You know that feeling you get when you instantly find
yourself excelling at something? Especially when you’ve never done it before
and your already a natural. That’s the feeling I get when I step on campus and
start witnessing and evangelizing to the Ghanaian students. I come alive! Words
and thoughts come forth like a flood, stuff I wouldn’t normally remember or
think of. I can’t sit still I get excited to get to the next question or the
next opportunity to pray for someone.
There are about 4 guys in each dorm room on the Cape Coast
University campus. Most of the time; not all the roommates are in the room at
the same time so we often come back to rooms we previously visited. The other
day I re-visited one of the rooms we began our ministry in. I got to meet the
last remaining roommate, his name is Justice. Most Ghanaian people have
biblical names for example; Joshua, Ruth, Comfort, Patience. Justice is a
rather tall and built guy and when he came to the door I was a little
apprehensive due to his size and deep voice. But as with all the Ghanaians that
I met he was very welcoming and offered us a seat and gave us his full
attention. Mike Sanders and I sat with him a while just getting to know Justice
and explaining who we are and what we were doing here. When we told him that we
were missionaries his demeanor changed a bit and he seemed a little saddened
like he expected the rest of our conversation to go a certain direction. To
Justice’s surprise our first question was “How can we pray for you”? He thought
for a minute on how to word his response and just began to pour out to us
exactly what he was struggling with.
Let me take a minute and explain why this is such a big
deal. In Ghana Christianity is everywhere and is often shoved down people’s
throats. So when you say you’re a missionary here people kind of expect you to
be preaching at them and proclaiming hellfire and brimstone if they don’t
repent. I don’t believe people can be pressured/scared into the Kingdom of
heaven. I do believe people enter the Kingdom through Love. Some might argue
that just going and preaching the Gospel is loving people, to an extent I
believe that to be right. I am showing you love by bringing you the Good News,
but if that’s all I do and I leave before finding out where you are at with the
Lord, what good is it? There are millions of people all around the world who
know about Christ and know the Gospel, but many of them don’t have a
relationship with God. Many of them don’t know how to get passed their sin and
live a life lead by the Holy Spirit.
Justice saw that we had love for him and that we were truly
concerned about the condition of his heart. God doesn’t want lip service and
empty good deeds, he’s concerned about your heart. We can know the whole bible cover to cover and
it won’t do us any good if we are still stuck in a life of sin, we are still
separated from Him because of our sin. So when Justice confessed his sins to us
God showed us what to pray about with Justice. God began showing us verses and
bringing forth testimonies, words of encouragement and Godly advice about
Justice’s situation. I got the awesome opportunity to pray with Justice about
his sins, and that day Justice received total freedom from guilt and shame
because of it. It’s been amazing applying the things God has shown me about
loving people, evangelism, Christian living, etc. and seeing fruit come from
giving away what God has so graciously given me. It a real testament to the
fact that your gifts, talents, lessons learned, and new found freedoms aren’t
just for you but for everyone around you, for the Glory of the Father.
