Are You Weak Enough to be Used by God?

Jim Lovelady: 00:03

Welcome to Grace at the Fray, a podcast that explores the many dimensions of God’s grace that we find at the frayed edges of life. Come explore how God’s grace works to renew your life and send you on mission in His Kingdom. Hello, beloved, welcome to Grace at the Fray.

Jim Lovelady: 00:22

First of all, I want to speak directly to all of our Serge missionaries and tell you how much I appreciate you and the work that you’re doing all over the world. I guess this episode, maybe even more than normal, has made me so thankful for you, and the fact that I get to hang out with you and tell your stories on this podcast is truly a blessing. So I hope, as you listen to this podcast, that you find yourself in all of these stories and that you experience a sense of renewal in the gospel and a reminder that you are not alone. The Lord, your God, is with you. He delights in you. He delights in you, and we love you too. Now, my guest today is no stranger to Grace at the Fray and definitely no stranger to experiencing God’s grace in the midst of her fray. Emily Shrader works on our renewal team, but before that, she and her family spent years on the field working with our company in a Muslim country. Well recently, Emily and the mobilization team were at the Winter Jubilee Conference for college students put on by CCO, the Coalition for Christian Outreach. CCO is a reformed campus ministry organization that began around the same time that Serge did, and they share a similar DNA of wanting the centrality of the gospel to be our starting point, our end point and everything in between. CCO is one of the many ministries we partner with. They regularly use our renewal materials with their students, especially the book 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘰𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘭-𝘊𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘓𝘪𝘧𝘦. Of course, you’re invited to use those materials as well. Some of their staff participate in renewal events and online courses, and it’s been a delight to continue building that relationship. And what’s even more fun about this is Emily is a CCO alum. So while at Jubilee, she gave a talk about one of the core values that Serge has as a missions agency: ministry through weakness.

If you hang out with us enough, you’ll hear the term weakness, evangelism or ministry through weakness thrown around a lot, so I thought it would be a good idea for us to have an episode that unpacks what it looks like to do ministry through weakness. Emily tells all sorts of stories from her time on the field, where the Lord forced her to acknowledge and admit her weakness and inability, and even her stubbornness, and it was in the midst of those things that she experienced the love of God while simultaneously sharing the love of God. So here’s some ministry through weakness questions that I want to ask you how much of your weakness and brokenness are you willing to put on display if Jesus asks you, or do you value your repentance as a part of your witness for Christ? Is your life marked by humility, fueled by grace? In other words, are you weak enough to be used by God?

Emily Shrader: 03:32

Well, welcome to this workshop. Thanks for taking time out of your schedule to come and think about this thing called evangelism. If you’re anything like me, I’m sure that you have very mixed emotions about evangelism, so I’m glad that you’re here. You’ve come to the right place. My husband, David, and I, along with our three children, served as missionaries in the Muslim world for over 12 years with our organization, which is called Serge, and I’m going to show you this little. So, before I get into the topic for our workshop today, I do just want to tell you a couple of quick things about our organization.

04:12

We are a small missionary sending organization that also produces materials and resources for spiritual renewal. Has anyone ever studied The Gospel-Centered Life? The Gospel-Centered Life is one of our studies that we put out there, along with many, many other things. We not only have these resources, but we also have some great opportunities for students, including internships that are summer internships or eight to ten weeks, and we have them all over the world and then also apprenticeships, which are two-year programs for really postgraduate not postgraduate, but post graduating work, and so, yeah, I would really encourage you. If you want to learn more about that, you can just go ahead and scan this code, or you can come see us. We have a table in the exhibit hall and I will put this code back up at the end of our time together. But one of the things about Serge as an organization that I love is that we are not an organization that’s necessarily focused on a particular type of work or a particular region or a particular people group. What we are focused on as an organization is our values, our core values, as an organization are these we are gospel-centered or we strive to be. I mean, I’m not always gospel-centered, but I really try to be gospel-centered love for people, Kingdom prayer. And then the last one is ministry through weakness, which is really the topic of our workshop today, and so, after you hear my presentation on evangelism from weakness, if it’s something that you really feel like you can resonate with, come and talk to us at our booth, because a really is a lot of it really is the way that we approach ministry all around the world. Okay, so we’re going to talk about ministry from weakness or evangelism, weakness- evangelism and the real question that we’re going to ask today is what makes us competent to share the gospel with others. Before we do that, I would like to look at passage of scripture together. So we’re going to be in the book of Acts. If you have a Bible or if you have a Bible app on your phone, you can go ahead and turn to that. Acts, chapter three, verses one through 10. And then we’re going to take a little section from chapter four as well. Reading from Acts, chapter three “Now, Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour, and a man, lame from birth, was being carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple that is called the beautiful gate, to ask alms of those entering the temple.

