| In my turmoil I was silenced...A few weeks ago I received some bad news about the woman I lived with in North Africa. I will call her "Faith". Faith is quickly dying of AIDS. She is a Muslim woman who is hiding her disease from everyone she knows; only my team-leaders know about her disease. Faith is still alive because my team-leaders take care of her in providing medicine, pay so she can live and regular trips to the hospital to get blood work done and to receive more medicine. My team-leaders believe God is sending them to work in Europe in May, which will leave Faith helpless and unable to take of herself. Faith will die very soon, within this year of 2008 for sure. I received this news about one week ago...I knew that my team-leaders were leaving but I was not aware of the fact that Faith will be left by herself to die. I know that Faith is tormented day and night with the secret knowledge of her death. She is terrified, and I mean T-E-R-R-F-I-E-D to let anyone know of her disease. She is dying alone.
So, I received this news of Faith's lonely state about 1 week ago through an email and was not sure what to do with the excessive sorrow of this knowledge, so I just went into the woods to cry to and plead to God for several hours. As I was thinking about Faith, I was reminded of North Africa and all the suffering that I witnessed when I was there. When I mean suffering, I mean fatal poverty, famine, disease, injustice, oppression, illegal slavery, persecution and of course, the devastating un-reachedness of the 10/40 Window. I was overwhelmed and unsure of what to do with this knowledge of the suffering of the peoples of the nations. I just began pleading to God, "Oh God, oh God please, please LORD, save 'Faith'. Lord, please, please, please."
Then I began asking the LORD "Oh God, what do you want me to do? What can I do about this LORD? Why do I have this knowledge of suffering people? What do you want me to do?"
Then I began praying "God, oh God, send your workers. Send your workers, LORD."
I continued for nearly an hour asking God what He wants me to do with this knowledge of suffering peoples of the nations and why I know about it. I was in turmoil as I was pleading for people and nations that seem so hopeless and vastly, VASTLY un-reached. I was weeping loudly for "Faith" and for the North Africans that I know who are lost and suffering. I was crying for the lost people I know here and in Indiana. I was crying for the lost people of the world. But I felt a calling to be quiet, to be quiet in His holy presence. I felt silenced in His holy presence to live by faith not by sight and to trust in His unfailing and eternal Word. I was deeply encouraged, humbled, broken and lifted up by the Truth that God has already made a way for every person on the planet to know Him. He did it. He did it already on the cross. Oh, the cross of my Savior...oh God. I felt silenced by His greatness in who HE is and His un-fathomable and vast knoweldge. He sees everything...I am His little child, so small. But we, as His fellow-workers, are sharing in His sufferings....the sufferings of God for His creation that does not acknowledge Him. I was silenced by the holiness of His presence. I was silenced and sat in the woods for about another hour in the contenement of His presence. I came back to the dorm and I read this:
Because of the oppression of the weak and the groaning of the needy, I will now arise, says the LORD. I will protect them from those who malign them. And the words of the LORD are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay, purified seven times over. --Psalm 12:5-6. I was deeply, so deeply encouraged by the LORD in knowing His heart and in what is dear to Him. God is moving and is arising and we have hope. We have hope for the peoples of the nations for our God reigns! HE REIGNS!!! HE HAS MADE A WAY!!!!! Amen. |
