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Seizing God's moment
Seizing ‘God’s moment’
Missionaries press forward in post-tsunami Sumatra
By Called and Sent Staff
Third in a series
Missionary names have been changed
SUMATRA, INDONESIA—Chahaya could only watch as countless bodies swirled in the floodwaters below.
Standing on a bridge above the tsunami’s grasp, the young missionary heard a voice from heaven reminding him why he was witnessing hell.
“A soft voice came into my ear, and the sound was like this: ‘This is your responsibility; this is your responsibility,’” he recalls. Chahaya understood implicitly that, rather than an accusation, the message was a challenge: He had a responsibility to minister to the tsunami’s surviving victims.
“I wanted to go back to my family, but that voice came to me and strengthened me to stay here,” he says.
The December 2004 tsunami, triggered by a magnitude 9.2 undersea earthquake, killed more than 100,000 people on Sumatra alone. Chahaya had spent the two years before the tsunami meticulously building relationships and talking about Jesus Christ with four of those people. And now they all were dead.
With the divine challenge on the bridge pushing him, Chahaya went back to work— making friends, helping them deal with the tsunami’s aftermath and studying scripture with those who are interested. Today, Chahaya has about a dozen Muslim friends in his town and meets with two of them regularly to compare truths in the Qur’an to the Injil (Gospels).
“I’ve told them about Christianity, from the beginning of the story, and about salvation,” Chahaya says. “They are interested in it. They are happy and get interested if we communicate like this and compare.
“I am optimistic that one day I will bring people to come to Jesus, because He sent me here,” he says. “He will prepare the people.”
Four Muslims for Christ
He already has been.
Sumatra is home to more than 30 million people who have never heard the Gospel, and culturally entrenched Islam has slammed the door on Christians for hundreds of years. But despite the illegality of proselytizing Muslims and the threat of physical retribution, evangelists are speaking and people are listening.
Ramelan, another evangelist in the area, has led four people to Christ this year, including a married couple that was planning to divorce. The husband had consulted local witch doctors about their marriage, but got no credible answer. Then he talked with Ramelan, who showed him the biblical injunction against divorce in 1 Corinthians 7.
“I told him, ‘There is no answer you can get in this world, but Isa al-Masih [Jesus the Messiah] can help you,’” Ramelan recalls. “I told him, ‘God loves you; God loves your family.’ And I explained to him that God made marriage, and God made them come together, and nothing can separate them.”
That same night, Ramelan went to the couple’s home, and they both invited Jesus into their lives. The three prayed for release from the influence of the witches they had consulted and the evil spirit pushing them toward divorce.
“I asked him to have a good life with his wife, and they held each other,” Ramelan says.
The couple comprises half of a new contingent of believers in the area. Ramelan is counseling the couple and each of the other two new believers separately for fear that a group might attract too much attention.
Visions of Revival
Others are praying that just such a group—thousands of them, in fact—will spring up on Sumatra and spread all over the Asian Muslim world.
Sam, an evangelist who works with Chahaya and Ramelan, got a dream he believes was from God in 2002. In the dream he saw a map of Southeast Asia, and from Sumatra, a light sprang up and covered all the Asian countries in what has come to be called the 10/40 Window.
“It was very strong in my mind and in my heart that God will make a revival from [Sumatra] to spread all over that place,” Sam says. “My personal vision is to raise up a team to share the Gospel from Sumatra to other places in Southeast Asia. I cannot reach all over Asia, so I want to raise up a team of Indonesians [to do it].”
Part of building that team is teaching its members to work through the deep skepticism most Muslims feel toward Christians and Christianity. Centuries-old stereotypes paint Christians as polytheists (for worshiping a triune God), permissive, promiscuous and imperialistic. On top of that, Muslim-to-Muslim peer pressure to resist Christians’ influence, no matter how helpful those Christians might be, runs rampant, Sam says.
To counter, evangelists learn the culture, customs, local language – anything that will help them build relationships that trump the stereotypes.
“We have to make really, really good friendships with them before we can share the Gospel,” Sam says.
One story that encourages Sam and his team: A group of Christians began doing relief work in a small Muslim village that was damaged by the tsunami. As some of the local people began to open up to the relief workers, people from a nearby village began bad-mouthing the outsiders.
“The people knew that the other side was not giving help, and that the Christians were helping; so they thought and they discussed, and they refused the other people,” Sam says.
Experiences like that and from his own work give Sam and his team reason to dream big.
“This time, God will do a good work,” Sam says of his territory. “I do not want to lose the moment, because this time is God’s moment.”