07:01

Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked to receive alms and Peter directed his gaze at him, as did John, and said “Look at us. And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. And he took him by the right hand and raised him up and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong and leaping up he stood and began to walk and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God and recognized him as the one who sat at the beautiful gate of the temple asking for alms, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. And now from Acts 4, verse 5.

07:58

“On the next day, the rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem with Annas, the high priest, and Caiaphas and John and Alexander and all who are of the high- priestly family, and when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, “by what power or by what name did you do this? Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means has this man been healed? Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead– by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished and they recognized that they had been with Jesus. “So let’s take a minute and wonder a little bit about this story. I wonder what the lame man was expecting when he got up that morning?

09:27

What was he thinking was going to happen? I mean, we know that he was planning to be laid at the beautiful gate, since his friends carried him there. The scriptures say daily, and we know that he was looking for something. He was asking for something right, alms, which is like money or food or something like that. It’s a way that people would give to help the poor and the needy. So we know that he was also relying, really on other people’s goodwill and generosity in order to survive. Imagine that, and we can assume that he’s been doing this for a really long time. It says that he was lame since when? Birth, right. So for day after day after day, this man has been brought to this gate, so I imagine that he probably expected that day to be like any other day.

10:20

Let’s wonder about Peter and John a little bit. What do you think they expected this day to be like? Maybe they got up from their mats, they had their morning prayers, unlike this man who had spent his time begging and being laid at the gate. Their experience had been anything but routine and normal, at this point right? They were two fishermen who’d been radically, even miraculously, called by Jesus. They followed him through his whole earthly ministry. They were part of his inner circle.

10:52

This is Peter and John that we’re talking about. They listened to Jesus’s teachings day after day. They witnessed miracles right? They saw Jesus change water to wine. They saw storms calmed with Jesus’ words. They saw dead people raised to life and they saw healings, so many healings. They witnessed Jesus’ gruesome torture and death. Which, if you stop for a minute and think about it, must have really been traumatic like the trauma of that. But then, three days later, they witnessed the glorious resurrection of Jesus. So talk about emotional roller coaster that they’d been on. And then they had received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, where Peter himself delivered a sermon that led 3,000 people to give their lives to Christ. That’s intense, right. So I imagine that Peter and John, apostles of Jesus Christ, expected this day to be anything but ordinary. And though we can only imagine what people were thinking as they got up that morning because the Bible doesn’t tell us what they were thinking right? One thing that we do know is what actually happened. Even though the lame man went expecting alms, what Peter and John, having no silver or gold, did was heal him in the name of Jesus instead.

12:22

So here’s my question as you walk throughout your days on campus, at work, with your families, wherever it is that you’re doing, you will encounter all sorts of people with all sorts of needs. Let’s talk real quick and you guys can interact with me on this. What are some of the needs that you’re seeing around you? [Audience member: Mental health] Okay, mental health, people struggling with mental health. And be even more specific, what kinds of things are they struggling with that way? [Audience member: Depression] Depression. Are any of your friends anxious? Yeah, are you anxious? Yeah, probably, I mean, at least at some point. Yeah, go ahead.

13:06

[Audience member: Looking for purpose?] Okay, people are really struggling. Looking for purpose, a place, a reason? Yeah. [Audience member: Loneliness] Loneliness. Good. I mean not good, but good example. Anybody else? Yeah,[Audience member: Problems]. Just problems. Yeah, problems. Maybe they’re struggling with their schoolwork, maybe they have family issues going on. Maybe they’re struggling with their own identity in different ways.

