Vineyard Writing Ministry - From China ICOC 2-3 The Dream of Gospel
[1] Preface
I am full with passion and dreams: When I was young, I dreamed to do something awesome, such as to be a prince to save the princess. I looked down on the adults who eat dinners for two hours, thinking that it was a waste of time. When I was in high school, I cried every time listening to the Anti-Japanese stories. When I was a freshman in university, I would stand before the classmates to remind them neither to forget their dreams nor the reason why they came to the university excitedly. Although I did not know what is the dream, but there is still someone who are moved to tears by my words.
I was the first disciple who was helped by Chengdu Mission Team in Renmin University of China and I was influenced deeply by the atmosphere of the mission team since I began to study Bible. I heard the stories of every team member about how they gave up what they own to share faith and I knew how all the team members prayed earnestly for my salvation. The fist Sunday worship after my baptism was to pray for the students in this university around the campus of all the church members. Thus, you can understand easily why I tended to be inspired by sharing faith.
The first time when I was inspired by the dream of sharing faith was that I listened to the House Church class about Acts of apostles after about six months of my baptism. And I was deeply touched by the disciples of first generation of their sacrifice. They are just like the candles burning themselves and lighten others and then we can heard the Good News about salvation nowadays.
The metaphor of mustard seeds mentioned by Jesus in Bible was lively showed in my life and it seemed like I looked them growing and becoming a big tree and the birds perching in its branches. The vision was so beautiful and inspiring. Then I could not stop crying and I had to take rest in bedroom.
I can still remember the vision of the heaven tree until now. It has nothing to do with this world but I start to know that the dream and plan of God to the world is far more behind my imagination and God promised he will accomplish the dream. From then on, I started to share faith with this kind of expectation: I want to witness the growing of the Kingdom of God and see the heaven tree.
What a wonderful beginning it is!
[1]
To spread the gospel down to earth, you will find there are lots of lessons to learn. Although I enjoy evangelism as soon as I open the Bible with others, I won’t stop talking with friends and become more excited and intoxicated, I also found out after a while: Huh? Why didn't my friends respond? Why were they all gone? It's not strange that my friends left. I felt funny afterwards. The sister told me: you should try to understand the heart of your friend, not just reason with her. Well, what is "understanding the heart of a friend"? From the past life of mine, I live on my "brain". My family rarely expresses emotions. Negative experiences on campus made me close the emotional connection with people prematurely. The sisters found it difficult for me to feel from the bottom of my heart because of my constant debate. But I know that "heart" is very important to help people, so I prayed very seriously for this "thing", and tried to understand other's feelings every time I chatted. "Stupid people have stupid blessings"-finally in a study, I felt that I could suddenly feel other's mood, oh! It turned out that she was sad when she experienced these things. It turned out that she was suffering. It turned out that when she spoke of her sins, her heart was very relaxed and free... I began to feel the hearts of others, and my emotions began to fully wake up, which is like a brand new world has opened to me, and I am anxious and looking forward, very happy! Another special experience is to listen to the Hefei mission team. Everyone in the mission team mentioned "want to love people there", why would they want to love them? Why is it used to motivate to spread the gospel? I found that I was very afraid of "love strangers" in my heart. I felt like I would be hurt and wanted to protect myself. For a week, I prayed earnestly, studied the scriptures seriously, confessed my fear, and asked God to help me break through. Until the Guiyang CCC, as I was having QT with sisters from Chengdu, the world was dark, and the sand in the distance suddenly turned gold, which means that the sun was shining on the beach, although we did not see the light coming. I suddenly realized that it’s the same principle as loving others—although it seems to me that the path of love is overcast, the light of God has always been on the cloud and never leaves. What is that light? You will know after doing it. After these things, I began to love my brothers and sisters and my friends more seriously, and I became more and more aware that "reasoning reason" is easier, but "loving people" is more difficult.
