Desolation
Emptiness
Oppression
These are a few words to describe the Spiritual atmosphere of BFC (re-named, pardon the language). I could easily start a “Never Have I Ever” list for this month but I will spare you for now.
God spoke to me a word in the beginning of this month. The word was change. He spoke that change would come but it would be in ways I wouldn’t expect. So, naturally, I created an expectation of things I wouldn’t expect. I thought maybe I would become this crazy, radical for Christ and witness 5,000 salvations and raise someone from the dead. You know… radical stuff.
But what I walked away with instead, was a revelation of spiritual warfare. I definitely didn’t anticipate this. I had formed this opinion in my mind that people who experience extreme spiritual warfare are just “over-spiritual”. I am sorry for ever thinking this.
Everything is spiritual. If I truly believe that God created the Heavens and the Earth and that He is a spiritual being, then to deny that everything on Earth isn’t spiritual is like denying the very former half of this sentence.
The center of the city we are staying in has a mosque. The city itself is home to a 90% Muslim community and a 10% Buddhist community. There are no known Christians here. I am not even sure these people have met a Christian before. They definitely have never seen a white person, I am fairly certain of that. The spirit of life is suppressed. It’s like a Harry Potter dementor has had a visit to this place (bet you can’t guess what I have been watching at night…). The eyes of the people are lacking life.
So, being the optimistic person I am, I asked God, “Why the heck did you bring me to this desolate place?”. We have no hot water, nothing to eat but noodles, no heat at night, no English-Chinese translator. We are lacking essentials in this place. And God revealed to me that these people are lacking essentials in life. They are lacking Christ.
Our team decided to walk through the streets of the city every day, praying for change. We believe that God has called us here to till the soil so that someone can come along and plant the seeds. We have had the opportunity to call life into this city. That as the “Yellow River” runs through it, so the River of Life would flow through these people. And as the “Himalaya Mountains” surround this place, so our Mighty God encamps about them. We had the chance to make faith confessions that possibly have never been made before.
It was in the last few days of our time there that we met the answer to our prayers; Chinese Christian missionaries. Two of our team members went out to grab our breakfast one morning and they were approached by a group of Chinese people wearing Muslim headwraps. They were interested in why we were here. So, in the well-practiced manner of charades we have come to perform so well, we were able to share that we’re missionaries. To our surprise, so were they. They had made the decision to move in among this community and learn the culture so they could better share their faith with these people.
AHHHH. It was an assured answer to prayer. We truly have no way of knowing what all God is doing in our tiny little town at this point, and we may never know (at least I pray I am not the one who has to go back to find out) but we can have faith that God has sent them there to reach this people.
Before we left, I felt the change of atmosphere. What Satan has once suppressed, God is calling forth to life. Walking through the city felt lighter, happier, hopeful, maybe even peaceful. Spiritual warfare is so real. Thankfully we serve a victorious God who had equipped us to fight.
