Eternal Longings
Ecclesiastes 3:11
“Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.”
Ina lay calmly perched on her wooden house front porch. Stubborn as a mule, cantankerous as a goat, were the first thoughts which brushed over my mind in this encounter.
A dark presence seemed to be quite content in this particular Sk village. Folk Islam strongly embraces the animistic spirits of a given territory.
“There is a strong Jin (spirit) in our area. That spirit is the one whom we trust to guide us in our Islamic devotion,” confided a relative of the elderly woman.
In our initial time in their village, there seemed to be this blanket-like covering over their hearts and minds. In subsequent visits, the elderly woman, though most likely a revered shaman (witch doctor), actually was not to be the one whom God was stirring with Holy Spirit drawing power.
As is sometimes the case, the actual Person of Peace (Luke 10, Matthew 10), is the one on the edge of the group. In this case, though the elderly woman resisted any and every effort to share Shema statements, listen to her process, care for her physical needs, offer to pray for healing from the trauma, it was to be a bystander whom God was preparing.
One of her adult sons and his family are the ones whom we are pursuing. They are now discovering the reality of God and His Word as they continue to meet as a family and be coached by one of our national partners in a Discovery Group using 8 simple Discovery Bible Study questions. Profoundly simple is how Jesus desires our hearts to trust His leading, yet to be highly dependent upon listening to the Holy Spirit to lead us to whom he is stoking with the fires of need.
At present, after 3,000 initial contacts post-earthquake, we have 90 potential persons of peace and their households who are moving into DBS on OT prophets and Jesus stories. There are presently 30 formed and consistently meeting DGs thus far which meet about every two to three days. Several from these Discovery Groups have made decisions to follow Jesus.
Ask the Lord for 4 solid streams of reproducing Discovery Groups (DGs) who come to follow Jesus as they multiply out to 4thgeneration among the SaSumBi.