Here’s the story…
Upon entering Malaysia we met our contact and were briefed with an approach of how to share our faith in Malay culture. I thought to myself “cool!” It took me back to my college years at Biola University when I took two evangelism classes by a solid man of God and friend Jon Rittenhouse. I was graded on whether or not I actually went out and shared my faith with people. Talk about challenging eh?
So, that same day we were also blessed with an opportunity to share in a real brief study of divine healing based on the scriptures with our contact. It was very fun and encouraged our team to really step out and pursue the strength we have in the name of Jesus Christ. Well, ask and you shall receive. The very next day three out of six of us woke up sick. Mind you, that was the day that we were supposed to meet up with our real contact whom we’d be serving with for this entire month. Well we prayed and…nothing happened. We prayed more…nothing happened. We prayed more…nothing. The rest of the day was really tough as we ended up choosing not to travel. Because of this decision we wouldn’t be able to get to our contact for another day for logistical reasons, which all in all meant that we’d have a day to listen to God’s voice and hear from Him.
Sunday – After church we came back to have a time to pray. God opened up the floodgates of His presence. He showed up. As I was praying I became very passionate about God’s word advancing and started speaking out of my passion. It was so refreshing to my soul. I felt as though my words were coming directly from God and but also ministering to me. I was essentially preaching to myself. John Piper says in His book When I Don’t Desire God that it is important to preach to ourselves even when we don’t feel like it so as to hear the truth of the Word of God physically which holds power. Jesus says in John 14:13-14, “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.” This is right after he talks about how He abides in the Father and nothing He says is spoken out of His own initiative. He then exhorts people to abide in His words which come from the Father. I felt as though I was experiencing God’s raw passion for humanity and it pumped me up. I had to go out and do something about it. I was sick and tired of getting all passionate about going out into the field and then “sitting and listening to God more.” Bologna!!! GOD HAD ALREADY SPOKEN! LET’S GO!!! (I remember hearing a story by Francis Chan when he spoke at Biola University for a chapel one time. At the chapel he gave an analogy of the church being like a football team. He explained how we huddle up, get all hyped up as we call the play and when we break we run directly to the bench and never carry out the stinkin play! Something is seriously wrong with that!)
Anyway, we finished praying with our team and all 6 of us felt that we needed to go to a local McDonalds and find random people to sit and share a meal together. We went and pursued what God had in store for us. I got there, ordered and started looking around for potential prospects that God might had been directing me towards. No one really grabbed my attention, but I didn’t care. I was going to sit there until God had directed me otherwise. I really wanted to have a conversation with a Muslim to learn more about what they believed and why, so I took the Qur’an with me to at least start reading and learning what questions to ask. Lo and behold two men walked in wearing beautiful garments and sat down to talk with a couple. It was clear those were the men I was here to speak with. When one got up and went to use the bathroom I ran over and cut him off before he could sit back down.
“Excuse me sir, do you speak English?”
He mumbled a couple english words but, it was very broken. I asked him if it wouldn’t trouble him and his friend if I could ask them some questions about the Qur’an. I asked these men out of ignorance not knowing that they their religion does not allow them to answer these questions of mine. They are actually supposed to get a scholar to answer me, but they graciously blessed me with joining me at my table and answering a lot of questions. Only one of them was able to speak English which was quite nice since I had some pretty intense questions brewing in my mind. We formulated a great dialog and I had a lot of fun learning about what they believed. I came into the conversation with an open heart and desired to learn more about their hearts and why they believed what they believed, so I asked them as we were finishing up if I could continue to talk with them some time. We swapped only phone numbers and penciled in another conversation the next week. I asked them if they had any friends they’d could bring as well. They said they would and they were looking forward to talking more with me.
I cannot wait to talk with them soon! More to come. Pray.
1 Peter 3:15 – “…but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.”
