“As you go, proclaim this message, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven has come near!’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.” (Matthew 10:7, 8)
Jesus spoke these words over His disciples as He prepared to send them out. He wanted His followers to reach so many people; He wanted His disciples to reach the unreached. The sick, those with leprosy, those possessed by demons; all of these people would have been outcasts in the eyes of that society. Pushed to the side, forgotten, these people would have lived and died without know Christ, without knowing that they were loved so dearly by their Heavenly Father. Jesus commanded His disciples to love each and every brother and sister that God graced the earth with. That command still stands. There are still many that wander, very lost, out in this dark, desolate world. Many of those people sit on the curbside asking for money. Many of those people are drug addicted. Many of those people are criminals. These people are the unreachable. These people are the ones we pass by on a daily basis. I know that I have walked past so many of these people, disgusted, completely disregarding the fact that they are my brothers and sisters. It is the sad reality, but it happens. They are ignored. But as Christians, is it not our duty to stop and speak to them, to ask them if they are familiar with Christ, to lead them to salvation? Is that not what Christ did?
The town I am living in is a beautiful town filled with smiling faces, delightful cafes and shops, appealing homes, great churches and an incredible mountain backdrop. Some have even referred to it as “heaven on earth!” In theory, it sounds perfect! But it is not. There is a feeling of brokenness here, a feeling that may go unnoticed by some people, a feeling that could, perhaps, seem unreachable, unfixable. There are many homeless people that sit out in the streets. Many people stumble out of bars, drunk, and wander the streets. The other half of the town is a township, which means an impoverished community. The image of a utopia slowly starts to fade as you consider these things.
Considering the problems we have seen, a few of my teammates decided to write up some Bible Verses, in Afrikaans, the native language here, to hand out to homeless people we see as we walk around town. So that is precisely what we did. We went through our Bibles, searching for verses that these people could both relate to and be inspired by. On small sheets of paper, they were written, and prepared to be taken out to the unseen.
We got back from ministry a bit early one day, so Kate, Zach and I decided it would be good to go around town, handing the verses out to people. We planned to reach many people, hopefully bringing salvation to many of them. But, as is the case when it comes to plans, things did not go that way.
We walked to the end of our street and turned right. A few seconds later, a woman walked past us. So we turned around to hand her a verse. She accepted it graciously, placing it into one of the bags she was carrying. We did not have any conversation with her, but, had we not turned, we would not have noticed the man across the street, walking in the opposite direction. The woman had since left us, so we were ready to move on to the next person. “We should give one of these to that guy,” either Kate or Zach said, pointing at the man. So, all in agreement, we began walking towards him. It took us a while to catch up to him; nothing was slowing him down. Finally, we called out to him and he turned around.
“Hi, sir,” Zach said. “We were handing out these Bible verses and just wanted to give one to you.” Zach reached out his hand and passed him the slip of paper. The man took it, looked up at us for a quick second, and then looked back down. His eyes did not move for a good while; he just examined the piece of paper, the verse written out to him. His expression never changed, and he looked angered. But he remained still, studying the words written upon the paper.
Soon enough, he looked up and stared, first at Zach, then at me. I stared into his eyes, his sunken, sad eyes, revealing his brokenness. I grew a bit concerned, as I was unaware of his thoughts; was he angry, are we going to get hurt? So we said goodbye to him and started walking away.
“I needed this. I really needed this.”
The three of us stopped dead in our tracks and looked back. “What did you say?”
He replied, “I really needed this word.”
Wow
I was really taken aback and did not know how to respond. Someone said something to the effect of “We are so happy that we were able to provide words to you from God. Then he leaned in and, very quietly, said something rather shocking. Making a gun symbol with his hand, he said, “I’m a gangster. I’m a bad guy.” Silence. We talked to him a bit about what he meant, and then, after he poured out a bit to us, asked him if he had a relationship with Christ. He responded “No,” and made it clear that he did not have time to discuss these things with us. So we prayed over him, and he started to walk away. But he stopped, turned and looked back. “One of the problems is, I do not know how to pray. I do not know how to do what you all just did.”
