In the kindness of God, Kathi and I are back from two weeks of working in The East with some friends. The work was primarily visiting some places where our friends had done development work–funding drinking water systems for schools and providing scholarships for tribal children to attend grade school. It was my first time to the great land of China–specifically far SW China on the Tibetan Plateau–and it was not much like my home town of He Dog, South Dakota–though both places are primarily populated by native tribes. (We were not in the political province of Tibet but we were at about 11,000 feet.)
In two weeks were exposed to so many starkly new things that I cannot even remember all of them. Here are a few lessons that I do remember:
1. There are uncountable people in our world who live in horrible bondage. People are spinning prayer wheels and using strings of prayer beads and leaving good food at the feet of inanimate statues and building elaborate temples and spending scarce money on incense and constantly driving roaming pigs away from the good food they have left at the feet of statues that cannot eat. All of this is done to appease dead “gods” and assuage a sense of deep personal guilt. It goes on for decade after decade in very sad lives.
2. Reaching people who have a worldview that is non-Christian and who cannot read is a bitterly slow process. Worldviews shape each one of us so profoundly that we cannot even comprehend the impact. Not being able to read is a handicap that I cannot understand. I have been able to read the language of the country where I live for more than 50 years. I take reading for granted. I assume reading with the same level of unconscious expectation that I assume air. I have lost touch with the blessing of reading.
3. It takes a lot of people working well together to reach people who never heart of Jesus and who cannot read. The synergy of a body working in harmony is so beautiful. Watching a professional high jumper gives a sense of this beauty. The synergy of a Body working together is so pivotal to impact. The work we were able to do was only possible because of the previous work of a lot of people.
4. If you can read and own a personal copy of the Bible in your first language you are blessed beyond imagination. Every day I am reading and appreciating my “first language Bible” with new gratitude.
5. God is at work in so many places and in so many lives and in so many unique ways. I was in awe of things that He is doing in a “corner” of the world without TV or internet. (Our world has a lot of “corners” and every one of us live in a “corner” in one way or another. The center of the universe is not on this planet.) What God is up to, in endlessly creative ways, in every “corner” of the world always involves His glory, His Word, and the rescue/renewal of people.
6. God is at work in so many places and in so many lives and in so many unique ways–we miss then when we are too worried about when our golf clubs will be repaired. I have nothing against golf–other than I stink at it–but what God is doing to rescue people towers above a hole-in-one.
7. Sitting in the home of a tribal person and explaining the Good News about Jesus is exhilarating. It is also recalibrating. It refocuses you on eternal things.
8. The standard of living in NW Houston and the cult of upward mobility are very strong. I have only been home for 5 days and I already went out to look at a new BBQ.
9. Working and traveling and living with sterling people makes all the difference. What a joy it was to spend 2 weeks with 7 sterling people.
10. Finishing your life in a second career in missions is really, really good. I think it is more fulfilling than shopping or five-day-a-week golf.
11. They are very, very stingy with their oxygen on the Tibetan Plateau.
12. Traveling in remote places to share Christ is inconvenient and uncomfortable. But my experience was nothing like Paul and many others have done.
13. I have a deep and severe cleanliness addiction. I need some help with this.
14. I have a significant aversion to sheep that has been chopped up with a cleaver and thrown into a huge pot and boiled with the stomach and the bones and the gristle and the sinew and the bone chips and the fat. In my own defense I tried to eat some.
15. Sleep is a very valuable commodity. When you cannot get any you begin to understand its value.
16. Clean water and beds without bugs are a great gift. I had forgotten this.
17. The International Date Line is voodoo magic. I still don’t get it.
18. A yak is not as exotic as it sounds from 6,000 miles away. A yak is a Tibetan cow.
19. Living in a place where you can own a Bible openly is wonderful. Many people don’t.
20. People all over the world have a keen sense of sin and guilt and the need to do something about these. They are doing a variety of things with varied levels of diligence and nothing apart from Jesus is working.
21. An American can buy a yak leather briefcase for about $100 but if a local will bargain for you then you can get it for about $35.
22. Speaking the same language with a person is so critical to telling them about Jesus and to finding the bus station. I just spend 2 weeks with about a 5 word vocabulary and they were probably not the five most important words.
Welcome home Dave and Kathi,
Love your bullet point insights. It gives us a sense of what it was like for the disciples to walk outside the borders of Israel into an unsaved world which desperately needed someone it didn’t know existed. Though a daunting task, it proved to bear great fruit. Look how far their work has come…all the way to the doorstep of Southern China on the hands, feet, faces and voices of Dave and Kathi Gibson. Bet your work bears fruit, too.
