Stories from the Field

Made For : an audio journey

Of the nearly 8 billion people in the world, 3 billion live in communities where they could easily go their whole lives and never meet a follower of Jesus. Sure, many will have heard the name, but they won't know the life. 3 billion who likely won't see the reflection of Christ's love for them from another. That's 3 billion people who won't get to know how much their father loves them unless we take action to help reunite God's family. So how do we respond?

Full Transcript below, or at missiongap.org/podcasts

'Made for' CONTRIBUTORS:

• Andrew Scott – From Ireland, living in the USA. Serves as President of OM in the US, and author of “Scatter: Go Therefore and Take Your Job With You”
• Belén Peters – From Chile, living in the USA. Serves as Career Advisor with Elevalto, career advisors for Jesus followers looking to take their life and skills to another part of the world.
• Decio De Carvalho – From Brazil, living in Puerto Rico. Serves as Executive Director of COMIBAM, an alliance of national mission groups across twenty-five Ibero-American countries.
• Ewout van Oosten – From the Netherlands, living in the Netherlands. Serves as Global Director of TeenStreet, a youth discipleship movement in over 50 countries.
• Glenn Packiam – From Malaysia, living in the USA. Serves as Associate Senior Pastor of New Live Church, and author of “Blessed Broken Given: How Your Story Becomes Sacred in the Hands of Jesus”
• Jessica Shumba – From Zimbabwe, living in Zimbabwe. Serves as National Director of OM in Zimbabwe, mobilising Zimbabwean Jesus followers to share Gods love.
• Katherine Lee – From the USA, living in the USA. Serves as Content and Creative Director for the Fuller Leadership Platform at Fuller Theological Seminary.
• Lawrence Tong – From Singapore, living in Singapore. Serves as International Director of OM, a global community of Jesus followers, united to share God’s love with those who don’t know it.
• Vaibhav – From India, living in India. Serves among people unreached with the love of Christ, focusing on the Tribals, the rag pickers, farmers and migrant workers. (Last name omitted for security)

Bible readings: Mason Peters, Mariela Morbelli, Carla Moran, Matt Tooker, Anthea Godsmark, Philip Godsmark

Hosted by: Geoff Peters - Geoff is a huge fan of coffee and market research, but what really gets his heart pounding is inspiring people to share God’s love with the world. He is a deep thinker driven to understand the fears, concerns, beliefs and motivations of Christians better. Through the Mission Gap Project, Geoff hopes to encourage believers to step beyond the safety of their comfort zones and love others for Christ.

Transcript: Series three, episode two, stories of God's work in the world.

Geoff:

Of the nearly 8 billion people in the world, 3 billion live in communities where they could easily go their whole lives and never meet a follower of Jesus. Sure, many will have heard the name, but they won't know the life. 3 billion who likely won't see the reflection of Christ's love for them from another. That's 3 billion people who won't get to know how much their father loves them unless we take action to help reunite God's family. For this episode, we'll be hearing from Lawrence, Katherine, Jessica, and Vaibhav. They'll all tell stories from where they are in the world, how they have embraced and played out God's plan for the world in their own lives and the effect that this has had on their futures and on the lives of those around them. First up is Lawrence. Early on in his journey, Lawrence had dreams and plans for his life, but soon realized that God's plans for his life far outweighed anything he could have imagined.

Lawrence:

I have my dreams, I have my goals, I have my interests. I aspire to do many things as a young person at that time would inspire at that age would inspire. And then when I joined OM, I serve with OM, really my original purpose was to go to get some training. I thought, wow, this group of people's lives was really exciting. I want to be a part of their culture, I want to learn from them and then I can live my own life. So I went, I never made a commitment to serve God for the rest of my life. I only made a commitment to go for two years. So it was with that I went with certain naivety and at the same time with certain freedom knowing that, "Hey, I'm coming back in two years so it's not a life lifelong sentence." But when I went with OM in the late '70s and after my initial training in Europe, we went with a ship to Latin America, and it was-

Geoff:

Lawrence is talking about the OM ship, a massive ship that sails from port to port all around the globe sharing knowledge, help and hope with the communities they meet.

Lawrence:

And it was there that I was first exposed to abject poverty. What I saw really shocked me and how could people live in that situations and people without hope and people that were lost. And some of the places we went to, every town had a big church and yet people don't know God. They know the church but they don't know God. It was at that point that I realized that if I want to connect and reach out to these people, I have to give up some of my dreams or at least set aside my goals, my dreams defer them, delay them and give my full concentration to that.

