A couple of weeks ago we were visiting Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, and I met a very interesting man in the hostel we were staying. This man lived in Germany for most of his life as a mechanical engineer. As he grew older, a godly restlessness motivated him to leave his life behind and move into Africa to look for ways of how he could use his expertise to help the people of Malawi (the poorest country of the whole continent) have better opportunities in life.
After researching the many needs and limitations that keep the Malawian people in their current state of poverty, he found out that education was one of the biggest challenges. He found out that around 30% of the students cannot read what the teacher is writting on the chalkboard due to bad eyesight. Poor eyesight has huge negative consequences by preventing access to future opportunities. There seems to be no affordable solution to bad eyesight, as glasses are simply to expensive for most of the population to buy. Even then there is very limited access to eyesight exams. He discovered that a small and simple solution could have a very big impact and he went for it.
After developing an affordable solution by manufacturing the glasses using raw materials from China and producing them in-country thus reducing most of the cost of production and distribution, he found out that the biggest challenge was not in simply offering the solution but it was actually in creating awareness of the problem in the first place. You see, for so long the Malawian people have been unable to solve their eyesight problems that they have resigned themselves to the possibility of anything better and have lost the ability of identifying it as an actual problem. You could offer them glasses and they wouldn’t even know that they needed them.
To tackle this challenge he created a very simple way in which the person could realize if there was any problem with their sight. He would basically test all of the different graduated lenses on the person and ask them if there was any improvement. It required no big medical equipment so that the test would be easy and quick to apply and would require no cost whatsoever. I was fascinated by this man’s ingenuity in solving problems in the simplest of manners and the fact that he was using that to help the people around him was the cherry on top.
The more I thought about it the more I realized that in many ways this resembles the purpose and the challenges that we the Church have when going out into the world sharing the Good News of Jesus and bringing blessings to the people. We are to bring recovery of sight to those who are spiritually blind so that they may know how much God loves them through Jesus, and that in Him the doors of the Kingdom of God are wide open for anyone to enter.
The greatest and most valuable solution has been freely given to us. At the cost of Jesus’ blood on the cross, He gave us access to a personal relationship with God through which we can receive total and complete restoration from our own broken nature, and from the broken world around us. We can now be made new in the image of God. Which means, that by the power of the Holy Spirit we can live a life like the one Jesus lived here on earth. No longer do we have to come under the worries and distress of this world but now we can enter the restful and joyful peace of the Kingdom.
Even though this amazing gift has been bestowed upon human kind, men have lost the ability to identify their own brokennes and fail to recognize the greatness of what is knocking at their door. How can we, the Church, come up with a solution to apply an “eyesight exam” that would make people understand their current condition? I believe that God has provided this for us in His Spirit, spiritual gifts and miracles.
Miracles and spiritual gifts such as healings and words of knowledge, amongst others, leaves the person that experiences them with the clear reality that God has entered their life. Since God is truth and light, His presence exposes anything that is lying in the dark and is keeping the person from knowing the truth that will set them free. In other words, it exposes the problem and at the same time the solution which is Christ and His Kingdom of love and power.
If we are planning as the Church to carry out God’s plan to redeem the world through the spreading of His Good News, it is going to be necessary for us to learn how to access and deliver the power of heaven unto everyone we come across. Our words alone have never been enough. I once heard a preacher say that the Word without the Spirit is dead but if the Spirit is not grounded in the Word then you don’t know where you might end up. Both are necessary and equally valuable in the proper context and application.
This month God walked with us and taught us how to strike this balance in humility, diligence and love and it has sincerely changed our lives. We saw the fruit of God coming to life in the communities we visited and in the lives of the people we came in contact with. I have never felt more alive in my life! For me that is the greatest confirmation that what we are experiencing is God’s plan and design for our lives.
