The Amazing Works of God and Man

 

 

It was an ordinary day at the Bangkla Baptist clinic.   Everyone was in their place. 

 

 

and then, a woman walked in with her 30 year old son. 



                             

"Excuse me" she said.  " I delivered my son here at the Bangkla hospital 30 years ago.  He was born with some serious health problems and the Doctors  prayed for him.  He quickly got better and we were released from the hospital.  I promised God, I would dedicate my son to Him.  It has been on my mind ever since.  I came all the way from Isaan to my son's home and brought him here for you to show us what to do?"

  Our office manager, Oy, share the Gospel with them.  The son gave his life to Christ.  We found out he lives in Ban Pho, the very place we are desperately trying to plant a church.  Please join us in praying for this young man.  He lives very close to the school where we will be doing an English camp in July.  Pray his faith will grow like seeds planted by the rivers of water. 

Great Small Beginnings

Thai provinces are divided into districts, similar to what we might call counties.  Each one has tens of thousands of people in it. Our burden is that there are seemingly a countless number of districts that have no churches – and many without even a single Christian.  For over 20 years our family has worked here with the desire to see God’s kingdom come and His will be done here in Thailand just as it is in heaven.  We share Christ with patients at the clinic, we knock on doors and visit people in their homes, we teach English in schools as a springboard to bring the Gospel to communities, and we do mobile clinics in districts all over the country with the desire to see people introduced to the Father’s love so that a local body of believers might be born and the Lord would be glorified in their praise.  
     BP is a district about 40 minutes southwest of us.  There is no body of believers there.  There has never been a church there.  Three years ago we began concentrated efforts to bring the Gospel to BP.  We did a number of mobile clinics, taught English in schools, knocked on door after door, passed out tracts in the market, and shared the Gospel over and over again – year after year.  Occasionally, someone would show interest for a short time, but local pressure and their own disbelief would always stop them short of following Christ.  
    

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the 10th grade class Gary and Rez taught 

 Then a few weeks ago, Gary and Rez brought a team to join forces with a team from South Mountain to come teach English and again help us take the Gospel into BP.  Sandi came a couple months in advance and she and I teamed up with some of my Thai staff to walk the streets of BP, knocking on doors, sharing Christ with people we met on the streets, and passing out tracts in the market.  In all our visits, we found no one even remotely interested.  But the principal of the school was very anxious to have us come help his students learn English, and many of the school’s students were freshly embroiled in a number of personal difficulties, so the Lord was preparing the soil for the Gospel seed that Gary and Rez’ team was bringing.
     After 4 days of teaching English and sharing the Good News, we gathered in the middle of the school’s soccer field to worship the Lord and intercede on behalf of the people there.  Two boys from the school followed us, and accepting our invitation, they joined us as we sang and prayed.  We asked them how we could pray for them and then gathered around them to pray.  Both of them were from broken homes.  After our time together, I asked the boys where they were headed.   One said that he was going to set up his roadside cart where he and his mom sold home-made ice cream every day after school.  I asked if we could visit.  Nearly 20 of us drove up to his little stand where he and his mom were selling their coconut ice cream.  Mong was obviously very happy to have us visit him, and his mom was perhaps even happier.  We all enjoyed having ice cream together, and enjoyed getting to know each other even more.  Soon we were talking about the Lord and His plan for our life.  I asked Mong’s mom if he had talked to her about what he was learning about God through the English teachers.  She said, “Yes, I think he wants to become a Christian.”  I asked her how she felt about that and she said, “Well, I’d like to know more about it.”  I said that I would be very happy to tell her more and asked when we could meet to learn about God.  She said, “How about right now?”  So right there we talked with her about who God is – that He made the world, that He is holy, that He loves us, and will one day judge all men and decide their eternal destiny.  When we finished, she seemed eager to have us come back – and very eager for us to continue to befriend her son.  

This is Mong drawing the bridge diagram Gary taught them  answering the question for that day. 
Why should I believe in God?

 

 

     Then a week later, we visited again.  This time a friend of the family was there. Also a student at the school where we did the English camp.  I asked her if she had talked to Mong and his mom about God, and her reply was, “I want to become a Christian too!”  So right there, just as Mong and his mom had done a week earlier, she prayed to make Christ her Lord.  Now there are 3 in this place that had no believers for such a very long time.  
     The “church” of BP is still very small – just 3 believers, with a faith that is less than 2 weeks old.  But Sandi encouraged me with a quote from Zechariah: “Do not despise the day of small beginnings.”  I am overjoyed by seeing the Lord save these 3 precious people.  Please pray for BP and this brand new family of faith – and thank the Lord with us for these days of small beginnings.

Mong and his mom's ice cream shop

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    A week later we returned and taught her more of the death and resurrection of Jesus and how men could have their sins forgiven and at last be right with God.  When we finished I invited her to repent of her sins and submit to God as Lord of her life.  And right there, at a table a few feet from her ice cream stand, she and her son (who smilingly said that he was very ready!) placed their faith in Christ.  We rejoiced as we watched salvation come to this BP family.



