe in the true God of power from the Bible. They told us of a time when their very good friend died of lymphoma in Zambia. The woman had been struggling with this life-threatening disease for a long time, and she finally passed away. As she laid on her bed completely 100% dead, her friends called on the name of Jesus to do something miraculous. Now, I don’t have the space or the time to write about why God heals some and not others, but in this case, God chose to raise this woman from the dead by the power of Jesus Christ. God literally brought her back to life.
What I love about this story is what happened when she was
raised back to life and completely healed from her lymphoma, as if God raising
her from the dead wasn’t enough! Her friends kept asking her to describe
everything she remembered after death, and all she could say was that she knew
she was walking up to the gates of heaven to see Jesus, when the gates abruptly
shut and she found herself alive on earth again. The woman said she woke up to
her friends praying, expressing that she was “quite annoyed” to hear their
voices. She added, “Next time I die, please don’t pray for me. I want to be
with Jesus.”
As many of you know, my Aunt Carol has been battling Lou
Gehrig’s disease, and her response to this trial is worth the applause of
heaven and earth. I have seen a woman who has walked with Jesus in the last
couple years and has set an example for the entire family on how to glorify God
in the midst of suffering. She is one of my heroes without a doubt. I pray for
her all the time. Do I know why God allows some believers to suffer fatal illness
or what the end result will be from this tribulation? Of course not. But I am
praying with a newfound expectation that the Lord CAN heal her and anyone else
with a critical sickness for that matter. If God can raise from the dead, can
he also not cure illness if He so desires? I am not writing to create any false
hope, but to build our faith back up again to a people expectant of the awesome
and mighty power of God.
Join me in praying for something this week that you have
left on the backburner because you believe there is no chance it will be
answered. Maybe you have bought into the lie like myself that some people are
so hard-hearted that they will never come to Jesus. If He can raise the dead,
He can melt a heart of stone. He can save those who you thought had no chance.
He can heal those who doctors have deemed a lost cause. He can cast out demons
when evil appears to have an impenetrable stronghold on so many lives. I love
you all and am expecting wonderful things from our God for you in this season.
Thanks for your prayers. Keep them coming please!
1 comment:
Thank you for this challenge.
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