“You just ended the Race the way you started it!” Mickey looked at me with a slight grin stretching across his face. I had been running my mouth about how God refused to show us something supernatural in healing the little girl we had just prayed over.
My mind went on overdrive.
I felt chills run down my arms and I started laughing as we kicked the dust up behind us enveloping a mob of small African children who had been hot on our trail since we had arrived in the village.
Have I been a little obsessed lately with seeing God doing something supernatural?
Probably to the point of not realizing exactly what IS happening around me.
But does God work through our selfish desires?
I believe so!
Why not? I do not find the idea unbiblical, especially when I read stories like Gideon’s, Samson’s or Thomas’, go figure.
The question I ask, “Is it possible to have zero ounce of selfishness in wanting to see the full glory of God revealed in a supernatural way?” Paradoxical? Perhaps!
The thought I have to deal with is this, how do I define selfishness and is the scope of what I consider to be supernatural limited or defined? Thank you Brittney… Perhaps intentions are a pretty risky factor when you are asking for the present and future to be redefined!
Maybe one of the last words I will receive on the field came from one of my favorite contacts, Johan. He prayed over me and looked at me stern in the eye and said, “Thomas, you need to knock the box off of the foundation!” Knock the box off of the foundation? I preach all the time about putting God in a box, not me… “You’re going to do big things and God is going to reveal bigger things, but you have to let Him out and give your mind a little rest!”
If you haven’t already found out, rest is one of the last things I allow my mind to do.
When you learn a lesson on the Race it is usually a gradual revelation that ends in a huge slap across the face and it comes when you least expect it!
I hope I have not lost you with the labyrinth I have in my mind.
What is to come is the meat and this may be one of the biggest and most impacting lessons from my eleven-month journey in finding God. However, definitely not the last lesson I will ever learn. I think I am starting to consider myself a Jesus Kindergartner in the scheme of things! Thank you Jesus for that!
You know how I just told you that lessons come when you least expect them? The following story does not fall short of that. Sometimes you wrestle and sometimes He sends you a little “Gift” to remind you how much He loves you.
Door to door evangelism in Africa is everybody’s favorite activity! (Do not read too much into this) I had been out of the game for a couple weeks, but this would be my last opportunity to reach out and in my mind I was going out on my own terms. I woke up in the morning with a smile on my face and fervor to get after it. Today was Kingdom day, as if that was not everyday! “Jesus, today is the day we do something BIG!” Can you see where this is going? I love that Jesus laughs with me!
We boarded our taxi van that would deliver us to another dirt road, water hand pumped, burning trash and wide-open toilet welled village. We went out delivering the Gospel until lunch and then regrouped before going out again. If you look back, the fervor I was speaking of was gone at this point. I really try not to meep much, but I was tired and ready to return back to camp. All that said, I mustered up the smile and the energy to head back out.
We walked down an alley way asking, “Hoti?” (Am I welcome here?) The lady was sitting on the concrete pad in front of her one roomed home and we had about thirty-to-forty kids trailing us everywhere we went who had jammed and completely blocked the alley where we had come from. Two men appeared out of the adjacent open windowed, muddy bricked building both very apparently hammered drunks. They yelled their greeting, not being angry, but being entirely unaware of how loud they were actually speaking. Our translator asked who would deliver the word and encourage the people listening. Mickey spoke up and went into a testimony Gospel about identity. It was really good from what I heard of it!
If I am completely honest and I want to be, within a few minutes my mind had started wandering. I began to look around and my eyes caught a glimpse of a small girl sitting in the corner with another man, who appeared to be sober. I was shocked! As I continued to watch the girl she thrashed around and had a hard time keeping up both her top and the baby doll attached to her back like most African women choose to carry their babies.
She was beautiful!
Immediately, I felt the urgency to talk to the man and what appeared like his daughter. I continued to watch her as drool fell from her mouth and smiles would come and go across her face. This was familiar!
If you have not followed my journey, you wouldn’t know about Pablo. Pablo was the first miracle that I was aware of on the Race in what seems like ages ago Guatemala. The kid had Down’s Syndrome and came into the factory to be fitted for a wheelchair. He grabbed hold of my hands and led me around like a trusted companion reminding me that God never let’s go of our hands. Had I forgotten?
The girl reminded me of him, but in my mind I was thinking God had put another one in my path and this one was going to be healed. I think God get’s to belly laughing about my determination and ignorance, not that it’s a joke but because He knows and He loves me so much! I had kind of forgotten that she was an individual and she needed love. She needed to know that Jesus loves her. And man does He, He totally showed up!
As Mickey finished speaking I came back to. A couple of people prayed the sinner’s prayer and the man in the corner rattled off something in Chichewa. Andrew our translator told us that the man had asked if we would pray over her daughter, she was mentally handicapped. I looked into the man’s eyes. It was the same genuine love I had saw in the eyes of Pablo’s father. It was the same desire to see God show up! I walked over to the man and shook his hand, “My name is Dixon.” The man said. “Hi, I am Toe-mas” (I don’t think I’ll ever introduce myself the same after being in Africa, it is amazing the difference it makes in the pronunciation). He smiled and looked into me. He had the eyes of a tired man with a lot of hope and perhaps a little bit of skepticism.
I knelt down to the little girl with huge gorgeous eyes staring up at me. I placed my hands across her bare back and smiled and said, “hey beautiful!” She threw her head back and halfway smiled as she blankly glared past me.
We began to pray. I couldn’t close my eyes, I just stared at the small, fragile girl that my hand was supporting and smiled as tears came to my eyes. “Jesus, I believe you can do anything! I believe you have the power to heal this girl.” She threw her head back into my hand and she looked up at me resting this time. She completely relaxed into my hand and the hugest grin broke out across her face. My spirit leaped. Was this the moment? In what seemed like a couple of seconds the prayer came to an end. I felt like I was blankly staring at what had unfolded in the matter of a minute. The girl turned her eyes away and began to tense up her body again. The smile lasted a little longer though. I whispered to her, “Jesus loves you so much!” She shot me a look back that said, “He loves you too!”
I stood to my feet. I shook her dad’s hand. I told Andrew to tell him that he had a beautiful daughter. She was so beautiful, quite possibly the most beautiful little girl I had seen in Africa.
I asked him what her name was? He looked back at me and said, “Gift!”
She was most definitely that! God had sent a “Gift” in month eleven to remind me how much he loved me. God’s glory happens regardless of if we see it. I like to place a lot of blame in Isaiah 55, but I’m an ignorant kindergarten Jesus follower who is learning.
We walked back down the road, I looked at Mickey and said, “I really thought that was the one!” He shot me a blank stare, “Man, you just ended the Race the way you started it!”
Jesus loves you and he loves me! We serve a God of supernatural and miraculous, whether we choose to see it or not…
“Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart” –Psalm 37:4
“For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless.” –Psalm 84:11
