In my very first blog post I wrote about good news…
I was walking down the road a little while ago and a huge billboard caught my eye. It read “Bad news is all around. Good news is closer than you think.” My heart did a little hop, skip, and a jump when I saw it, and a smile broke out on my face. It was a Franklin Graham advertisement for his 'God loves you' tour (read more here).
I’ve been seeing those ads on the buses and at bus stops again, perhaps you’ve seen them too! It’s sad that it always feels so surprising to see something so overtly Christian on the side of a London bus, but seeing the words ‘God loves you’ clearly on display is a joy to see! We really do have such good news to share. So with that said, I thought I’d use this blog entry to share a couple of ‘good news’ testimonies from the past week!
Last weekend we headed over to Paris for a few days to join an outreach sharing the gospel with people in the city. On our final evening, we went along to one of the ‘Glory nights’ (worship/prayer evenings) they were hosting at a church a short walk from where we were staying. As we left the meeting, Ben felt a prompting from the Holy Spirit that we should walk a slightly longer route back. We set off and a few moments later we came across a couple of muslim ladies who were sat on a picnic rug with a flask of chai while the children played at the skate park.
Just before I left for the glory night I felt to put a box of biscuits in my bag - we’d been carrying round biscuits to give out to the many homeless people that we met. When we saw these ladies, we felt we needed to go up and give them the biscuits. They didn’t seem like they were homeless, but it seemed like they could have perhaps been refugees. I pulled the box of biscuits out of my bag and went up to them to give them this small gift. I tried my best to communicate with them, but they didn’t speak English, none of us spoke much French and I didn’t speak Phasto (the Afghani dialect they spoke) either. While we muddled our way through trying to communicate, the ladies invited me to sit with them as a couple of the children came up to introduce themselves (probably out of curiosity). The older of the two ladies then pulled out her phone to call her son, who was in Afghanistan, to help translate the conversation. He helped translate why we were there, but he also got to hear the story and a bit later on Ben got to speak to him directly and tell him about the love of Jesus too!
While I was sat with the ladies, Ben struck up a conversation with the husband of one of the women. He spoke good English! Ben talked to him for a bit and then asked if there was anything we could pray for them for. The man asked if we could pray for his wife’s family, particularly her dad who was unwell back in their home country. So Ben began to pray for this muslim family. As he began to pray, I could see tears begin to fall down the wife’s face - they were happy tears. She didn’t even understand what was being prayed as it hadn’t been translated to her yet, but she told her husband that she felt good inside. In fact, her husband said she hadn’t felt that good in such a long time!
This family were so happy we stopped to talk to them and said they were touched by the small gift of biscuits we gave them. We walked away with joy too! But most of all, this muslim family experienced something - when christians prayed for them in the name of Jesus they felt different… they felt good inside! God was touching their hearts.
This encounter reminded me of the verse I was reading earlier that day from 1 Corinthians 4:20. Pauls writes this:
‘For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power.’
Let me share another testimony from back in the UK.
I help out with a ministry at church where we give out food to the community. I’ll skip a bunch of the details, but the other day we ended up with 6 crates of potatoes and a couple of crates of coleslaw that we needed to somehow get rid of. My friend & I didn’t feel we could just leave the potatoes and we had no way of binning such a large amount so we decided that we’d reach out to passers by and offer them potatoes! I’ll admit, it was quite comical (especially as it was an event day - lots of people were on their way to a concert!). A lot of people turned our offer down, but it did spark some good conversations, and we got to share about who we were and what we were doing.
We were slowly getting down to the last couple of crates of potatoes when my friend struck up a conversation with a young man who took up our offer and took a LOT of potatoes! He told us his name meant ‘angel’ - to which we told him we’d be praying for the Lord to send people to come and take the potatoes! It felt like a divine appointment. As we chatted with him, he told us he was a muslim but that he was ‘figuring out’ his relationship with God. Then he told us he was a training to be a doctor and was looking for a placement…he’d applied for 53 places but so far had heard nothing and it was clear he was feeling disappointed. I was struck when he mentioned this and I immediately remembered a testimony Ben shared from a time when he was looking for the same kind of placement and the Lord miraculously opened a door for him. So I shared the testimony with this young man, then my friend prayed for him. He was encouraged and said he felt a sense of warmth as we prayed. Then he began to ask us questions about Jesus, and why God would send his son to earth to die on a cross. What a joy it was for us to tell him about a God who so loved the world that sent his only son (John 3:16). And about a God who so cares about him that He would use a bunch of potatoes to keep my friend and I there just so that we might have this conversation with him.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the question that young man asked. For so many religions they have to work to earn affection from their god, yet we get to share the GOOD news about the one true living God who first loved us - not because we deserve it, or could ever earn it. I feel teary just thinking about it, I feel God reminding me of that truth of who He is and His great love for us. What an awesome, awesome God we have!
And incase you’re still wondering, we managed to get rid of all the potatoes! We had one final crate left and as I waited for someone to come and lock up, a lovely elderly Jamaican woman came past and very joyfully took the remaining potatoes. She even wanted the scraggly bits for her compost! She joined me in giving glory to God for His goodness. The Lord is good, really good!
Much Love,
Katie
