“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” Psalm 42:1-2
Growing up in the Baptist church, I have sung that hymn numerous times, but never really experienced the panting for God, until recently. We just returned from a mission trip to Tanzania, Africa. Our church partnered with a mission organization called e3 Partners, formerly Global Missions Fellowship.
Due to circumstances with the airline, we arrived one day late to Africa, which meant instead of four days of evangelizing on the field, we only had three days. Time after time after time, we would start sharing the gospel with one, two, or three people, and before we finished, there would be 20, 30, up to 70 people who would accept the free gift of salvation. It wasn’t the “muzungu” who brought the people out…it was the Holy Spirit of God. And the hunger for God’s Word and the thirst for His salvation was a miracle. They never took their eyes off the evang-e-cube and they listened with such intensity.
The proof of the hunger did not come with the number of professions of faith, but by the number of new believers who came to the discipleship classes each afternoon. We would go door to door sharing the gospel in the mornings, and then invite the new believers to an afternoon discipleship class to be held where the new church would be planted. We have never seen such an increase in the number of discipleship attendees. Not only were they hunger for salvation, but also for righteousness and training.
At the end of our trip, 51 new churches were planted where there had been no church before, with over 14,000 new believers in the villages where the churches were planted.
Growing up in the Baptist church, I have sung that hymn numerous times, but never really experienced the panting for God, until recently. We just returned from a mission trip to Tanzania, Africa. Our church partnered with a mission organization called e3 Partners, formerly Global Missions Fellowship.
Due to circumstances with the airline, we arrived one day late to Africa, which meant instead of four days of evangelizing on the field, we only had three days. Time after time after time, we would start sharing the gospel with one, two, or three people, and before we finished, there would be 20, 30, up to 70 people who would accept the free gift of salvation. It wasn’t the “muzungu” who brought the people out…it was the Holy Spirit of God. And the hunger for God’s Word and the thirst for His salvation was a miracle. They never took their eyes off the evang-e-cube and they listened with such intensity.
The proof of the hunger did not come with the number of professions of faith, but by the number of new believers who came to the discipleship classes each afternoon. We would go door to door sharing the gospel in the mornings, and then invite the new believers to an afternoon discipleship class to be held where the new church would be planted. We have never seen such an increase in the number of discipleship attendees. Not only were they hunger for salvation, but also for righteousness and training.
At the end of our trip, 51 new churches were planted where there had been no church before, with over 14,000 new believers in the villages where the churches were planted.
1 comment:
Thanks for posting...
51 churches is an incredible number. I thought that when I heard it Sunday!
Post a Comment