A MUSTARD SEED OF FAITH

Remember the bleeding woman in Mark 5? When she heard that Jesus was passing by, she thought to herself, “If I can just touch His robe, I will be healed” (Mark 5:28). Hidden in her heart was a mustard seed of faith - the kind that grows into a large, fruitful plant. “I encountered this kind of faith on a trip to Brazil,” relates Gary Wilkerson. “I asked a local pastor to take me on a tour through an impoverished community to see how ‘World Challenge’ might help with some of the needs. Brazil's ‘favelas’ are the equivalent of America's most desperate urban ghettos, only worse - much worse. There is no electricity or running water. The streets function as sewers, flowing with human waste. Homeless orphans roam looking for food and shelter. The favelas have no governing bodies or police and instead are run by drug lords. “The pastor who took me to the favela was a former drug addict. He wanted me to meet the faithful elderly woman who had led him to Christ. She was over one hundred years old and still lived in a humble shack. Years earlier she had evangelized the young man, telling him day after day, ‘There is hope for you. Jesus will change your life.’” “As the pastor introduced me to this saintly woman, she immediately began praying: ‘God, you have brought this man to me. I have prayed to you since I was eighteen years old, interceding for this community where gangs and drug lords continue to kill. But now I can go home to You because you have sent this man to care for our community.” Gripping my hands, she then prayed for what our ministry would do - start a school, an orphanage, a medical clinic, a feeding program - all of which we were enabled to do. It happened because she prayed in faith, ‘Lord, you will’ - and the force of her faith fuelled my own. I began trusting God to bring all of these things to pass through our ministry.” “Don't misunderstand: this woman's faith was not the name-it-and-claim-it kind. Her prayer wasn't based on some wish or whim, but on a desire that had been sown in her heart by the Holy Spirit. It was in agreement with God's Own desire to bring about His Kingdom on Earth.” [Gary Wilkerson, JNI 911].