Ignite mission to the islands: Day One.
I’ve heard Casey Parnell mention it more than once in the past week–as he tells the story of a lady on Bufumira Island he encouraged to follow Jesus, he says he flew 10,000 miles just to inform her that God has not forgotten her. The tens of thousands of dollars spent, the vast amounts of time, effort, & other resources expended to carry the whole team to the other side of the world, etc, were all worth it to encourage one disheartened soul to get back on the way of salvation. And I believe that it was…in theory. Of course my mind immediately goes to good stewardship and good return on investment and all that. But today, I had a revelation: sometimes God deliberately sends his servants out at a great cost for only one.
In a tiny fishing village of around 100 people with one Christian church consisting of 2 faithful members and their newly installed pastor, we descended with our team of 20 young adults, equipped with a good sized sound system and our Bibles, ready to see a great harvest of souls in one afternoon of seed sowing. Before I even finished the two mile trek across the island with my piece of sound equipment on my shoulder, some of our team were already engaged with an unemployed man who reeked of alcohol. The next moment the church building was full of praying voices as they laid hands on the man rededicating his life to Jesus. He surrenderd his witchcraft items and emptied his bottles of local brew, and then stuck around for the rest of our ministry in his small town.
After preaching the Bread of Life to newrly half the village, we prayed for the sick and folks with other problems. I was particularly interested in engaging a group of 20-something’s who spent most of the afternoon mocking what we were doing, and kept them busy with re-preaching my message while the rest of the group kept ministering. As we packed up our equipment, I noticed one of our guys still talking to our newly saved friend and went over to join in. We encouraged him to join the church and be accountable to other brothers in the church to overcome the temptations that he faces with drinking & gambling. Then he told us more.
It seems our brother is a good musician–an expert at beating goatskin drums with his bare hands–and is regularly hired to appease the demons with his playing at the local shrine. Because of unemployment and fear of those requesting his services, he has always gone along with their plan. Now he was saying that “maybe I’m supposed to use my skill for worshipping Jesus instead of the demons.” We began to pray against demonic influence in his life, and he crumpled on the ground in tears. We could tell God was doing something and continued in prayer, leading him in renouncing all ties with demon spirits and instructing him in his authority in Christ.
Then he revealed that the witchcraft burnt earlier in the day was meant to ease the pain in his leg as he regularly experienced an excruciating feeling of his bones being crushed as he walked. We laid hands on his leg and commanded the pain to go in the name of Jesus. Something was clearly changing in his body, but when we asked what exactly he felt, he remained silent. Standing upright, he lightly beat upon his hip, and started walking all around us, testing for pain. He indicated the pain had gone, and we told him to jump while in great surprise, he found no discomfort at all. Then he began to run, leap, and kickbox as we all laughed with joy at what God had done in proving to this man His superiority over witchcraft.
I’ve preached in places where there was a great response, dozens were saved, the church tripled, and it seemed revival had come, only to find a short time later that none of those converts became disciples or even stayed in the household of faith. But seeing this radical change in this one man eager to surrender his life to Jesus gave me hope for the future of the entire church in this small place. This one can go deep and stay strong as he looks to the One who died & rose again…just for him.
