Outreach in Mumbwa (Part 2)

As I said in the previous post, miracles occurred while we were in Mumbwa. In addition to the healing of that man’s back, another woman came in with a visible limp. One of her legs was longer than the other one—probably because of a problem with her tendons. As she was prayed over, whatever was causing the problem went away and the woman’s legs were restored. She got up dancing and praising God.

Since my time in the Bush, God has been challenging my heart in the area of faith. Here are some of the things that he is either reminding me of or teaching me anew:

God is Sovereign
God is sovereign. He will accomplish his purpose both through our belief and our unbelief. And his chief purpose is to bring glory to himself because He is everything perfect.

God is the Author & Perfecter of our faith. So we should seek Him when it seems like our faith is lacking.
God is the author of our faith and it is He who develops us in our faith. So, there is nothing we can do on our own to have faith or muster it up and we cannot grow in faith apart from Him.

He chose those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith
The people who live in these villages are clearly the poor in the world. When you go into a village here, the people just believe and stuff happens. There is no better way for me to say it. It has shed a whole new light for me on this particular verse in Scripture.

We shouldn’t seek Experiences, but God
God desires relationship. The reason he ever performs miracles is so that those who don’t know him might believe and come to know him. Matthew 7: says “On that day, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles.’ And then I will tell them plainly, ‘Away from me you evildoers, I never KNEW you.’ So, while we ask for faith and begin to see God show up in ways that we haven’t experienced him before, we must not forget Him. Our ultimate goal for more faith must be a deeper more intimate relationship with Him not a spiritual “sideshow” of miracles.

Before this trip, I had unbelief in my heart—I wanted to believe that God still did some of the things that were talked about in the New Testament, but if I were to be honest, I was more comfortable not experiencing these things. Here in Zambia, I’m finding it more and more difficult to avoid these things because this a culture entrenched in the spiritual realm. And this is one area that I see God continuing to stretch me during our time here in Zambia.