Lawrence:

So it was there that I think I made a conscious decision that if God is going to use me in this situation, I will continue as long as he has a task for me. I've seen that God's purpose, his values, is higher than my purpose and my values. And what I've given up my little dream is nothing in comparison to what God has given me.

Geoff:

Katherine's perception of God's call on her life has been through an evolution of sorts. What she had believed she was designed to do is quite different to what she now finds herself doing. Or is it that different? Here's what she had to say.

Katherine:

For me, it's been an evolution. I felt like I was called to be a doctor or I wanted to be a doctor, I guess I didn't think so much about calling then. But I've had a sense of wanting to least help restore people. And I think I've been looking for how that becomes material. Like how do I actually do that? So you can be a healer, but you can be a healer in a lot of ways, not just with a stethoscope and a scalpel. And I think over time I've just began to listen more to my own desires and the things that put me in that state of flow where I'm like I'm losing all sense of time. I'm completely energized by this, I'm wrapped up in this, I keep thinking about this, I keep envisioning this.

Katherine:

What is this? What God, what is... And having an ongoing conversation like why do I keep thinking about beautiful words? What is that? What is that? It just won't let me go. And I think my sense of calling has evolved to like I want to use words to help restore people. I want to participate with beauty, which was God's idea to help restore people. And that's a different kind of doctoring, but it's still the same thing. Words can bring us to our knees and they can be a salt to our wounds

Jessica:

Two weeks ago, I went to the supermarket.

Geoff:

That's Jessica in Zimbabwe. She tells a story of an interaction with a woman at the supermarket. That is a wonderful example of living with the awareness of the needs of people around you. Showing interest in their stories and having the courage to take those God opportunities when they present themselves.

Jessica:

So I'm doing my shopping, I'm doing my shopping, minding my own business. And then this lady, I saw she wanted to say something, but I was like, "Okay, why? I don't know you." And then she came up to me and she basically asked me, "Will you buy something for me?" And I was like, "Okay, why me?" And God had like... Something in me had... I paid attention to her, I had noticed something about her before she approached me. Just walking with an awareness of the people that are around me and the curiosity as to what is their story, kind of opens up opportunities. I think early on I started praying. God opened my eyes to these opportunities so that I can see them and then give me the courage to take them. In the beginning I can't say I always did that. I would notice something, but I'd be too concerned about my stuff to do that, but I always regretted it and wondered what could have been. And so those missed opportunities haunted me for lack of a better word.

Geoff:

And lastly, here's Vaibhav. As COVID-19 made its way through India and the effects of a severe lockdown was creating a huge amount of need around him. This story of practical, humble service is incredible. It's a powerful example of Jesus being made known in love. Here is Vaibhav.

Vaibhav:

When we were completely involved in the relief work recently, when we had a complete lockdown, strict lockdown imposed in India, we never used to get time to share about God's law because people are just moving. It's moving crowd that you're solving. Thousands of people are coming into my city and they are just walking hundreds of miles and they are not in a situation to listen to you. They just need help. They just need food, water. But when were are serving, we saw a group of people. Their job used to just clean the toilet and clean the drainages. They are known as the manual scavengers. When we used to sell food, they used to be hungry but then they never used to come to us to have the food.

Vaibhav:

And I feel that why these people are not coming to us. I see them cleaning toilet, I see them cleaning drainages, sweeping roads and working hard. You're in this difficult situation. I went there and I asked, "Why are you not coming to us?" They said, "We don't want to unclean you because we are unclean people." And that really broke my heart. And I invited them, I said, "I'm not going to eat today without you, I want you to come. And I don't believe that you are unclean. God has created you in his own image and you are my brothers. How can you call yourself unclean? Please come and eat with us." While I was talking to them, God started touching their heart. That very night, I had my wife were burdened to wash their feet. And it was a strange idea. When you're serving so many people, how can you wash feet?

Vaibhav:

But I shared that idea with my wife and the same burden she was also having that night. And we invited them for feet washing and when we started washing their feet, the first thing they said, "Are you Christ followers? Are you Christians?" And we surprisingly asked them, "How are you asking this question to us? Why are you asking this question?" "This is only Christians can show this kind of love and acceptance. We have heard but we had never experienced about this love. Today we are experiencing it." And as we were washing their feet, as we were hugging them, accepting them, loving them, they started crying. We witnessed how God's spirit was ministering to them, touching their heart. And that day they said that we have experienced that Jesus' love is powerful. We did not share the gospel directly with them or with our words, but our actions spoke louder.

Geoff:

You've been listening to the Made For podcast series. Part of the Mission Gap project from Operation Mobilization with me, Geoff. To find out more, go to missiongap.org. And if you would, please rate this podcast in your App Store and leave a comment so others can more easily find the series. In the next episode.