“Unripe Ones – From Fear to Faith” Part 9

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“About three years after Monsing was killed, there were quite a number of Higaunon men from our village involved in the ministry of God’s Word. Some of them had gone to other areas following Monsing’s example and there were believers now in each of those places.

“Others, including myself, were leading the church in our village and we often had conferences in our village with believers coming from the other outreaches.

“As the missionaries continued to teach us from the word of God and we were exposed to deeper truths about how we as God’s children ought to conduct our lives, we began to notice quite a number of our people openly reject this teaching.

“This was especially evident in situations where people wanted to continue on with sinful practices. To our surprise when they were confronted with sin like continued drunkenness or adultery, they not only rejected the exhortation but they got mad at those dealing with them and they began to slander the church and even persecute those who wanted to follow the Word of God. What tended to happen then is their believing relatives would take sides with them and this caused a lot of strife and division in the church.

“Through these things we have seen that not all those who claimed to be believers in the beginning were really genuine. Many simply followed the majority, but their motive was wrong. Then, because they did not have the Spirit of God to enable them to follow the Word of God, they turned away from it. Some of them have even gone back to the old spirit worship and others have joined false cults. We are sad about this but not discouraged because it is just like the parable of the sower.

“We have also learned that, though our old ways were broken by the introduction of the Word of God, many of our strong Higaunon family relationships still have a strong hold on those of us who are not making a determined effort to follow the Word of God.

“Family loyalties and the pressure of expected cultural behavior from our unsaved relatives and tribal leaders is often the cause of us choosing to deny the Lord rather than follow Him. We are sad about this because, on the one hand, we are so excited about our new life and all that the Lord has done, but then, on the other hand, there are so many of us that are still very weak in standing up for the truth.

“We have also struggled with the idea that we are not all equally as strong in the Lord because, in the tee-noo-mah-nun before we were saved, the whole group had to be equally committed for it to succeed.

“We know that this is not how it is in the Lord, but, because the group feeling is so ingrained in us, we get easily discouraged when some members of our church choose to follow their own selfish desires. We feel as if it is us doing it. We hope that anyone who reads this will pray for us in this area because we want things to go smoothly but there always seems to be problems.”

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