Our ministry this past month has been very similar to our time in Rwanda the month before. Our contact, Moses, grew up Muslim but converted to Christianity and later became a pastor. He brought us around with another one of his friends from the church, David, to be our translator during door-to-door evangelism, preaching in churches, speaking and teaching in schools, and praying for patients in hospitals.
David was such a good translator and partner in ministry, that half-way through the month when he was leaving to go to Kenya for a pastors conference but did not yet have enough money to go, I and another teammate were joyful to be able to support him for the rest of the funds he needed.
I got to see some incredible things happen during our ministry. Many people including several Muslims became born-again believers, professing Jesus Christ as their Savior. One time, as we were out for door-to-door evangelism, as we were leaving one house, one of our translators met another man on the path that day. Our translator talked to that man for a little bit, and he said that he was Catholic, but his wife was a born-again believer, and he was interested to know more about what we had to say. He brought us to his home to meet his wife and sister, both born-again, and two other Muslim women.
I had the opportunity to speak the Gospel to them, starting from the Creation of man, both male and female, in the image of God, the sacrifice system set up to atone for sin but how the sacrifice only covered over sin and that it did not take it away, the need for Jesus as fully God and fully man to be that perfect sacrifice, the hope we have in His resurrection, and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to live out that sanctified life. Then, the Catholic man, one of the Muslim women, and a few children prayed to accept Jesus and the Holy Spirit to be born-again. This was a very exciting moment for me! In that moment, I truly saw the power of the Gospel. I did not have to make philosophical arguments or apologetic statements, but I just presented what I believed and let the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ do the rest.
But perhaps one of the most significant ministries this entire month was the free medical clinic we did for the last 2 days of ministry. We has the opportunity work with another group to bring free medical services to people in the area who could not afford to go to the hospital for some common problems that plague people here. In two days we saw nearly 800 come through our clinic, based out of a local church (650 through the clinic, and 150 through the dentist).
People would either go through long waiting lines to see one of the 2 doctors we had to get diagnosed, and then theyd have to wait through another long line to get medicine from the pharmacy table. Or, others that had dental problems would have to wait through a long line outside the church to get into a wooden structure to see the dentist. The only service the dentist did was to pull teeth with only slight local anesthesia as the next 10 patients sat in the room looking on. With some of the children, two of our team had to hold the kids down so they would not squirm and thrash around. It was definitely a difficult experience, for them and for us, and definitely made me appreciate our medical healthcare services in the States. (Earlier in the month I was sick and had the money to pay to go to the hospital, and even that was difficult for me.)
At the clinic, I got to pray for most every patient after they had received treatment.
In 2 Chronicles 16:12, it says, Asa developed a serious foot disease. Yet even with the severity of his disease, he did not seek the LORDs help but turned only to his physicians.
Too often, especially in the West, we do not pray when we are sick. This comes a lot from the theology that God does not work in these miraculous ways anymore, that those things were only for the early Church. But perhaps even more so this comes from our Western medicine, depending on the comfort of our money and our knowledge. We say, God doesnt work like this anymore because he gave us modern medicine. But we can see that from the passage above, even with physicians, God desire for us to turn to him in sickness.
When I got injured earlier in the Race, I went to the hospital. When I got medicine, the bag said, We prescribe the medicine, but Jesus Christ is the Healer. Do we truly recognize that, acknowledging Jesus. Or are we like the other 9 lepers who, in Luke 17:11-19, after receiving healing from Jesus, never return to acknowledge him? Or are we like Asa who never turned to him in the first place?
Whatever your theological position, I think we can all agree that we need to turn to God and pray more. Perhaps we should pray for healing. What if God actually did heal, after all? What if Gods not acting in miraculous healing is because we are not praying in faith for that, but only pray timid prayers? (That is not to say to use this as a bullying tactic, saying that if you arent healed you dont have enough faith). But at the very least, God can allow sickness so that we will turn to him and call upon his name. Shouldnt we at least do that?
We got to pray for people as they came through. We prayed for their physical condition, that God might work in them to heal them, meeting their physical need where they were at. But we also prayed for spiritual healing, that they would come to believe on the name of Jesus Christ. We got to see 15 people pray to receive Jesus in those 2 day.
