This entire blog is one huge praise report about my friend, Brooklynn. She got to hear the Gospel and now has a Bible! Read below to find out more.
Prayer Necessities for the Skimmers:
1. Continue to be in prayer for Brooklynn, that she would read her Bible and that the Holy Spirit would continue to draw her to Himself.
2. Pray for us as we finish up our time of Quechua study here in Cochabamba and say goodbye to those with whom we´ve developed relationships here (pictured here are Bea and Annie, believers from Sweden with whom we became good friends). We will be leaving here Wednesday to return to our home in Sucre. Pray that we will "make the most of every opportunity" and would be wise with the time we have remaining.
3. Pray for us as we prepare to make a short community trip after Christmas. Pray that God would give us wisdom in choosing the parts of His Word to share in a community of people who are believers but without access to the Bible, and pray for the people there, that they would be doers of His Word and not hearers only.
Inquring Minds Wanna Know (Bonus for the Readers):
As I was reading the book of Jude this morning, I was struck by the great responsibility with which we as believers have been entrusted. This verse really hit me:
"Dear friends,... I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints." (Jude 3)
This week, God gave me the most amazing opportunity, and it can be directly attributed to your prayers. I´ve been asking you to pray for Brooklynn, the Belgian-Canadian woman with whom I previously got to share my testimony. (She´s pictured here with Misty, me, and Amy.) Well, this week, I got to talk to her even more in-depth, and it was certainly a God-ordained appointment.
We had learned that Brooklynn would be returning to her home in Belgium this past week, so I asked her to have dinner with me before she left. Being from Canada originally, English is her first language, so I was excited to be able to talk to her more about Jesus with no language barrier at all. I´ve so come to appreciate that!
God had prompted Leah to give a Bible to Brooklynn, so I took that with me to our dinner, along with a list of stories from the Word for her to read. I was hoping to get her to see the big picture of the Bible, culminating in the Gospel, without being intimidated by the sheer size of its 66 books. And, during the dinner, it was my hope to be able to share something of the Good News with her.
Have you ever tried to share the Gospel with someone who has very little or no background in Christianity? If so, you know how difficult it is. Even if the person has had some exposure to our faith, we often do them a disservice by just presenting a cursory Gospel presentation and pushing them to a quick decision. Following Christ is hard, and Jesus Himself told us we need to count the cost of being His disciple (see Lk. 14:25-34). This is how Paul described what it means to truly be His disciple:
"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead." (Phil. 3:10-11)
If we just show that He is all joy and love without describing the demands of discipleship, we wind up with people who fall away from Christ at the first trial. And what´s worse is that they think that, because they once prayed a three-part prayer over a Gospel tract, they now have eternal life, though their lives show absolutely no evidence of that. These are the people to whom Christ will say, "I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness" (Matt. 7:23). And how much of that blame for that must be laid at my own feet?
So I really consulted the LORD about how to lay the foundation for the amazing Truth of the Gospel in this young woman with very little understanding of Who Christ was or why He came. How exactly does one explain thousands of years of the history of sinful man and the prophesied, personfied grace of a redeeming God in the span of a dinner?
But the LORD gave me the opportunity and the words. Brooklynn listened as I talked about Santa Claus and how I´d always wanted that to be true, for there to be someone out there who is so good that he brings gifts to all the children of the world, regardless of who or where they are. But then I´d realized that we have a "fairy tale" that is honestly true in that we have a God Who freely offers us salvation and the opportunity to know Him, even though we´ve been nothing but naughty for our entire lives.
When I explained that Jesus had come to earth with the express purpose of dying and that all of our sins, both before and after coming to Christ, were nailed to that cross with Him, she was excited. She explained that she had known about Jesus´death but that she had never before understood why He had to die.
When I told her that she had many people praying for her and that God was calling her into a relationship with Himself, she was moved. "Really?" she asked. She couldn´t believe that so many people who didn´t know her would be praying for her, and she was overwhelmed by the idea that God was pursuing her.
But this girl is not one to just blindly follow without questioning. She wanted to know why God would cause certain people to be born into such abject poverty when she and I have both had such great financial riches. She wanted to know what happens to those who will never hear about Jesus.
Was I bothered by her questions? No way! I actually welcomed them, because it meant she was actually considering whether what I had told her was really true. She wasn´t blindly believing me in the moment, only to fade away from the faith at the first sign of struggle. She was counting the cost and, if she does choose to follow Christ in the future, I have no doubt that she will know what she´s getting into.
As we said goodbye to Brooklynn this week, it was sad for all of us. I will truly mis her. But I am encouraged that she carries back to Belgium with her in the Word of God the same power that transformed my own life, and I take great delight in knowing this Truth:
"For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it." (Is. 55:10-11)
Please join me in praying that Brooklynn would be like the Bereans of old:
"Now the Bereans... received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." (Acts 17:11)
Pray that she will one day be able to proclaim with the Samaritans:
"They said to the woman, ´We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.´" (Jn. 4:42)
Two rainbows over our school in Cochabamba, Bolivia
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