Isaiah 55: 10-11 "The rain and snow come down from the heavens and stay on the ground to water the earth. They cause the grain to grow, producing seed for the farmer and bread for the hungry. It is the same with my word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it."
I'll be honest, it's hard for me to read the above and not spend a little time on the words "always" and "prosper everywhere I send it" (italics mine) in regards to His word. If you've spent even a little time actively trying to reach people with the Good News you can get tripped up with those words because, well, so many people seem to be uninterested in this eternity changing free gift.
I know the Evil One tries to plant seeds of discouragment with every "no" we hear. It's also especially hard to hear "of course I'm coming" or "of course I'll be there" a few hundred times and never actually see those people come to anything. This brings disappointment as well.
This week God reminded us that His word (not our words or our actions) is active and it works even when we think not much is going on.
A couple of days ago I got a call from a really good friend of mine. He's a great friend actually but, I'll confess, there's been some distance between us lately. Partly his fault, partly mine. I'm not proud of it but that's where we are. For a long time, I diligently reached out to him to become a Christian, giving him many opportunities to accept. He would always say just what I wanted to hear, but never followed through on putting anything into practice. After a while, I got tired of trying. We are still good friends but we just don't see each other as much as we used to.
Lately, I've been reading the writings of George Müller and one thing he encourages is praying daily with your wife. You'd think as a Christian missionary I wouldn't need a kick in the pants to start getting serious about doing this but the book has made us (both Benay and myself) try to be consistent in daily getting together for prayer. Benay has a little book and she has been writing down everything we pray about.
One of the things we began praying about is specific people. We pray for them by name. My friend and his family are on our list. "Out of the blue" he called two days ago. He asked how we are doing. He asked how house church is going and he wants to bring his family by our house tomorrow for a visit. God is good.
Yesterday afternoon I took the kids to see a movie and to let Benay have a free afternoon as she is battling the beginnings of a cold. While at home she heard the doorbell. She went to answer it and saw that it was another friend who had visited our house church with his family a couple of times in January/February. We literally haven't seen them since then. We've traded emails with them but haven't seen them. He was bringing a baby shower invitation to us for his little girl that will be born about a week before our little boy. He said they haven't forgotten about house church, want to come back but it has been hard with his girlfriend being pregnant (they only have a motorcycle which makes double riding a little difficult). It was a great surprise to hear from them again and to have them invite us to this big day for them.
After Benay told me about this visit we thought about the verse above. It reminded us that God is in control. You'd think I'd know this by now but I constantly need to be reminded. It's good to be reminded that no matter how long (over 5 years) or how short (2 house church visits) the amount of time you spend with someone, His word always produces fruit. It will accomplish "all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it."
No comments:
Post a Comment