13:32

The fact of the matter is is that there are all sorts of needs. When you walk out your door, there are needs that you may be able to see, like Peter and John could see. This man had needs, right, he was lame and laying there. But it’s kind of tricky when the needs are a little bit more invisible. But you can assume when you go out the door that there are needs out there, right? I want you to ask yourself what am I prepared to give? Or, even better, how am I prepared to give? It’s really easy for us to fly through our days focused on tasks. Maybe you have a project you need to finish. You’re trying to get to class or to work on time, you’re meeting friends for coffee, but the question is are you prepared, like Peter was, to share the hope of the gospel with those you encounter along the way?

14:26

Now, evangelism comes naturally to some, but for most of us it can be a pretty intimidating thing. Fear of offending, fear of rejection, even our own doubts, right, can keep us from effectively witnessing to the name of Jesus. Sometimes we lack an urgency. We often hope that our actions will be enough. Like good old Saint Francis of Assisi, you know, “preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.” It’s a nice quote, but you have to use words. Sometimes you just you gotta, you gotta speak the name of Jesus. And I know that when I’m confronted with my own ineffectiveness in this area, I can often feel some despair and guilt about it, especially over my lack of zeal.

15:16

It was funny when the musical Hamilton came out. I loved it. I mean, you guys like Hamilton, right? I mean, most of you probably like it, Maybe you don’t, but I thought it was amazing and it was like, oh, Lin-Manuel Miranda, he’s the new Shakespeare, blah, blah, blah. And so it was really exciting and I was telling everybody about it. Like I heard it and I liked it, and I thought it was amazing and I was telling everybody that they needed to listen to it. So much so that I’m going to have a Hamilton listening party at my house. So I’m inviting people to come. I have the words up so that they can follow it, because you know, old people like me can’t really follow everything. It’s kind of fast sometimes. But so that’s like when you’re really excited, you’re zealous about something, it’s easy to share it with other people.

15:57

But sometimes I think it’s just so easy to not feel that way about the gospel, which is so much better than Hamilton, just saying. And my friend once was like Emily, you are a Hamilton evangelist. And I was like, dang it, that is not how I want to be known. You know like I don’t want to be known by that. I want to be a Jesus evangelist. This is why I was a missionary. So I just want to put that out there, okay, so, um, so I just want to say today that if you struggle with this, I want you to know that Jesus offers us a different way. He invites us to repent of self sufficiency which I’m going to get to and his Spirit reorients us. We can jump back into ministry with renewed faith. So I’m going to tell you guys some stories.

16:42

Once, while living overseas, I found myself in conversation with this young guy. We were actually both standing on the porch of a home and I had brought friends to this home for them to look and see if they wanted to rent it. And he was there with the guy who was renting the home and so we weren’t doing the business, we were just standing outside waiting for them to do business. I was kind of like you know, like, looking at my clock, I had things to do, I wanted to get home, cook dinner, probably had to pick up my kids at school, and so I was, like you know, tapping my foot, kind of standing there and this guy, he was sweet, he spoke English very well, and so we started talking and of course, if you’re a westerner, um, you know, they’ll ask you oh well, are you a Muslim, you know? And I said no, I’m not a Muslim, I’m a Christian. And he’d say, oh well, we pretty much believe the same thing. And I was like, oh, I really don’t want to get into this right now, like I just wanted to have my friends get their rental agreement and go and I was ready to leave. So he says, yeah, we pretty much believe the same thing. So I said dutifully, after rolling my eyes, inside, not outside. Actually they’re not really the same thing.

18:00

Christians believe something very different than Muslims. And then he surprised me. He said, well, what do you believe? And I wasn’t used to that because, living in the Muslim world. At that point, I was used to people telling me that they knew what I believed already, which was never really what I believed, but they have a very specific. Most people in the Muslim world will have an idea of what Christians believe, even though it’s not actually what we believe.

