This past week I had the privilege of meeting with two missionaries from Tanzania who are working for the Global Church Movements arm of CRU. CRU is most well-known for its campus ministry known as Campus Crusade for Christ.
Dismas and Anne Shekalaghe oversee coaching and ministry support for 24 countries in East and South Africa as they facilitate rapidly multiplying church growth. In the last 8 years, they have seen over 590 churches planted in the region at an astonishing rate. Their goal is to see a local church gathering per 1,000 people.
While we were discussing the ministry they shared many stories of God’s amazing work in Africa. One of the stories even included a description of how a single church has now planted other churches to the 16th generation in just a single year. The simplicity of the approach is fascinating as each level gets trained by the layer above it in a comprehensive discipleship process.
As fascinating as that story is it pales in comparison to the phenomenal story of God’s revelation and orchestration of events that Anne shared. She began talking about Zanzibar and how it was 90-95% Muslim which makes it extremely difficult to enter for evangelism.
In an amazing turn of events, she was able to connect with a young woman from one of the universities who quickly became interested in the Jesus Film. Anne helped her download a few short videos taken from the film so she could watch them on her phone.
The young woman lived in a dorm room with a few other women—all of whom were Muslim.
One day, Anne’s friend left her phone unlocked and her roommate began watching the videos she had downloaded. When the young lady returned to her room, the roommate couldn’t contain herself. She kept asking, “Where did you get this video? How did you find this? What does this mean?”
Finally, she said, “This is what I have been searching for! This is exactly what I have been looking for!”
The roommate soon came to Anne and gave her life to Christ. She quickly brought many of her other friends to meet with Anne, and they have a growing group of committed Christians now.
It is always so encouraging to hear how God uses seemingly unrelated events or things to bring people to himself. The Muslim roommate was searching for truth and found it through the simple message shared in the video clips.
God doesn’t need us to reach people. He could have brought the young lady to himself with nothing other than the conviction she was feeling, but he chose to use Anne and her friend. The simple act of downloading a few videos answered a tremendous need in the roommate’s life.
We have the tremendous privilege of partnering in what God is doing around the world. Too often we miss that because we are consumed by the busy-ness of life.
Hearing stories like this gives me chillbumps as I realize just how amazing our sovereign God is. He guides us to exactly the right point every time. The truly amazing thing is that God promises that many will come to know him when we share the Gospel. It is not our job to change someone’s heart.
We must simply be faithful to share!
Perhaps God wants to use you today.
Is there someone who has been looking for exactly what you know to be true?