Patience in sowing and reaping
23/11/2010 9:00 am <>
I met Mr. Tiu, a machinist living in Taiping city, about 3 years ago during a visit to Taichung. After we moved to the Taichung area and began ministering in the Taiping area, we saw a lot of Mr. Tiu. We had a weekly men’s tea night, where we would have tea and discuss a Bible story. He attended regularly and was very engaged in the discussions that we had. It was clear that he had a strong curiosity about who Christ is.
About a year and a half ago he noted he really enjoyed coming out on Thursdays, and it was not too hard to set the time aside as he was only working one or two days a week. The economic crisis had hit Taiwan rather hard, and his current employer could not find enough jobs for people to do. He had the attitude that he would take advantage of lack of work to see his family, and spend time with us studying the Bible. But this could not continue.
Mr. Tiu soon found a new job. While his old employer could not find work, his new one could. But due to the uncertainty of the times it was more effective for him to have a few workers working many hours. My friend found himself going from no work, to working overtime most nights, even on Saturdays. This change in work meant that he could no longer make it to our tea nights, but still wanted hear more about Jesus. Yet the only time that was convenient was Saturday nights, as he did not have to work on Sunday.
We began meeting late on Saturday nights to go through the story of the Bible. Starting at the beginning with the Creator God, and slowly working our way forward to Christ. Week by week we met together, looking at the stories and discussing what they meant. It was clear that he still had an intense interest, as he was using his only free evening to study the Bible. It was also obvious he was really thinking about the implications of what the Bible was saying. Early on we read the promise in Genesis 3:15, that one of Eve’s descendants would defeat Satan. He looked at me and said, “It has been a long time since then, I wonder if that person has been born yet?”
It is tempting at times like this to jump ahead and say, “It’s Jesus, it’s Jesus!” But instead we continued to look, week by week at who God is, and how He prepared the way for Christ. By doing this we were not only filling in the blanks of the story of the Bible, but more importantly introducing him to the Christian world view. He began to see a god like no other god he had encountered before. The true God who is both absolutely just and perfectly loving. He was seeing the God who interacted with the deeply flawed people of Bible in order to fulfill the promises that He had given.
This past spring as we read through the gospel stories, about Christ’s ministry, teaching, death, and resurrection Mr. Tiu had a fuller understanding of them. He was able to tie together that Jesus was the fulfillment of all the promises he had read about. When I asked him if he wanted to have Jesus as his savior he was eager to do so. Since he became a believer in Christ we have continued to meet weekly and study about how to follow Jesus.
Tim McCracken - Taichung
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