18:30

So I took a moment and I prayed and I looked at this guy and I said do you really want to know what I believe? And he was like yes. And I said really? And he said yes. I said because it’s going to blow your mind. And he was like what? What do you believe, you know? And then I proceeded to share the gospel with him and as I was sharing it, I thought, yeah, this really is mind blowing. Right, this really is one of the most amazing, astounding, astonishing stories that you’ve ever heard. That I believe that this God became a man and came to earth and lived a perfect life and died a gruesome death on my behalf and is now wait for it is now ALIVE. He rose from the dead. He’s alive and he’s seated at the right hand of the Father and he intercedes on my behalf. That’s what I believe. And he was like I mean, yeah, he’s like, yeah, I didn’t know that that’s what you believe. And so I encouraged him to get online and to look up the story of Jesus’ life in the Injil, which is the Arabic word for the Gospels.

19:47

And then the friends came out, they had finished their rental agreement. They walked out and we all said goodbye and he went on his way and I went on my way and I wondered, as I watched him walk away, would he actually go and look up Jesus? And I prayed that he would. So, in hindsight, I wish that I was more expectant about how God might use me that day, but also, in reflection, I’m really thankful that he used me anyway, in spite of my hesitancy, my apathy, my cynicism, which are all born out of self-reliance and my struggle with unbelief.

20:25

Jesus invites us to repent of our propensity and that’s a really big word, but it’s an important word. Propensity meaning, like our tendency, okay, to minister from our own strength and wisdom. He wants us to stop thinking that somehow evangelism, for example, is about ourselves, about our reputation, our gifts, our effectiveness, our competency. Competency. that’s a funny word, isn’t it? What does it mean? Well, I looked it up. This is what I like to do. “It’s the necessary ability, knowledge or skill to do something successfully. So, true or false, competency is highly valued in the world today.

21:17

I see lots of heads nodding. And, in contrast, incompetency is looked upon with disdain. True? I mean. Think about it. Say you need a haircut. So we live on a military base, my husband’s a chaplain and people are coming and going all the time, and so we live in this neighborhood and there is a neighborhood group chat, and the group chat is there for people to ask all sorts of questions. One day, a new neighbor reached out on this group chat and asked for recommendations for a place to get their hair cut, and I was intrigued by the fact that almost everybody responded not with a good place to get your hair cut, but with where not to go, right? Why is that? Apparently, a competent barber or hairdresser is really hard to find, but incompetent ones are in abundance and they now live in infamy on our neighborhood group chat. That’s just a small example of what happens, though we don’t even remember the competent things.

22:29

It’s really hard to forget the incompetent things in our lives. Think about this. Say, you visit your dermatologist and learn that you need to have a sizable mole removed from your face. Do you walk over to the medical school if you’re at Pitt, you know and ask for a first-year med student to take a stab at it? Literally no, you do not. You ask around for a dermatologist that has experience with this sort of thing. In fact, you may even go to a plastic surgeon, one who deals with this issue all the time. So when it comes to health and appearance and things like that, we really have no patience for incompetence. And, let’s be honest, deep down inside, we really hate the thought of being considered incompetent in a world where we’re constantly being measured by ourselves and others right: resumes, interviews, GPAs, enneagram types.

23:29

We tend to rise and fall with our successes and failures, and the thought of being seen by others as incompetent is really terrifying. I mean, think about it. You guys are all working really hard to be successful. We can’t underestimate the desire of our flesh to be competent. We really, we really love it, but scripture makes it really clear that God’s economy does not work this way. So, in our pride, what I’m about to tell you is really bad news. Right? But as believers who are in Christ, what I’m about to tell you is some of the best news that you’re ever going to hear. “For consider your calling: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not to bring to nothing, things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. Because of Him. You are in Christ Jesus, who became to us the wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, so that, as it’s written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

Jim Lovelady: 24:57

I want to pause this conversation and invite you to join us in prayer for the Serge field workers that we at the headquarters here in Philadelphia are praying for this week. We meet on Tuesday and Friday mornings to pray, and this week we are continuing to pray for our teams in the UK. Would you, would you pray with me? Oh, and, by the way, I say the same prayer every time so that you can, you know as you listen, start to memorize it and and actually pray with me. So would you pray with me? Lord, we pray that you would bless these folks, give them joy in their work in your Kingdom and the pleasure of your joy as they follow you. Give them wisdom and let your grace abound in their relationships with one another, with family members and children and the people they serve. Heal all sicknesses, liberate the enslaved, protect them from the powers and principalities of darkness, restore to them the joy of your salvation and let your Kingdom come and your will be done in these places just as it is in heaven. We pray in your name, amen. Now back to Emily’s talk.

