The God Who Hears and Answers

January 29, 2014

By an Alliance worker serving in Indonesia

Recently, our team entered a new season of ministry—praying for open doors to share the gospel with the many unchurched people flooding into our area.

All the avenues that presented themselves ended in distinctly closed doors. Then one night, at a pizza shop, I met a long-time friend, who introduced me to her aunt. This encounter was a double answer to prayer.

The woman is the head of the English Department at a state university. While our team had been praying for open doors, she had been praying for native English speakers to assist in her department. She knows many English speakers but was asking God for someone to minister and teach, since  the recently revised university curriculum standards require education in spiritual topics.

After our meeting, the believer went home and asked God if I was the answer to her prayers. Then she called and invited our team to teach at the university—a wide open door to reach the unchurched.

The blessing didn’t stop there. After our first class, the department head shared her testimony with us. Having been raised in her country’s majority religion, she became dissatisfied during college and explored the other major world religions.

“The Faithful Lord Jesus”

She found Buddhism, with its emphasis on doing good works, quite attractive. But then she heard an audible voice telling her to read 1 Corinthians 1:9. Because she didn’t own a Bible, she didn’t do so right away. When she heard the same command two more times, she borrowed one from a Christian in her dormitory. She read: “God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.”

“I’ve been following the faithful Lord Jesus ever since,” the woman told us. “Whatever God tells me to do, I do.”

Several years ago, during a tense political gathering in this town, the educator, along with her prayer group, chartered a helicopter to fly over the area where the demonstrations were taking place. The believers anointed the ground with oil by dripping it out the helicopter window as they prayed. “Truly, the meetings were much less chaotic than they could have been, with only one person killed; the potential for much greater loss of life was there,” the woman said.

We are in awe to serve the God who hears and answers prayer in powerful ways to bring people into His Kingdom!