Warmed to the Gospel by the Common Cold

Warmed to the Gospel by the Common Cold

 I saw Mr. P, a 30 year old factory worker, in the clinic on Friday.  He came to see me for a cold.  Soon we were talking about his need for a relationship with God.  He said, “I need to study this some more.”

      “Great idea!”  I exuberantly agreed.  How about we meet Monday evening?  He agreed to come meet me after he (and I) finished work on the following Monday.  He showed up as promised and he and I then talked through who God is and what His expectations for man include.  After our evening talk, I asked him if he was ready to make the leap and place his trust in God.  He said yes!  Right there he prayed wonderfully, confessing sin and promising to follow God and bring Him honor.  It was a joy to see! 

     Please pray for him.  He works long hours and often works evenings and Sundays.  Pray that the Lord will call Mr. P to study his Bible and seek all opportunity to grow in his new faith.

Saturday Night Devotions on Sunday

I Peter 2:16

     As free, yet not using your liberty as a cloak for vice, but as servants of God.

     If Christ has set us free, we are free indeed (John 8:36).  We are free from being dominated by sin; we are free from the fear of death; we are free from worthless religious traditions which teach ritual but starve our soul; we are freed from wasting our lives on worthless temporal pursuits – oh the joy of the freedoms gleaned by means of the presence of our indwelling Savior!  Among the myriad of wonderful freedoms enjoyed by the believer in Christ, however, one freedom is perhaps misused more than the others.  We are freed from religious ritual and legalism, that is true, but the temptation for the Christian is to use our new found freedom “as a cloak for vice.”  In the Old Testament, followers of God were easy to spot.  They had several hundred pages of rules to live by in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  The laws in those pages were full of outward actions that were intended to verify a person’s pure devotion to God.  But what will we use to replace those rituals and “thou-shalt-nots”?  Peter pleads with us here not to use our freedom in Christ as an excusing cloak for a less-than-holy lifestyle.  Oh the tragedy when Christians live by the dogma “don’t judge me,” rather than living by the inner drive to be holy.  If we think that our freedom in Christ gives us license to live immorally we are horribly mistaken.  This “cloak for vice” is all too commonly used by believers today.  We use our freedom to excuse all manner of vices.  We entertain ourselves by unwholesome means, enter relationships that God considers immoral, use profane language that stain our character, imbibe in drinks and drugs that weaken our witness, and then pretend to think that we are above judgment and criticism because of our “freedom in Christ.”  Peter plainly calls us here to use our freedom paradoxically to become “servants of God.”  Usually, “freedom” means we can do what we want – this leads to using “liberty as a cloak for vice.”  But Peter calls us to use our freedom to do what our Master wants, “as servants of God.”  David felt this wonderfully contradictory state of becoming the servant of God to be freed by God: “O Lord, truly I am Your servant; I am your servant, the son of Your maidservant; You have loosed my bonds (Psalm 116:16).”  Let us rejoice that our life in Christ has “loosed our bonds” from a heart to sin and a penchant to waste our time on meaningless matters, but let us not neglect the duties of our liberty and submit to the Lord as faithful servants.

153 Fish

Last week a wonderful group of believers from Lake Havasu, Arizona went with me to do a series of medical clinics in north-central Thailand.  We had been planning the trip for months, and then we were hit with a run of last minute changes just as we were getting ready to leave.  The church folks from Havasu handled the changes beautifully, but they were just as hard to take for our local Thai church planters as they were for our team.  Despite the changes, however, we  were able to do just as we had desired to do – we held mobile clinics and did English programs in 5 different villages and shared the Gospel with over 900 people.  After one great day of sharing the Gospel at the medical clinic and through the English activities, we worshipped the Lord together – the American team from Havasu, my Thai team from Bangkla, and local believers from the areas near the clinic site.  After several shared their testimonies of seeing God move in the hearts of the people that day, the local Thai church planter (we’ll call him Pastor Q) encouraged us with his testimony of how the Lord had chosen to bless him that day.  He said that the whole week prior to the clinic had been a strain.  Virtually every detail of our time with him had to be changed.  But the Lord encouraged him with the story of Jesus commanding the disciples to throw their nets on the other side of the boat.  Pastor Q said that he was encouraged to read that when the disciples fished on the other side of the boat – when they changed the plans that they had made, God blessed them with 153 large fish.  This story encouraged him all week long.  He said that as he busily made the necessary changes he kept being encouraged by the thought of the disciple’s 153 large fish that came as a result of their willingness to live with change.  Our day with him in an effort to reach his community for Christ was a blessing.  His neighbors came and many were moved to seek to know more about the God who made the world.  Finally, as the day ended, he  went to our registration table to see how many people had come to see the doctor and hear the Gospel that day.  We had seen 153.  Exactly 153 people.  God wanted to encourage Pastor Q – and us – that the changes did not thwart His purposes, but rather accomplished His purposes, and that the fruit of our efforts came as a result of His blessings on our faithfulness to His great Task.      