Emily Shrader: 26:03

God uses the foolish, the weak, the low and the despised. Many of us would prefer the opposite. We prefer that God used our strengths and our gifts, especially when sharing the gospel. We even take tests to find out what our spiritual strengths are, right? We often seek to understand what our calling is in light of our talents or abilities, and for my husband and I, we felt like God was leading us to the Muslim world, and I believe that that call was authentic. But in my mind, okay, I felt like God was calling me to go to the Muslim world to share the good news of the gospel with Muslims and to change the Muslim world for their good and His glory. But really, actually, what I didn’t realize is that he was calling me to the Muslim world as well, to change me and to work a work in me. Not only that, I thought that God was going to send me overseas and I was going to use my years of ministry experience and teaching skills, my excellent sense of humor, my relational capabilities to get the job done. But instead, my experience was that my suffering and the way that I responded, my sin and my repentance. Okay, these are the ways that God ministered and continues to minister through me. Sometimes the fruit of God’s grace in my life was quick and dramatic, and sometimes it happens slowly over time and still does. So, I have a couple more stories for you.

27:43

When we first moved to the Muslim world, our goal was to live missionally among the people, so basically it meant we were going to build relationships with our neighbors. We were going to slowly build trust with them, with the hopes that we would have the opportunity to share our faith. When we first arrived, the picture in my mind of how we would win over our neighbors and friends was idyllic. Here it is I would first of all bake banana bread, then I would bring it around to the people and they would open up their doors and they would welcome us in. We would share the gospel with them and they would respond joyfully to the good news of Jesus. We would write back home to our supporters reporting on the numbers of conversions. It was the perfect picture of missionary competence.

28:31

In reality, however, it was really hard to get to know our neighbors. Our Arabic was limited, first of all. Because we lived in a port city, p eople were private and they were used to people coming in and out, especially expats, so they weren’t really trusting. The schedule that Arab culture keeps in general was really hard on our family. I mean, who eats dinner at 10 o’clock at night? The rest of the world eats dinner at 10 o’clock at night. Really, I can tell you that, and we were foreigners. But they did like my banana bread. I just want to say that. Ok, so here’s how we actually got to know our neighbors.

29:09

The tiny apartment that we lived in had no heat, and for most of the year we were okay with that because it wasn’t a super cold place. But for a couple months out of the year it would get pretty cold, and so we would kind of heat one room of the house and then when we would go to bed we would like have hats and big heavy blankets, and I mean, it got, it got really cold. So one particularly cold day, my husband and I we had like had it, and so he decided he was going to go out and buy like this fancy heater, butane heater. Everything was run on butane over there, and so, um, he bought this heater. It was from made in Italy, it was really nice, and we brought it home and we set it in the middle of our house. I have to give you the layout. The house was like this it was a long hallway and off of that hallway, on this side, was like our big living room they would call it a salon and right in the middle they would call it the wast ad-dar, which is in Arabic. It means like the center of the house, and then you keep moving and we had our kids’ bedroom here, a little family room here, our bedroom here and the bathroom there. You could literally stand in one spot and see every corner of the apartment.

30:19

It was tiny. And so we brought this heater in. Oh, and the kitchen was over here, like a little galley kitchen, not important to the story, okay, so we came in and we put the heater, the butane heater right in the wast ad-dar, right in the middle of the house, and we attached the rubber hose to the tank and we attached it to the heater and we were all excited and we turned it on. Oh, and our kids were back in the family room and we turned the heater on and immediately flames started shooting straight out of the front of this heater and so we quick turned it off and we went. Hmm, and I think it was an Einstein who says the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting something different to happen. Okay, so then we’re like, all right, we did this, did that, maybe tightened something, and then we did it again.