“Would you like to learn?” I said.
“No, no… not today. I have to go meet with my friends,” he said, referring to the other members of his gang.
“Well do you really want to go there?” Kate asked him.
“No. Not really. But I have to. It’s my life. I have to go.”
“You do not have to,” Kate said. “You can stay here, talk to us. You do not have to go to be with those people.”
A little hesitantly, he resolved to stay. He never said, “Fine, I will stay,” but he began to open up more. We got his name, Kialthope, and then he went deeper into his relationship with Christ. He was angry, so angry, at God. He cursed at God. He yelled at God. He was so angry about the things he believed God had done to him. With a scowl on his face, he told us why he does not like God, why he does not want a relationship with him. We came to find out that he was a believer, at one point in time, him and his brother both. He started to fall away from his faith, but his brother remained strong. His brother loved God. Then, one day, his brother was shot dead in the streets of Capetown, completely throwing off the course of Kailthope’s life.
Kialthope said to us, “Why would God take him? Why would God take my brother, the one that loved him? Why did he not take me? I was the bad one, I was the one that had done awful things! But I am still here and he is dead!”
He sought vengeance. Vengeance against God and vengeance against those that made him feel such pain. He drifted further and further from his Heavenly Father. He wanted nothing to do with a relationship with God.
In talking with him, he made this very clear. However, the beginning of the conversation was certainly more angry than the latter part. His demeanor began to change from angry to remorseful. He stopped using as much foul language. He stopped cursing God.
In talking to him, Kate, Zach and I found out that he had children. So we began to equate his relationship with God to his relationship with his children. The love that God pours out is even greater than the love that Kialthope could have for his kids. He said on many occasions, “I am not a good father,” to which responded with, “How proud would your kids be if you came home professing the Gospel? How proud would your kids be if you became a true role model for them?” He said, “I do not want my kids to be anything like me.”
In return, Kate said, “But you can change. Through God, you can do anything. God can make you into a better man, a better father. Your dependence in Christ can turn you into someone your kids truly look up to. Don’t you want that?”
We started to really get to him then. We eventually went on to tell him about forgiveness, about how it does not matter what he has done in his past. As long as he brings it to Christ and says, “Abba, Father, forgive me of my wrongdoings and accept me into your kingdom!” True dependence in Christ brings about redemption.
After nearly an hour of talking, this man, this hardened, tough, broken man said, “You have started to soften me.” A grin appeared on his face, which was the first time he had done anything other than scowl. Then Kate said, “That’s a good thing though.” The grin turned to a bigger smile and he laughed.
So we said, “Do you think you can accept Christ into your heart today?” He responded, “No,” but said a relationship with God is certainly something he would begin to think about. And, sure, people say, “Oh, I’ll think about it,” all the time, and it generally means no. But this was genuine. He was truly softened to the idea of welcoming Christ back into his heart.
We asked if we could pray for him one more time and he said yes. But before we laid our hands on him, he said, “You know, this is something special. It used to be, that if someone approached me on the streets to talk about this stuff, I would tell them to screw off. But this — this is different.”
We prayed over him and said goodbye. This angry, cynical man now leaped with joy. He had a large smile on his face, and seemed to walk with a new sense of purpose. As we walked away from each other, he said goodbye, in a childlike way, nearly six or seven times.
The verse we gave him was 1 John 3:1
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him.”
Now, since it was written in Afrikaans, we could not really read what the verse said as we handed it to him. But, coming home and reading what it said was powerful. God led us to affirm that Kialthope is, in fact, a beloved child of God!
Now, he told us that he usually would not talk to people like us. But these words, these few, simple words, written for the people of God to profess to other brothers and sisters, softened him immediately. These few words caused him to stay, talk and voice his frustrations. Without them, we may never have reached him. We may never have reached the “unreached” or “unseen.” It just took a few simple words to soften a man’s heart. That’s incredible! Wow! And that’s all it takes. A few simple words.
