Lessons from Tajikistan

A missionary from our church came back with a report on Sunday morning. God is on the move in a Muslim country most of us can't locate on a map. Deb showed us a slide of a woman surrounded by her seven daughters. That might look like domestic bliss to you, but to the woman's husband it feels like seven strikeouts: no sons. This is one of the lucky women, Deb said. Her husband didn't divorce her; he just has extra-marital affairs.

But the woman has come to know the Lord through Deb, and she loves Him with all her heart. One day her husband came home as she was reading the Bible and asked her, "Is that a fortune-telling book?" She wisely answered, "Yes." She went on to tell him that it's the only book that can tell him his future.

More recently, she was informing her husband about her ailments, and he told her that her book would help her with them. (He was not being sarcastic.)

Sometimes when we look at our own lives, we get discouraged, thinking God is not doing anything. After all, even John the Baptist, sitting in prison and probably praying to get out, sent messengers to ask Jesus if he was "the One" (Matthew 11:3). This is the same guy who earlier had shouted to the world that this was "the One" (John 1:29). What happened?

What happened is that life is a series of moments. And in that series of moments, sometimes we take our eyes off what Jesus is doing and set our eyes on what He is not doing. At the moment, there was something Jesus was not doing in John's life-taking him out of prison.

So when the messengers came from John to ask if he had been mistaken, or if Jesus was "the One," Jesus redirected his focus from what He was not doing to what he was doing: the blind are getting their sight, the lame are walking, the lepers are being cleansed, the deaf are hearing, the dead are rising, the poor are getting the gospel.

Don't be discouraged. Look at Tajikistan. Look at what God is doing.