October 27, 2012

• Foreign Missionary

   I have told the story how God told me to return to my childhood home, Parke County Indiana, as a “foreign missionary.” I've said I didn't understand what He was warning me about until the slanders and accusations began against my foster- and child- care ministry several years after I was back here. Those slanders and accusations eventually sent me to prison for a crime I didn't commit -- in fact, for a crime which didn't actually happen at all! But while in prison I had an opportunity I had been praying for: to study in “God's best” Bible college. Also, when I had been locked up for only a short time, I received the “second baptism;” the power of the Holy Spirit was poured out upon me; and I have walked in the power of God's Own Spirit since that very day. God delivered me from dangers in prison you folks who ain't been there don't even need to think about! And He performed signs and wonders through me there in prison I hesitate to write about lest I be called a liar. Nonetheless, many men came to know Christ because of them.

  Even so, I haven't written very much about my return to Parke County from prison, still under the “foreign missionary” mandate with which God commissioned me. Perhaps it is sufficient to begin that story with one fact: I wanted to stay as far as possible away from young children, especially from pretty little girls, in order to avoid further disgusting slanders and accusations which could so very easily send my Extra Large sized butt back to prison! But God had a very different plan for me and for my ministry!

  Within a few months of my return to Parke County, on probation, under close scrutiny, I made new friends who were suddenly plunged into financial need. They were parents of two little, toe-headed girls. They lived only two blocks from me. They were unable to provide adequate meals for the girls. And our church family seemed to have exhausted its good will toward them. Oh, and by-the-way, I had received a six-month early release from prison because I completed a vocational cooking class there. In other words, I knew how to feed five almost as cheaply as I could feed only myself!

  Well, so what if I get sent back to prison! Clearly it was God's will that I feed them! And I did. Got to know those little girls quite well, too. I was Uncle Jerry. I was “Jeraldo.” They told the other kids at school that God had provided their family with a “personal chef!” Oh God, how I dreaded the probability I would be sent back to prison. But God used me and showed His love for that family, especially to those two little girls. Why?  'Cause, by God's grace,  I am a foreign missionary!

  Humanity is caught smack dab in the middle of the ongoing struggle against every manner of evil. And Christians are charged with the task of facing evil in Jesus' Name, with His resolve, by His power.  Oh, how easy it is to shrink from it and stay back behind the battle lines in the comfort of our little Christian sugar shacks! I know. I've been there too.

  We're commissioned to shine His light into the darkness of this world. But we say, “Let folks crawl up outa the darkness and come into the light we have here in our church.” Oh yeah. I'm guilty of that one too.

  But God has blessed me simply because I promised Him I would go -- Yes, Go! -- anywhere He sent me; and then I went even when I really didn't want to, even when I feared the judgement of the world, even when I knew the worldly were gonna gang up on me.  In going, I have discovered the greatest joy and peace and satisfaction comes from self- sacrifice as it is needed to take God's love and light into the dark and murky places of this world, even if they are thriving just across the street, or in the next room, or in the chair right next to mine.  For I know, now, that He goes with me wherever He sends me.

  I'm writing this now because two young women I know have accepted God's challenge to be His “foreign missionaries,” to boldly take God's love and light into the dark and murky places. One of them has been delivered from a kind of darkness God sent me here to Parke County to confront when I didn't even know it was here with me, right under my nose.  (Yeah, I sure failed in that one!) The other is one of those toe-headed girls who needed breakfast. Oh God, You are so good! Your work in these girls has given me renewed strength. And, Girls, I am so proud just to know you, Fellow Servants of the Most High God!

  • 1:50 am
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