A Divinely Inspired Partership

 

 

     A few weeks ago, our mobile clinic team of nationals partnered with an American team from Heartland Worship Center in Paducah, Kentucky as well as with 4 missionary couples from 2 different areas of Thailand.  We made our way up to some small villages in northeast Thailand where the Thai Nyaw people live. The Thai Nyaw people are what our mission board has labeled as a people group that is “unreached and unengaged (UUPG).”  That is they are unreached with the Gospel, and no group with the Gospel is engaging them.  Our mission board has been encouraging our Southern Baptist churches in America to pick a place where we have these UUPG’s  and partner with us to try to find ways to reach them with the Gospel of Christ.  Heartland church has stepped up to the plate.  Beginning last summer they sent their first team into these villages to look for ways to engage them.  This summer they sent another team and asked us to do a mobile clinic with them in hopes of making some contacts with these lost souls. 

  Our first surprise was that a Thai church met us when we arrived.  They had heard of our joint efforts and our desire to reach the Thai Nyaw and wanted to join with us. (It was their heart too).  As an added bonus several of them spoke the language and one of their members was Thai Nyaw.  For three days we worked together in three different villages sharing Christ one on one with everyone who came to our clinics and teaching English via Bible stories to the neighboring schools.  It was a wonderful partnership that started with one church in America, then four missionary couples, and finally a national Thai church.  We saw a tremendous number of people respond to the Gospel during our 3 days with them. 

  As we met together and prayed and shared what we had seen God do with our time together, all of us were overwhelmed by the reality that God had directed each of us to be here at this appointed time.  Heartland church and the national church were so excited to learn that even their ideas of how to reach people for Christ were so similar.   The fellowship we shared will be a treasured memory for all of us.  Pray for these people that what they heard that week will penetrate their hearts and souls.  And in the days ahead, as the Thai nationals and the Heartland team return to those villages, we pray that God will go before them and prepare the hearts of these people for further understanding and discipleship.     

Brand New News Leads to a Brand New Life

Usually on mobile clinic, my job is to see patients and my Thai staff shares the Gospel with everyone when they pick up their meds.  But one mobile clinic day recently, it was about noon and many of my staff were at lunch, so I handed over the doctor role to the capable American docs who were with me and went to help pass out meds and share Christ with the line of people waiting.  While in that role, I talked to a 39 year old man who lived near the Cambodian border.  I asked if he had heard about God before.  He looked at me perplexed and said “no.”  I explained that it was God that had made the world and had given us a conscience so that we would flee sin and try to know Him.  He had a host of questions – he had never heard the story before.  I finished sharing, and asked if he was ready to submit to God as Lord and ask His forgiveness for sins.  Again, the perplexed look came over him – only now he was even more troubled.  He was weighted by the truth that he had just heard…but he looked up at me and said, “I’ve never known God was out there.  I’ve never even considered that there might be a God.”  He said it again, almost to himself, “I’ve never even considered that God could exist.”  “What should I do?”  He asked me and then looked at the ground.  It was a life changing – eternity changing moment.  Just an hour earlier, his biggest problem in life was a recurring headache.  Now he weighed changing his entire belief system and all his life’s priorities on the basis of hearing news from a stranger.  It took him some time to decide, but he could not overcome his need.  I prayed for him and then he bowed his head and prayed out loud, repenting of his sin, confessing his belief in God, and asking to belong to God from then on.  It was his first time hearing the Message, and he took full advantage.  Praise the Lord. 

Belief Leads to Blessing and then to Baptism

We had another baptism at our little house church in Plaang Yaow!  Just writing that makes me smile.  One was a young woman in her 20s who has struggled with the decision to follow Christ for some time, but finally saw her hopelessness without God and decided to follow Him.  The second was a 14 year old girl who has come to meetings for a long time with her aunt, but never wanted to follow Christ.  Finally, in April, she told her aunt, “I believe in God now, and if I get into Benja (a private high school that takes only the best students) I will get baptized.”  The day came, and Benja announced the names of all the students they had accepted.  Bam, our little 14 year-old’s name was not listed.  It was a painful blow to Bam and her family.  College acceptance is greatly related to the quality of the high school one attends, so failing to enter Benja put a cloud over Bam’s future.  A couple weeks later, as the family discussed the matter again (it was hard to talk about anything else), Taew, her aunt, said, “perhaps you should not make deals with God.  You either believe in Him and choose to obey Him or not.  You shouldn’t make conditions for God saying you will only obey Him (and be baptized) if He helps you.”  Wonderfully, Bam agreed.  She called me at almost 10 o’clock that very night (it was a Saturday) and told me of her faith and asked to be baptized in the morning at church.  I talked with her about her faith and made plans to talk with her more in the morning before baptizing her after the worship service on Sunday.  Less than an hour after talking to me, several friends excitedly called her.  “Bam!  Benja is accepting more students!  They just announced it on TV.  Go on their website and see if you got in!”  Bam’s whole family went into an upstairs room together and went to the school’s website together.  And there was Bam’s name.   She had been accepted.  Her fledgling faith had been immediately rewarded – and we baptized her the very next day.     Her uncle, our national leader the Plang Yeow House Church,  was given the honor of Baptizing her.  What a wonderful family event!