God’s richest blessings,
Larry James
Pastor Dave:
It sounds as if you met some precious Christians who are impacting their world mightily, even though they seem so “small.” Below is an article I wrote and was published in a Christian magazine several years ago. I pray that it will be an encouragement to your ministry as well. Our whole family loves you. Kep on keeping on and BE COURAGEOUS!
Your Brother in the Lord,
Lee Anderson
DTS ThM 1976
keyportlee@sbcglobal.net
GOD DOES BIG THINGS THROUGH LITTLE PEOPLE
After World War I, General Pershing planned a series of victory parades. He needed 27,000 soldiers to march, and each participant was to possess two qualities: Each soldier was to have an unblemished military record, and second, he was to stand at least one meter eighty-six centimeters tall.
Forty American soldiers, stationed about one hundred miles from Paris, read with interest the notice about Pershing’s victory marches. Each man in the company met the first qualification. None of them had ever been court-martialed. The second condition, however, puzzled them.
They did not know how tall one meter, eighty-six centimeters was. So the soldiers began to compare themselves with one another. They stood back to back like children in a kindergarten, until they knew the tallest through the shortest men in the company!
If we are honest, isn’t that the way we behave also? We tend to measure each other and evaluate each other, in order to decide who is “more important.” Well, I have good news for you.
The Bible is filled with very “normal” people whom God used mightily.
As we explore the nooks and crannies of Scripture, we find hidden treasure and warm encouragement for our own lives.
These seldom-noticed portions of God’s Word record the lives of real people, who played a pivotal role in the events of sacred history. We will discover that “God does do big things through “Little People.”
Four people and four principles demonstrate this truth.
The first character to occupy center stage is the little boy mentioned in Judges 16:23-30. Although Samson had judged Israel, he grew weak and ineffective near the end of his life. Blinded, bound in chains and mocked by God’s enemies the Philistines,
Samson asked the little boy who held him by the hand, “Put me where I can feel the pillars that support the temple, so that I may lean against them.”
That little boy focused Samson’s great strength, so that Samson “killed many more when he died than while he lived.”
Did that little boy do everything to win that battle? No, but he did what he could. Do we have to do everything to win a battle for the Lord? No. He only asks us to do our own part, faithfully.
The next “little” person to appear before us is a little girl, mentioned in 2 Kings 5:1-6. She was captured by marauding bands from Aram and made to serve the wife of the commander of the army of the king of Aram. She would have had every reason to want to get back at her captors, but she told her enemies of God’s power to heal. Even
the Lord Jesus Christ taught not to return evil treatment for evil treatment (Matthew 5:43-48). In fact, if we love our enemies, we refuse to let them control our emotions. We refuse to let them set the agenda for our behavior.
Did this little girl know everything? No. But she told what she knew. Do we know everything? No. But we can tell what we know, especially about God’s Word.
Now we come to bigger “little people.” An unknown warrior named Hur helped Moses to win a strategic battle for the Lord (this event is recorded in Exodus
17:8-13). Moses needed two men to hold up his arms during a raging battle, in order to ensure victory. One of the men was Joshua. He held up one of Moses’ arms. He’s famous—we all know him. But Hur was equally important, because he held up Moses’ other arm. He faithfully carried out his part of the work.
Our fourth “little person” is relatively unknown, but, in many ways, exerted the most significant influence upon sacred history
As recorded in Acts 22:30—23:24, the Apostle Paul’s nephew uncovered a plot to assassinate Paul. How he discovered the plot we are not told. But Paul’s nephew e commanding soldier of the Roman barracks,
As recorded in Acts 22:30—23:24, the Apostle Paul’s nephew uncovered a plot to assassinate Paul. How he discovered the plot we are not told. But Paul’s nephew went to Paul himself and told him what was planned. Paul then sent him to the commanding soldier of the Roman barracks, who listened carefully and moved Paul out of danger. Paul’s nephew told what he knew. This young man was not a scholar like Paul, nor a gifted orator like Apollos (Acts 18:24). He just proclaimed what he knew to be the truth.
Four principles emerge from our quick glance at these four “little people” in Scripture:
1) “Size” does not restrict God from working in a mighty way. After all, what is truly “big” to God? What is truly “small?”
When David’s friend Jonathan approached God’s enemies in battle, he expressed confidence in the Lord’s ability to deliver “whether by many or by few (1 Samuel 14:6).”