Missionaries press forward in post-tsunami Sumatra
By Called and Sent Staff
Third in a series
Missionary names have been changed
 | |
|
SUMATRA, INDONESIA—Chahaya could only watch as countless bodies swirled in the floodwaters below.
Standing on a bridge above the tsunami’s grasp, the young missionary heard a voice from heaven reminding him why he was witnessing hell.
“A soft voice came into my ear, and the sound was like this: ‘This is your responsibility; this is your responsibility,’” he recalls. Chahaya understood implicitly that, rather than an accusation, the message was a challenge: He had a responsibility to minister to the tsunami’s surviving victims.
“I wanted to go back to my family, but that voice came to me and strengthened me to stay here,” he says.
The December 2004 tsunami, triggered by a magnitude 9.2 undersea earthquake, killed more than 100,000 people on Sumatra alone. Chahaya had spent the two years before the tsunami meticulously building relationships and talking about Jesus Christ with four of those people. And now they all were dead.
With the divine challenge on the bridge pushing him, Chahaya went back to work— making friends, helping them deal with the tsunami’s aftermath and studying scripture with those who are interested. Today, Chahaya has about a dozen Muslim friends in his town and meets with two of them regularly to compare truths in the Qur’an to the Injil (Gospels).
“I’ve told them about Christianity, from the beginning of the story, and about salvation,” Chahaya says. “They are interested in it. They are happy and get interested if we communicate like this and compare.
“I am optimistic that one day I will bring people to come to Jesus, because He sent me here,” he says. “He will prepare the people.”
Four Muslims for Christ
He already has been.
Sumatra is home to more than 30 million people who have never heard the Gospel, and culturally entrenched Islam has slammed the door on Christians for hundreds of years. But despite the illegality of proselytizing Muslims and the threat of physical retribution, evangelists are speaking and people are listening.
Ramelan, another evangelist in the area, has led four people to Christ this year, including a married couple that was planning to divorce. The husband had consulted local witch doctors about their marriage, but got no credible answer. Then he talked with Ramelan, who showed him the biblical injunction against divorce in 1 Corinthians 7.
“I told him, ‘There is no answer you can get in this world, but Isa al-Masih [Jesus the Messiah] can help you,’” Ramelan recalls. “I told him, ‘God loves you; God loves your family.’ And I explained to him that God made marriage, and God made them come together, and nothing can separate them.”
That same night, Ramelan went to the couple’s home, and they both invited Jesus into their lives. The three prayed for release from the influence of the witches they had consulted and the evil spirit pushing them toward divorce.
“I asked him to have a good life with his wife, and they held each other,” Ramelan says.
The couple comprises half of a new contingent of believers in the area. Ramelan is counseling the couple and each of the other two new believers separately for fear that a group might attract too much attention.
Visions of Revival
Others are praying that just such a group—thousands of them, in fact—will spring up on Sumatra and spread all over the Asian Muslim world.
Sam, an evangelist who works with Chahaya and Ramelan, got a dream he believes was from God in 2002. In the dream he saw a map of Southeast Asia, and from Sumatra, a light sprang up and covered all the Asian countries in what has come to be called the 10/40 Window.
“It was very strong in my mind and in my heart that God will make a revival from [Sumatra] to spread all over that place,” Sam says. “My personal vision is to raise up a team to share the Gospel from Sumatra to other places in Southeast Asia. I cannot reach all over Asia, so I want to raise up a team of Indonesians [to do it].”
Part of building that team is teaching its members to work through the deep skepticism most Muslims feel toward Christians and Christianity. Centuries-old stereotypes paint Christians as polytheists (for worshiping a triune God), permissive, promiscuous and imperialistic. On top of that, Muslim-to-Muslim peer pressure to resist Christians’ influence, no matter how helpful those Christians might be, runs rampant, Sam says.
To counter, evangelists learn the culture, customs, local language – anything that will help them build relationships that trump the stereotypes.
“We have to make really, really good friendships with them before we can share the Gospel,” Sam says.
One story that encourages Sam and his team: A group of Christians began doing relief work in a small Muslim village that was damaged by the tsunami. As some of the local people began to open up to the relief workers, people from a nearby village began bad-mouthing the outsiders.
“The people knew that the other side was not giving help, and that the Christians were helping; so they thought and they discussed, and they refused the other people,” Sam says.
Experiences like that and from his own work give Sam and his team reason to dream big.
“This time, God will do a good work,” Sam says of his territory. “I do not want to lose the moment, because this time is God’s moment.”
© 2007 Called and Sent Magazine. All rights reserved.