“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
J.R.R Tolien, The Lord of the Rings
A couple of years ago, I took a team of young adults to the middle east. In the back of my mind, there was a thought that goes like this: “God can’t use a short-term trip like this, we’re in a foreign country, we don’t speak the language, and we’re going from place to place, how can we make an impact?”
God proved me wrong! He uprooted the lie!
While we were there, the only young lady on our team was riding the bus to where she was staying after a busy day under the hot sun. She felt the Lord speak to her and told her to go to the other girl on the bus—telling her Jesus loves her and cares about her.
Right away a very human reaction bubbled up, “I don’t want to do that, I’m tired, I don’t speak her language.”
But when God wants to tell someone something He makes it happen. The girl on the bus got up and moved toward our team member, “Hi, my name is Emily, what’s yours?” She spoke perfect English and it was quickly discovered that she loves Canada—”I love Vancouver, I love poutine, I love Justin Beiber!” She hung out with our team for the next four days.
It’s not to say she didn’t have her walls, she didn’t like it when we would talk about Jesus because she hated religion. She left home because of the way her father would impose religion on her and her siblings. She would argue with us and then shut down when we spoke about Jesus. “I don’t want anything to do with Jesus.”
In this country, people love to hang out in the evenings, and one night we had an impromptu worship time, with the workers here, our small team, and Emily. We sang together in both languages and the Holy Spirit showed up. Emily watched us worship. We know that Emily was feeling the Holy Spirit, but she was wondering what she was feeling in her heart—peace.
To speak to her about Jesus would shut her down—but, He knows how to reach each one of us!
A word came from one of our Global Workers here, and she was told how much she is loved by God, that she is chosen and handcrafted by Him, and that He is pursuing her—no matter what. Others had words for her too, becoming a commissioning-type service and by the end, she said, “I want this, I want to know Jesus!” So after only 4 days of meeting her, Emily gave her heart to Jesus.
But still, God was not done with Emily, a word of knowledge: “Do you have trouble sleeping?” Emily replied, “Yeah, for the last six years I really haven’t slept, I haven’t had a full night of sleep.” So he prayed that she would be healed and have a perfect night of sleep and that she would meet Jesus that night.
She slept a perfect night of sleep. And Jesus came to her in a dream and said “Emily, I love you and I’ll always be with you—no matter what.” That was her first night of being a believer—being a disciple of Christ.
God is writing a similar story all across this nation, dreams, one on one encounters with workers, finding a bible in the dumpster—reading it and finding Jesus! But that’s only one part of the story, the other part is us going—to help finish the story that God is writing…
Thank you for your prayers and support,
