GOD CAN USE YOU JUST AS HE DID REHAN

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A Pakistani teenager has reportedly led his entire tribe to embrace Jesus, a remarkable story shared this week by Mission News Network (MNN).

A 17-year-old going by the pseudonym “Rehan” for security reasons was working as a waiter when he met Safdar, a truck driver, and partner with a missions group called Foursquare Missions International (FMI).

Safdar gave Rehan an audio Bible after they met, and the teen listened. Then, he started meeting with Safdar to talk about God and the Bible. Soon, he became a Christian and was baptized, according to Missions Network News MNN.

Rehan soon shared the Gospel message with his family and community members. Considering the sweeping and intense persecution Christians face in Pakistan, these actions were dangerous and, without a doubt, courageous.

Pakistan (MNN) — In Pakistan, a 17-year-old boy led his entire tribe to follow Jesus.

At first, Rehan’s parents, who were receptive to the Gospel, were scared. But he reportedly forged on.

A man named Nehemiah, who works for FMI, explained that Rehan wasn’t dissuaded. He invited missionaries to minister to his tribe and share the Gospel – and the results were incredible.

Rehan’s 60-person tribe reportedly stopped participating in Muslim prayer and turned toward Jesus.

“One evening, he gathered all the tribe’s members under one big tent. First, Rehan showed a movie about Jesus,” Nehemiah told MNN. “Then, an FMI partner shared a 15-minute devotion about new hope in Christ. That day, a 17-year-old boy led his whole tribe to the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Now, the missions groups ask for prayer for this tribe and others in the region.

This story is especially remarkable, considering the hostile arena in which Rehan boldly shared the Gospel. As Open Doors USA’s “2022 World Watch List” notes, Pakistan is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a Christian. The nation ranks eighth on the list, with Islamic oppression serving as the primary form of persecution.

“In Pakistan, Christians are considered second-class citizens and are discriminated against in every aspect of life,” Open Doors reported. “Church leaders can be arrested if they don’t abide by the authorities’ wishes. These arrests act as warnings to the Christian minority and intimidate them further.”

Regardless, God is at work as Rehan’s story demonstrates it just requires willing workers that God can use.

GOD USES SUFFERING

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God often uses suffering for His purposes, even Christians, to purge sin from our lives. The suffering causes us to stop and re-evaluate our lives. Holy Spirit conviction comes upon us and we realise we have grieved Him and quenched His work in our lives, This invariably leads to repentance and make us realise how dependent we are upon God’s grace. It will also lead to a lot of other good things in our lives, greater discernment, greater sensitivity to things of the Spirit, transformed minds, wisdom, expanded hope, increased desire to spend time in His Word and to know the truth, teach us to give thanks in all circumstances, increased faith, strengthened character. Hopefully, when we see God transforming our lives in these ways we will come to the conclusion that the suffering was worth it.

Quadriplegic painter Joni Eareckson Tada shares ‘life-changing’ words on anniversary of her diving accident

Not all of us have had to suffer like Joni Eareckson Tada but she wrote in he book When God Weeps: “Before my paralysis, my hands reached for a lot of wrong things, and my feet took me into a lot of bad places. After my paralysis, tempting choices were scaled down considerably. My particular affliction is divinely hand tailored expressly for me. Nobody has to suffer ‘transverse spinal lesion at the fourth-fifth cervical’ exactly as I did to be transformed to His image.”

How about Nick Vujicic born without arms and legs. He tried to take his own life at age eight in four inches of water. Thank God he was unsuccessful, hundreds of thousands maybe even more will be in God’s Kingdom because of the testimony of this man.

MESSAGE TO LGBTQ COMMUNITY

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Angel Colon and Luis Javier Ruiz probably shouldn’t have survived the 2016 massacre at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. But they did, and the deadly shooting sparked radical transformation for both of them.

After realising he had miraculously survived the June 16, 2016, killing, which left 49 people dead, Colon thanked God and promised to use his life to share the Gospel.

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“I look around again and everybody that was around me was dead and I am alive,” he said. “And I just started thanking God: ‘Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Lord. … The moment I get out of here, I’m testifying about you. I am worshipping you for the rest of my life.’”

Colon’s transformation wasn’t immediate, though. Weighed down by fears of how those around him might react to his decision to abandon the gay lifestyle and embrace Christianity, his conversion took time.

But after watching Ruiz step out, Colon had the courage to embrace the faith that saved him. Colon, when he finally spoke out, said he and Ruiz “became these men, these soldiers, these generals that aren’t scared anymore to share wherever they go the Gospel of God.”

One of the reasons Colon was so hesitant to walk away from the LGBTQ community and run toward the church was because of the backlash Ruiz faced for his conversion.

Ruiz, though, said it finally clicked for him when he realised that — despite his ongoing homosexual desires — “it’s not a gay to straight thing; it’s a lost to saved thing.”

For Ruiz, living a faithless life was no longer an option when he discovered not long after the shooting he was HIV positive. He is now using his platform to spread the Gospel, and his story is making a big difference in the lives of those around him.

“In all this, behind the scenes, God was working, because I had ex-lovers that were coming to Jesus because they saw a Facebook Live that they were making about me, and laughing about me. . . . This brought people to email me and say, ‘Hey, I want to know about this Jesus you’re so in love with.’”