A Moi man — a believer — tried to kill his infant daughter. He decided she was a result of his wife’s adultery, even though there’s no evidence his wife committed adultery. And in the Mois’ traditional ways, that makes it OK to kill the girl.
You may be stunned. Perhaps you’re thinking, “How could a believer do that?”
I wasn’t stunned by that. And not just because I’ve been to that Moi village and met that man. You really shouldn’t be stunned either.
All around us, people who profess the name of Christ do things that Scripture says are wrong, simply because our culture says they’re OK. Yeah, those other people are really messing up, aren’t they? You and I never do anything like that, right?
But I was stunned by what happened later, and I shouldn’t have been.
The missionaries among the Mois talked with him, and he told them and others why he had changed his mind and decided to keep and care for the girl.
“As I was thinking about the Hebrew midwives and Moses’ parents, I realized that they had to make a choice. They were told by Pharaoh to kill all Hebrew males. They thought, ‘Is man’s talk big or is God’s talk big?’ They made the right choice and obeyed God,” the father said.
Read that again, and think about it a minute: Why did he change his mind?
If I’m understanding this correctly, he listened to what he was told, and then, instead of thinking it through for himself, he thought about God’s Word. He applied what he found there to his own life, and made a God-honoring choice.
That stunned me because I don’t see that often. I wonder how many times I haven’t made the right choice because I chose to reason things through, rather than turning to God’s Word and trying to discern what He was saying. It’s great to pray about decisions and to listen for God’s answers. I do that. But too often, I neglect the fact that God’s primary way of talking to us today is through His Word.
But I’m sure that’s just me.
The reason that should not have stunned me is that this is a pattern that is nurtured and cultivated by NTM’s church planters. They don’t try to tell people what is right and what is wrong. They help people look at God’s Word for themselves, and, guided by the Holy Spirit, find the direction they need.
That’s one of the key ways you make disciples among all nations, which is what God’s Word tells us all to do.
Thank you for choosing to be involved in our ministry as part of your work to make disciples of all nations.