31:13

This time the flames really shot out and it was so hot that almost immediately the rubber hose that was leading from the butane tank into the heater melted. And once it melted, the gas coming out of that rubber hose ignited and the hose started kind of like like a literal fire hose, not like the good kind, this was a bad fire hose. So we’re like kind of freaking out. We were really freaking out and we took we weren’t thinking, you’re not thinking so we took a rug and we tried to smother it, but you can’t smother a flame that’s being fed by fuel, you know. So we’re like that’s not working. Meanwhile, like ceramic plates on our walls it was so hot ceramic are exploding. Um, the plaster all around the ceiling of our house was falling down because of the heat.

32:05

So we realized like we, we’ve got to get out of here. So here’s the thing. So we’re here, here’s the wast ad-dar, there’s the heater, the fire hose and our kids are over here and the exit is over here, right, and I, oh, I forgot, Important, I was pregnant. So I was pregnant like out to here, sorry, important detail. So we have two little kids. So I go running back, I grabbed my daughter, who’s about five, by the hand and I grabbed my son, who’s who’s about two, and swoop him up and I just I mean there’s flames, but I just barrel through and literally, when we got to the other side, my son Wes, his eyebrows were singed like it was scary, and David came running out.

32:48

We went running out and we were living on the fourth floor of the apartment building. So we yelled out Afia, afia, which is fire in Arabic, um and uh, and people started coming. They were like starting to come running and we were and I said what are we going to do? David says to me I want you to take the kids and I want you to go down to the courtyard. So there was like this big courtyard in the middle of the building. Go down. I’m going back in, I need to turn the gas off. Yeah, and I was like oh, no, and he’s like no, I really I need to do this or the whole thing could explode. So I’m thinking to myself well, there he goes, like he’s going to die. But I did what he said. I went down and when I got to the courtyard I basically melted down there. I am big, pregnant, have to my two kids.

33:38

I am sobbing, and all of the women in the apartment building, of course we’ve made such a ruckus now that everybody is out and they hear fire and they’re freaking out because you know, their apartments are all connected. So all of the women come running to me and all of the men go running to David and they’ve all got like fire extinguishers. And I’m sitting there and I’m weeping and crying and sobbing and I’m literally calling out at the top of my lungs Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, over and over again. Well, David, God bless him. Belly crawled into that apartment I mean, it’s so full of smoke at this point he had like a towel because it was so hot and he reached in and he was able to turn the gas off on the butane tank, which cut off the fuel and stopped the fire, and the tank didn’t explode. But there are lots of butane explosions, like it’s a thing, so the Lord was totally gracious. So I sat on the ground, I was weeping, holding children calling out Jesus’s name at the top of my lungs, so that automatically, right there, put any doubts to rest of whether or not we were Christians. I mean, people were like, oh man, so much for this winsome and convincing presentation of the gospel.

34:55

Right, David was able, like I said, to go in and turn the butane tank off, but his efforts were too late. I mean, our apartment was really, really damaged. It was smoke stained. All of our stuff needed to be either thrown out or washed several times. It was just a disaster. And it really was a disaster, you guys.

35:19

And it did a couple of things. First of all, it made us here’s another Arabic word for you marufin, which means famous or infamous, depending on the context in our building. So we were no longer just the foreigners, but now we were the masakin foreigners. And that’s another arabic word, which means pitied. We were the pitied foreigners who needed our help. In fact, we needed their help so bad that if they didn’t give it to us. We might kill them all like that’s that’s really what it was coming down to and not in like the you know bad way, but just like, obviously, we don’t know how to use a butane tank. Secondly, our neighbors opened their homes to us in the direct aftermath of the fire. Their pity and our neediness thrust us into the community much more quickly and deeply than if we had lived there without incident. We all praise God together for sparing the building and our homes from even more destruction, and so I can declare with confidence to you all today that what Satan meant for evil, God used for good. But even still, I would not have written the story that way, you know. So that’s an example of how God uses, can use our suffering and our weakness to open doors to authentic relationships with those we are trying to evangelize. Right, if we had been the perfect picture in moving in and out of that apartment building, we would not have gotten to know our neighbors nearly as quickly, and they would not have opened their hearts and their homes to us in the way that they did.

