An Ebenezer Along the Way

My favourite hymn (apart from "Jerusalem the Golden" - which, by the way, if you attend, please make sure they sing it at my funeral) is "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing". In the second verse, the writer says, "Here I raise my ebenezer, hither by thy help I've come." It's a reference to 1 Samuel 7:12 where Samuel took a stone and set it in a place saying, "Thus far has the Lord helped us". It's a good reminder for all of us to hold onto these ebenezers, these tangible things that encourage us along our journey, a reminder of what God has done for us and how God has helped us.

Yesterday I met an ebenezer. His name is John. He was the guest preacher at our church. He's a third year student at Saora Bible College here in the Solomons. Before he preached, he gave us a bit of background about himself. Like the woman I mentioned a few posts ago, John was born and brought up in a heathen home, worshipping Satan. He committed some crime and was sentenced to prison. In prison he met Jesus through various Christian programs, including the Crossroads Bible Institute of which we are a part. He became a Christian and when he was released from prison a year later, in 2008, he was baptised. And now he's almost finished his studies to become a pastor - the fact that he's at Saora at all means that he was nominated by his church as a fitting man to train for the ministry in the college.

It was such an encouraging story for us. Doing prison ministry is hard sometimes for us. I get bogged down with the paperwork. Jair carries the responsibility to go in faithfully week after week. But it was so uplifting to see fruit of the work - not our work, because we weren't here in 2008, but work of prison ministry here. Praise the Lord!

I just wanted to share that with you because I think it's amazing. Someone else, whose life was so bound up to Satan and his devilish practices, by God's grace, has been rescued from the dominion of darkness and brought into the kingdom of Jesus (Col 1:13).

John asked us to pray for his brothers - who are still heathens up in the bush. His pain was so evident. He knows the way they live, they way they are bound, the way they are imprisoned in a life they did not choose, but don't want to leave. And he knows where they're going.

In the Solomon Islands, Christians seem to have three categories of people. Christians (front sliders, as my friend calls us), backsliders (people who grew up in church, or were a part of church but have left) and heathen. Sadly however, all those backsliders, really are heathens too. Because there is no fence - or if there is, it's a nasty, barbed wire fence and you don't sit on it for long before you fall off into one or the other side. Sadly, "backsliders" are as much bound by Satan, so far as we can see, as heathens. Though they might not overtly worship Satan, like the heathens do, they rebel against God by turning their back on him. I don't think, though, that people here realise just how grave the situation is for so-called backsliders.

Someone shared with me a quote from Mark Driscoll that I thought was rather... profound?

"For Christians, earth is as close as they'll ever get to hell. For non-Christians, earth is as close as they'll ever get to heaven."

Let's pray that, as my friend said, the backsliders would start front sliding.

Let's pray too, for John's brothers, that God would rescue them, like He did John.

And while we're on prayer requests (which I don't usually write on here. If you want to be a prayer partner to our ministry, email me to join) pray for that God would provide another person to permanently work alongside Jair in prison ministry. It is such a fruitful ministry, yet the workers are few.

And let's hold onto ebenezers, because they point us to our hope in Jesus Christ. What are your ebenezers?