God whittled the initial number of Gideon’s soldiers to the level of his choosing—a level which would give God His glory and provide for no human boasting in the oncoming battle.
2) God may choose to do His best work through our worst weaknesses. The Apostle Paul reminded the saints in Corinth that “the weakness of God is stronger than
man’s strength (I Corinthians 1:23-31).” He wanted those who chose to boast, to “boast in the Lord.”
Paul also wanted the Corinthians to remember that the frailty of our human bodies displays a glorious message to a watching world: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us (2 Corinthians 4:5-12; 16-18).”
Even further, Paul encouraged the Corinthians to live out life knowing that, as we are “renewed” inwardly by God day-by-day, our “light and momentary troubles achieve for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”
Onlookers despised the work of God’s servant Zerubbabel as he worked to rebuild God’s temple after the Exile of God’s people. But he was to remind the people that God’s work is “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty (Zechariah 4:6, 10).” We to be channels of God’s mighty power, not the source.
3) God periodically reminds us of our need to depend on Him. The Apostle Paul endured many afflictions during his life of ministry. He endured great pressures, and came to the brink of death. But he was able to cope with severe problems because he firmly believed that “[these things] happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead (2 Corinthians 1:811).”
Paul also taught his listeners that one way we come to rely upon God is through the undergirding prayers of other Christians who know of our trials. “God’s hand moves heaven and earth, and prayer moves God’s hand.”
Sometimes it is only when we are flat on our backs that we finally look up!
4) God does “quiet” as well as “dramatic” work. The prophet Elijah had just arrived before the Lord from a dramatic and triumphant encounter with wicked Jezebel and the false prophets of Baal. Emotionally drained and wallowing in self-pity, God gave Elijah an audio-visual lesson about His “quiet” ways.
“Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind.
After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake.
After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire.
And after the fire came a gentle whisper (1 Kings 19:9-14).” “The sound of sheer silence” is how one translation puts it.
Elijah had seen God do the dramatic on Mount Carmel. But when the prophets of Baal were overwhlmingly defeated, he believed that he alone was bearing the burden of confronting the enemies of God. However, in verse 18, God reveals the fact that 7000 other faithful servants of the Lord spoke for Him in echoes of His “quiet
whisper.”
The Bible does not emit a “hum” or a beeping noise, yet the Lord clearly declares that His Word is the “power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16).” God’s mightiest miracles are wrought in silence: the force of gravity, the sunbeams which fall around us all day long, the dew that waters plants and flowers during the evening. God should not have to shout to get our attention.
In 1972, NASA launched the exploratory space probe Pioneer 10.
According to Leon Jaroff in Time, the satellite’s primary mission was to reach Jupiter, photograph the planet and its moons, and beam data to earth about Jupiter’s
magnetic field, radiation belts, and atmosphere. Scientists regarded this as a bold plan, for at that time no earth satellite had ever gone beyond Mars and they feared the asteroid belt would destroy the satellite before it could reach its target.
But Pioneer 10 accomplished its mission and much, much more. Swinging past the giant planet in November 1973, Jupiter’s immense gravity hurled Pioneer 10 at a higher rate of speed toward the edge of the solar system. At one billion miles from the sun, Pioneer 10 passed Saturn. At some two billion miles, it hurtled past Uranus; Neptune at nearly three billion miles; Pluto at almost four billion miles.
By 1997, twenty-five years after its launch, Pioneer 10 was more than six billion
miles from the sun.
And despite that immense distance, Pioneer 10 continued to beam back radio
signals to scientists on Earth.
“Perhaps most remarkable,” writes Jaroff, “those signals emanate from an 8-watt transmitter, which radiates about as much power as a bedroom night light, and takes more than nine hours to reach Earth.
The “Little Satellite that Could” was not qualified to do what it did. Engineers designed Pioneer 10 with a useful life of just three years.
But it kept going and going and going. By simple longevity, its tiny 8-watt
transmitter radio accomplished more than anyone thought possible.
Look at yourself in the mirror right now.
What reflection do you see?
Do you feel insignificant?
Do you feel painfully “little” right now?
Remind yourself that the people in Scripture were normal people like you, whom God chose to use mightily.
“From little acorns mighty oaks do grow.” The people we have met from the pages of Scripture, and the principles they illustrate, prove that:
God can do
God does do, and
God will do
Big things through “little” people.
Little people like you, and little people like me