36:56

Now for the sin and repentance side of things that I talked about, this is a story about a woman named Faith. When I first met Faith, she was desperate for work. She is a divorced mom and she was unemployed and had absolutely reached the end of her rope. Because we live in a Muslim country, her family disapproved of her divorce, obviously, and they mistreated and neglected her. She really was kind of like the Cinderella of the family. Not only that, but being a divorced woman also has debilitating effects in the community. It was really hard for her to find work. This is the state that she was in when I met her, and the agreement was that she would come to our home and clean and cook a couple of days a week. So Faith quickly learned that we were Christians who believed that the prophet Isa, which is the name for Jesus, was the son of God and that he came to live and die on the cross to save us from our sin and was resurrected and is coming back. She would listen to us and some other Christians that she knew and she would respond that’s fine for you, but I’m from here and to be from here is to be Muslim. So it was difficult for her to even conceive of embracing a new way of thinking about her faith, because rejecting her faith actually felt like she was rejecting her whole identity. So for a few years we continued on like this, agreeing to disagree, but we still grew close and shared more and more of life together. For example, she was one of the first people to respond when we had that fire, besides our neighbors, but she was there and she helped us rehabilitate our apartment. I attended her oldest daughter’s wedding. She anticipated and welcomed our youngest daughter, Miriam, into the world, who was born overseas and literally took as much joy in her as she did her own children. And then we also got to celebrate the birth of her first grandchild. She had become a dear, dear friend.

38:56

After about four years, a mutual friend of ours invited Faith to watch the Magdalena film. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a film that shows Jesus interacting with women. It’s translated into many languages and even dialects, including the one that my friend Faith spoke. When the film was finished, Faith proclaimed through tears that she could not deny the truth about Jesus any longer.

39:20

When her family learned of her conversion, they tried to persuade her. Well, they were furious to start, but then they decided that they were going to try to persuade her to return to Islam, and one of the ways that they wanted to do that was to throw her a big party and invite an imam which is a religious teacher in the Muslim world. It would be like inviting your pastor to come to a party, to come and discuss her recent conversion with her. They hoped that he would be able to bring her back to Islam. So she invited him into her kitchen alone and proceeded to share the gospel with him. She told him that the people in her life who believed in Islam had been abusive and unloving. They judged her and they rejected her. Then she told them that all the Christians she met were different. We were loving and accepting, and so was the God we served. She said that this witness could not be argued against and the imam relented. He returned to the family and pronounced that Faith had been convinced of Christianity, and there was no hope for changing her mind, no hope for bringing her back.

40:24

So that’s pretty amazing, and there’s a lot more to the story that I wish I could tell you, because she endured a lot, even after this time from the community, even including police and jail and things like that. But when she said that the Christians she met were different, that part always shocks me. It still shocks me when I think about it, because I know that she had been in our home on a regular basis for about four years, and when she was in our home she witnessed a lot of things. She witnessed marital arguments, disobedient children and impatient parents. She witnessed morning sickness and homesickness. She literally saw our highs and our lows. But she would tell me later that it wasn’t that our family or the other Christians she worked with were perfect. It was that we were repentant towards each other, towards her and towards our Heavenly Father, and that repentance was what made us different. People around her did not live that way. I want to repeat that it was our repentance that set us apart in her mind.

41:42

Do you value your repentance as a part of your witness to Christ? Our need for grace and acceptance of the gift of grace are the very things that place us in a position where God is able to use us. So there’s another word for this position. It’s called humility. It’s the secret to be incompetent minister, but there’s more the source of our ability to minister through evangelism is also the grace of Christ.

