God Gives the Growth
Mark 16:15, “He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.”
I’ve been going out with a team from our church, Acacia Community Church, and doing evangelism and discipleship in a village that our church is in called Kimaka. This area is a very impoverished community that consists of many immigrants from other parts of Uganda where there are no jobs. In this community we find many Muslims, people that have believed a false gospel, and drunks.
This area seems to be very open to hearing the Gospel because when we come around; everyone is very open to listening to us and sharing their beliefs. Some have accepted the Gospel and have become Christians, but I felt like for some time, there was no fruit from our efforts. I began to get discouraged because I feel a burden for these people accepting Christ, and it wasn’t happening. I think the reason this was occurring was that God was trying to teach me a lesson. You see I held myself accountable for the number of people that got saved, and that is not my role! Look at what 1 Corinthians 3:6-7 says:
“I planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”
I was holding myself accountable something that I cannot do. We are just the means, not the cause. I can only be faithful to the Great Commission and trust that God will give the growth.
Once I accepted that, my heart was at peace. The next time I went out for evangelism, I came across four men that worked for a security company that told me that they were part of a works-based religion. I shared the Gospel with them and talked about the saving work of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. While I was sharing, more men joined to hear what I was saying. God gave the growth and eight men accepted Christ from that group. Praise God!
That would have been a great ending, but that is not the end of this story. While we were walking back, the Ugandan man that was with me, Sam, felt the Spirit leading him to share the Gospel with a women he saw. This woman said she was a “born again”, but upon further investigation, she was not a Christian at all. Sam shared the Gospel with her in Lugandan and she accepted Christ and asked us to come back again and share with her husband. Praise God!
After we left her, we went to speak with a Muslim family that we have been making a relationship with over the past couple of months. We have been sharing with the matriarch of the family because if she accepts Christ, then the rest of her family may follow her lead. The last time I shared the Gospel with her, she told me that she wants to believe, but she needed some time to think about what I told her. This time, she told me that she still wasn’t ready, but wanted us to keep up the relationship and keep coming to check on them and pray for them. After she said that, her grown son walked by and she told us to “tell him about Jesus”. After we shared with him, God gave the growth yet again and he accepted Christ! Praise God! I’m absolutely amazed that she wasn’t ready to change, but she wanted to make sure that her son was saved!
I’m so humbled by the work that God has been doing in this village, and I’m grateful that he is using me as the means to His growth.
Pastor Andrew sharing the Gospel with workers at a distillery in Kimaka
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