See What God Can Do

And those times when we do muster the courage to serve the Lord, we quickly get frustrated when we don’t see any results. We tell ourselves, “Well, I tried giving my co-worker a Bible and it didn’t do any good. But at least I’ve done my part.” Sometimes we don’t even know what the result of our efforts are. I want to share with you a true story of African missionaries from Sweden. Alison Pickrell shared this with me from a book called Fresh Power by Jim Cymbala. A young couple, David and Svea Flood, went to the Congo in Africa in 1921 to share the Gospel message of salvation through Jesus Christ to the African people. They went to a remote village but the chief would not allow them to enter or even to speak to anyone. They didn’t give up but built a mud hut a short distance away. The chief allowed only one little boy to take chickens and eggs to them twice a week. A lot of time went by, and many prayers were lifted to God, but the only person in the village that they were ever allowed to speak to was this one little boy. But this little boy did become a believer in Christ. In time, Svea became pregnant and gave birth to a little girl who they named Aina, but the mother, having been weakened by malaria, died a few weeks later. David became enraged that God would bring so much suffering upon him and have absolutely nothing come from it. He returned to the mission center where he left his infant daughter with another missionary couple and returned to Sweden, and spent his life angry and bitter towards God, with a bottle by his side.

Aina was raised in America by this couple. She married and settled in Seattle where she came upon a Swedish missionary magazine that had a picture of her mother’s grave in Africa. Unable to read the Swedish magazine, she had a college professor translate it for her. The little boy who had become a believer in Christ through the seemingly fruitless efforts of her parents had grown up and built a school in the village. The Holy Spirit worked through him to bring faith to the children of the school and through the children to bring their parents to faith in Jesus Christ. The whole village of 600 worshiped the one true God and eventually many, many more in the surrounding areas. Aina eventually met the boy who had delivered chickens to her parents at an evangelism conference. He was now the head of the national Christian church body of Zaire, what was once the Congo, representing over 100,000 believers. See what God can do. He took the apparent failure of a young couple and created His church, strong and vibrant, where once there was none. Using just a few chickens and some eggs, God fed an entire nation with His Word.

Aina was able to locate and visit with her father in Sweden just weeks before he died. She told him that his life had not been in vain after all, that God had used his efforts for wonderful things. Father, see what God has done! And the bitterness and anger towards God that had overwhelmed him for so long fled away into the dark night and David Flood was once again able to rejoice in the Lord.