Keeping Pace with Jesus
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From the desk of Ron Pearce In my calls to world leaders of national church planting networks, all reports are extremely positive, ranging from “overwhelming” in India, to “growing and deep” in El Salvador, to “never ending” in China. These verses of Jesus quieting a storm on the Sea of Galilee from Mark 4 come to mind at times like this: Now a great windstorm developed and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was nearly swamped…39 So he got up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Be Quiet! Calm down!” Then the wind stopped, and it was dead calm. 40 And he said to them, “Why are you cowardly? Do you still not have faith?” The words I bolded above were spoken to the storm, but Jesus is also speaking these words to His Church worldwide today. Here’s is a story as related to me by the leader of one of the largest and fastest growing church networks in Southeast Asia: |
Very recently, in a remote village in Laos, a 24-year-old young man suffered from a violent form of mental illness. He came to be known as “the crazy boy” in the community, with his family spending all their money over the years attempting to have witchdoctors heal him — but with absolutely no success. One day, a pastor was travelling through this village, where he met the father of the young man. The pastor was told the family’s sad story. Then, realizing this was a Christian leader, the father asked the pastor to pray over his son for healing and release. The father took the pastor to his house, and when they were going through the gate (approximately 30 meters away from the house) the young man cried out to the pastor and said, “Don’t hurt me. I surrender. I will go now. Why do you come to me with such a great troop of army.” The pastor responded, “I am alone,” realizing that the demon(s) in the young man must have been referring to angels who were invisible to human eyes but still backing up the pastor. Entering into the house with the boy, the family gathered around, and the pastor quietly but firmly said, “I come to you in the Name of Jesus. Be healed,” —and the boy immediately became normal. Amazed and rejoicing, the family asked, “We are poor because of all that we have paid to the witchdoctors, but how much do you charge for healing our son? One pig or three chickens, or some cloth?” The pastor immediately responded, “Absolutely no charge. I received freely and now I give freely.” Even though the pastor was told that the local government doesn’t allow village members to be Christians, the father firmly stated, “We aren’t afraid of government. We will face them because they all know what happened to our family and our son. We want to follow Jesus, and we will tell others. They know the failure of the witchdoctors and the success of Jesus. They will believe too!” A new cell group leading to a church has now been planted in that village. I receive many similar stories every month, all pointing to the present-day revelation of a victorious, global Church that is expanding rapidly. But what especially stood out to me were the words this leader used after sharing the story. He said to me with great passion: “God is going ahead of us — now it is up to us (i.e. national pastors, evangelists and church planters) to keep up to Him — just like the disciples did with Jesus in the Gospels.” He went on to draw my attention to the story in the New Testament of the demon possessed man who lived in the tombs on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee (Mark 5:1 – 20). The condensed version is that Jesus delivered this man who had been locked up in chains and who was possessed by hundreds (or more) of demons in a similar manner to that of the 24-year-old Laotian man — minus the 2,000 pigs that drowned in the Galilee. The church leader commented that the reaction to the miracle was also extremely similar. The local people who owned the dead pigs asked Jesus to leave because they were “afraid” they would lose their livelihood. Then it says, Jesus told the delivered man to go to his people across the Jordan River to a group of 10 villages and show them what Jesus had done for him. He did so and it says that “they were amazed.” In the Laotian deliverance, the parallel is that the communist forces were afraid of the power of God, and the message of hope and deliverance in Jesus spreading to the point that they would lose their power over the population. Contrary to this, the family of the healed man was “amazed,” and they were eager to tell others about Jesus’ power, regardless of the cost. The lesson, the national church leader explained, is that his national pastors are merely walking into these situations regularly, praying, and standing back and watching Jesus open spiritual eyes, heal physical bodies, and mend broken minds. All they need to do is try to keep pace with Jesus and with those who are amazed and not afraid. He clarified the job description of his national pastors: 1) Explaining to the spiritually confused what is happening; 2) Leading the spiritually hungry into an intense, personal relationship with Jesus; 3) Organizing the masses of new believers into vibrant local fellowships; and 4) Teaching them from the Word of God. As it was in the Gospels and the Book of Acts, so it is today in these regions of spiritual growth where over half the population of the world lives. |
