Learning to trust His spirit, part 1

The question is: “Do you really trust him?” or do you think he needs your help? That was my struggle. I had been trained to preach, and teach as I got my undergrad in applied theology. I preached some weekends in little country churches. During that time I got accustomed to enlightening God’s people to what he was saying to them in His word. See, I had studied. I was learned and I knew what he was saying. Problem is that my learning was influencing my understanding more than his spirit. As I look back I feel guilty for some of the things I taught. I believed them at the time. My intentions were good. But as I learned to trust him more and more some of those sermons haunted me. I had preached through a poor interpretation of scripture. And some of the things I said were just plain wrong. And in the South, whether anyone admits it or not, what is said from the pulpit is the same as truth from God. I had misrepresented him. I realized I was no good at this speaking for God thing. At least, not in my own intellect and power.

When I went to Peru to work with the Asheninka, we adopted a strategy that included Chronological Bible Storying* which is very scripture based and in its purest form does not allow much for ‘preaching’ or ‘explaining’ It requires us to give them the word, ask some questions, and let the Spirit reveal to them what he desires. I struggled with this concept from the start. Truth is I didn’t trust the spirit enough to let their understanding lie in his hands. I felt like I needed to explain so that they could understand these complex ideas in scripture. But thankfully, I had a boss who was as hard-headed as I was. He worked with me but let me know that this is what we were going to do. I thank the Lord for his leadership in this.

As hard as it was, I learned to stop explaining Gods word, like I was an authority. I just told the story, and asked them their thoughts through simple questions. I never answered those questions. As time went on we continued to evolve in our method of storying. Funny enough, it got simpler and simpler. We saw the Lord do incredible things. I learned that he had been speaking to mens hearts for a really long time. I can trust him as he reveals his message to them through scripture. I don’t think this is necessarily the only way to do things but it was a very important stage on this journey.

Missionaries have struggled for decades with baptisms and reproducing missionaries. As we trusted the Lord we found the solution for those problems, at least for that situation. It was simple, we just told them the story and we focused on the obedience of his people. The lost learned how important obedience was to God. They saw the results of both in the stories of scripture. Then when we arrived to the stories of the NT and they heard of the baptism of the Ethopian or the jailer, our jaws would drop as they said, “We need to do that too, can we be baptized?” We never suggested it, never encouraged them to “follow in obedience to our lord through baptism.” They saw how important it was through scripture and the spirit compelled them to do the same. We would teach stories of Paul and his journeys, and the people would think of other communities and tribes that they needed to go and share with. Once again we were dumbfounded at how easily the Spirit fixed this problem that had confounded missionaries in S. America for decades. Now this is how he worked with us in sharing with the lost it is often different in a mature church. But there is a lesson to be learned about how we can trust him.