Today we would like to take you again a little bit into the happenings of Dinangat church life. We will try to keep it short 🙂 !
In October we spent a few wonderful encouraging days with our NTM co-workers of the Madang region at our annual conference in town, which was followed by the visit of my parents. We had a great time with them, too. Unfortunately my dad was not feeling well at all the whole time. He had horrible back pain. After they flew back home to Germany the doctors checked him and it was found that he had flown to PNG with a herniated disc. Oh my! We were so glad that they could operate on him right away and now he is feeling much better again.
As I’m sure you all know very well that not all things in this life seem to go how we like it. In fact, at times it feels like things go very wrong. In the following we want to take you into what happened here in Dinangat that seemed to go very wrong. But in the end we realized that all things, looked at from God’s view of point, can end in glorious moments of life. Let us explain.
While we were in town a man named Bon came from the nearest town, Lae, to our village. His wife had been living here for a longer time, but is enduring a sickness that causes her pain in her stomach and back. When her husband came from town he called together the believers to pray for his wife, but also the sorcerers from the neighboring village to practice occult rituals on her. People heard what was about to happen and many of them came to see. Too many came, because once you go to the location where sin is in full action, it is mostly already too late to not be part of it as well. Unfortunately many of the believers were tempted into participating in the rituals.
When we came back from town and heard right away what happened, we were quite shocked and very disappointed. We asked ourselves, “What have we done wrong? Why can they still not stand strong in the truth? What is going wrong?” But our good God reminded us that He can even use the bad to accomplish something very good, for “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him…” Rom.8,28
Yes, this is our God! He really did use the wrong behavior of the believers to create something wonderful which we saw in the church service on Sunday two weeks ago. After Gary taught on the reason for sickness and on the spirit world and Satan’s doings in this world, Lukas got up and encouraged the believers to openly confess their sin before God and the church body. He and his wife started out by confessing that they had made themselves guilty before God and the church because they saw what happened but did not take a stand against it. This humble confession was the beginning of an almost two hour time of confession from old to young believers that Sunday morning. It was the most moving church service we have ever experienced here. While men and women confessed their sin of partaking in those occult rituals, others stood up and confessed sins of even other areas of their lives. Here a few:
Tom: “I was part of the old rituals and I am ashamed. I doubted God’s power and listened to Satan’s voice. I have sinned against God and the church and I am very sorry! This will not happen again, I am done with this work!”
Mesari: “At first I thought that the believers only met to pray for this sick woman. I went to see them and realized that the old rituals of our ancestors were practiced. I should have left right away. But I stayed and could not take a stand against it and even participated. I ask God to forgive me! What I did was wrong and I am ashamed of it!”
Felix’s wife: “I want to confess before God and the church body that I am often bitter and angry towards my husband because he works so much for the church and I am often alone with the kids. I know that my anger is against God and that is not right. I don’t want to do that anymore.”
Wamane: “I get angry at my kids a lot when they don’t behave well and I also don’t help my wife often when she needs me. That is not good and I ask God to forgive me!”
It was a wonderful God-glorifying time. The whole church service went for almost 4 hours and our behinds hurt J, but that didn’t matter because God’s Spirit who lives in the believers was so active, it was just wonderful to watch. We thank HIM so much for His work here, He is faithful to build and grow His church… and we even get to be a part of it!
Thank God with us this Thanksgiving Holiday for His work amongst the different churches all over this world!
To Him be the glory, the Schlegels.