42:11

So I want to return to that passage from Acts. We can consider all of the people who actually witnessed the healing of the lame man right. What were their expectations for the day? Like the crowd, again, it’s impossible to know for sure, but we can assume that their expectations were a lot like the man who was laid at the gate, nothing special, just another day. But when they saw the man walking and recognized him as the lame one that they had seen laying on a mat with outstretched hands day after day after day, they were filled with wonder and amazement. And when the priests and the scribes asked Peter and John by what authority they healed the man, they responded with a definitive answer. “Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified little inflammatory there, but we’ll get over that “and whom God raised from the dead by him, this man is standing before you. Well, the priests and the scribes were astonished by their boldness. And then it says this, and I love this. It says “they recognized that they had been with Jesus.”

43:29

As we reflect on the call to evangelism, let’s remember that the same gospel that we are sharing is the gospel that we depend on. Let’s take time with Jesus to repent of our propensity to rely on ourselves and remember God’s faithfulness. Do you guys expect God to show up? Are you attempting to be bold proclaimers of His salvation? Not in your own strength, but because of the beauty and greatness of his character? You can go to your campuses, into your workplaces. It’s my prayer that the people you meet will look on you with astonishment and recognize not that you’re awesome, but you’ve been with Jesus. Isn’t that what we want people to know?

44:17

So let’s pray and this is the prayer, this is from 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘔𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘏𝘰𝘭𝘺. It says, “So, then take this meager measure of anything we might give, o God, and bless it for the benefit of your people. Breathe spirit and life into our flawed forms. Let our insufficiencies be met by the multiplying power of your grace.” Amen, amen. If any of this resonates with you this kind of idea that we have the opportunity to minister out of humility, it’s so important and so freeing. Really, please do come and look into Serge. It’s really the way that we approach the stuff that we do, and we would love to have a conversation with you. So that’s it. Thank you for coming!

Jim Lovelady: 45:09

Your repentance sets you apart. You know, who does that? Who says I was wrong, I’m sorry, would you forgive me? You know you can’t change, you can’t become a better version of yourself if you don’t admit when you’re wrong. But when you do, it not only transforms you, it transforms the people around you. That’s ministry through weakness. I love the question that Emily asked the students at Jubilee. “Do you value your repentance as a part of your witness for Christ? It’s a scary question because repentance requires humility. But repentance also produces humility and, like Emily said, humility is the secret to being a competent minister. But the source of our ability to embrace humility is the grace of Christ. Do you follow the thread, Repentance from humility, humility from God’s grace. You can admit that you’re wrong because Jesus already knows and he already loves you. And when you repent, you’re met with the God of love, who already knows your sin and brokenness even more clearly than you, and He loves you. After all, when you confess your sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. And the world around you is watching this happen, wondering if that kind of grace might be for them as well. And you get to say well, if He can have grace towards me, the Lord can have grace towards you. And the Kingdom of grace moves forward, one broken story remade at a time, and if you’re ready to be a part of that, the next step is to go to serge.org/nextstep and sign up for our explore more series and check out our summer internship programs serge.org/internship or the Serge apprenticeship program. That’s for a longer exploration, where cross-cultural ministry meets growth through discipleship.

47:11

And we have so many resources that I want to make you aware of, especially if you’re a pastor or ministry leader or on your missions committee at your church or trying to help your small group Bible study become more passionate about missions. A great place to start is this little book 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘈𝘳𝘦 𝘚𝘦𝘯𝘵: 𝘍𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘗𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘎𝘰𝘥’𝘴 𝘎𝘭𝘰𝘣𝘢𝘭 𝘔𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 by Nathan Sloan. And if the question do you value your repentance as a part of your witness for Christ? Has wiggled its way into your imagination and you want to explore more about that, check out the show notes and follow the link to a free e-book by my dear friend and mentor, Stu Batstone. It’s called 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘙𝘦𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦. There’s so many more resources at serge. org. Don’t go death scrolling on social media.

47:59

Go exploring prayerfully at serge. org and thanks again for listening and as you go, go live your weakness boldly, knowing that the God of grace is chasing after you with his love. And as you fail in front of others and as you walk in repentance, you will leave a trail of grace behind you that transforms the world. So go, but as you go, receive the Lord’s blessing. May the Lord bless you and keep you and make His face to smile down on you. May the Lord be gracious to you, turn His bright eyes to you and give you His peace In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God, life everlasting, amen.