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[2]
What is the difficulty of "love"? The difficulty is to be active, work hard, meticulous, and dedicated; to be initiative an not to be disappointed, to make an effort and not to control the results, to be meticulous and put up with sadness, to be dedicated and expect nothing in return; the harder part is that human’s nature is "incomplete love” How on earth can you cross the boundaries of your nature? In the process of evangelism, there will be some disappointments and injuries more or less. The biggest setback occurred in the last three years: In 2013, I had an apprentice (someone I discipled) left; in 2014, there was a fierce conflict with another apprentice; in 2015, again another apprentice left. I was extremely hurt, and I couldn’t help thinking about: Why can’t we grasp people’s heart? Why did the solemn pledge like mountain and sea towards each other look like a ray of light smoke? If I don’t let go, they are just a thorn getting deeper and deeper into my heart; if I let go, where would they go in the vast world? Would we meet each other again? Why did God allow such things to happen? I fell into a state of weakness and was like an army that was utterly defeated. I cried for hours and hours, read novels restlessly without eating, drinking, or sleeping, and began to have skin problems. I was arrogant and angry with God, and refused to be comforted and was in a mood of hating. In those two years, I spent 1/3 of my time dealing with various feeding conditions in the church, and 1/3 of my time dealing with my own sins, weakness, and being healed. For the rest of my time, although I was still spreading the gospel and some people were still baptized, I accumulated frustration deep in my heart. I no longer prayed hopefully before reaching out to friends like: "God, please let me meet someone and make her be my sister.” Because I couldn’t help thinking, “What matters if she can be a sister or not? Which is better, passed away while still a baby or while still in mother’s womb?” These events became the fuse, exploded the superficial connection between me and people, and God, exploded the childishness, fragility, cowardice, pride, and unbelief in me, showing that there was a trapped beast in my heart. From the latter half of 2014, I hardly spread the gospel and entered a state of rest and treatment.
[3]
Thanks to God's help and continuous input from brothers and sisters, my condition began to improve significantly by the spring semester of 2015 (the story in this process should be written in another article). With graduation approaching, I wanted to commemorate these six years of being a disciple on campus and also the six years of evangelism. I was determined to reach out to friends every day to share a story about how God has changed me. In this wonderful process, I feel like I was living out my past life again. From the nervousness at the beginning of reaching out to friends to the true feelings to them afterwar; in the beginning, I didn’t have the confidence to directly say that I was a Christian, but later I couldn’t help talking about God. In the beginning, I left immediately after telling a story with a friend, but later I could talk about my sins with friends till tearing up. I started to remember how God has changed me, shaped me, and blessed me step by step. Sometimes the sisters will accompany me and recall the sweet and sour memory while doing ministry, passing on the faith to the younger sisters. Sometimes I am alone, I can always seize the opportunity, and God has always been with me. The night before I left the campus, I prayed around the school and felt that God's love had spread to every corner of the campus. No matter whether I am present or not, the love of God is always here, and there will be sisters who will continue to spread the love of God here. I feel inexplicable comfort.
[4]
Then I left campus and started my life in single ministry. Soon, I got heavily sick and it took me a long time to recover. During the year I have not been on mission field. I missed my old days, wondered the meaning of the days before, then I realized:
God is faithful, He kept his promise in Matthew 28:19-20 “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. “and in Matthew 6:33 “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. “
He used me as his instrument when I devoted myself to him. It is a piece of blessing.
I have met numerous setbacks in the mission which I have dedicated to since I was little. Yet they helped me to see the weak spots in my spiritual life: Individual Heroism, Over-confidence, Self-focused ambitiousness, Deceitful aggressiveness.
God allows hurt in my life to teach me what is Love. We can never know the ones we loved will love us back, they can be bring flowers and gifts or a knife to hurt us. Only when I recognize the possibility of getting hurt, I can truly love. All the hurt we experienced, God has taken most of it before us and we are promised to be healed by his unfailing love. I think I will be terribly regretted if I chose not to love.
Still I harbored resentment and fear about what have I done in my life. I wasted too much time on repeating mistakes. God took David’s son and he took nothing from me but blessed me with his grace and mercy when I cried out to him. He asked me to share gospel, and I found I am the one who needed the most.
Now, I am an empty vessel, I do not have much fight left in me for HIM. I am poor in spirit and cannot see his face. I struggled with the presence and desperate for future. I am weak soul waiting in wilderness.