China was a hard month for a lot of us. If I could only use one word to describe China I would use tired. We were briefed about China while we were in Hong Kong and we were warned about some of the strongholds over China, like laziness, division, isolation, and lack of focus. We were encouraged to worship and pray together as a team every morning to help protect us from the crazy amount of oppression. Everyday getting out of bed felt like declaring war on the day for every single member of my team. We were exhausted and distracted almost every moment of every day.
Hopefully that gives you a little glimpse into the climate we were walking into. On top of the spiritual difficulties we encountered we also had much less freedom with the government. So not only were we forbidden to preach and share the gospel but even if we wanted to no one spoke any English.
For those of you who know me it will come of no surprise that not being able to communicate through words was super difficult and frustrating for me. So I found myself having to literally force myself to worship Jesus every morning and smiling and waving people into the kingdom.
Or something like that anyways.
So even though China does not celebrate Jesus the commercialization of Christmas was still present. You would find Santa’s face on te door of almost every shopping mall, restaurant, or coffee shop. While the people of China don’t get too much into Christmas the marketers do. So it wasn’t too much of a stretch to plan Christmas parties for the kids. It would be like having a Valentines Day party at school or something. So all month we shopped, wrapped presents, planned, created, and shopped some more before Christmas Eve. We decided we would tell a story at the Christmas party about a baby being born that we called, “Baby Love”.
Love came down to earth as a baby under a star and grew up to be patient, kind, gentle etc etc…
But in the middle of our story something amazing happened. Once we began describing “Baby Love” a kid around the age of 10 yells out (in chinese of course) I KNOW JESUS!
All of us paused. We didn’t really know what to do so we stumbled through the rest of our story while secretly jumping up and down on the inside. How amazing that even with all of our restrictions and rules to protect the ministry (which of course is NEVER referred to as ministry) Jesus can’t help but have his fame be made known to his people. I could only think of the verse found in Luke 19 for Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”
I love that God always his own plans that far exceed anything we can facilitate. I also love how God loves to make himself known to his people.
And more one thing…
