The Lord Set His Glory on Display

February 7, 2021, was one of the most remarkable Lord’s days I have yet experienced in my life. I was in South Sudan as a member of the Reformed Presbyterian Global Mission Board responsible to oversee the Cush4Christ mission there. We came to help encourage the mission, yet for ten days I was continually encouraged by the Lord’s work as I interacted with pastors and church, toured the Christian school and radio station, experienced life in the community, and enjoyed fellowship with the missionaries to learn first-hand more of what their lives are like on the field. Better still, I was able to see it with my twelve-year-old son. As that February day began, my mind was already moving towards packing for the journey home the next day—but the Lord set his glory on display and I stopped to revel in it for one more day.

Wek, the compound’s guard that day, greeted me with a bright smile early in the morning on my short journey to the main mission compound. Wek is about 18 years old and the breadwinner for his household, his grandparents and younger siblings looking to him for leadership in the absence of his parents. He attends the Christian school and is now a junior teacher there as well. Having journeyed from Roman Catholicism to a secure faith in Christ alone for salvation, Wek stands tall and is growing rapidly in Christ, a good testimony to the Lord’s work in the school and church.

From there, Zach Smith and I hopped on a motorbike to go to a church some miles from the mission compound. Sunday is the busiest day for the local market, so as we traveled outbound, we choked on the dust of the many travelers rolling inbound to the market to pursue the things of this world. We angled off the highway into the bush toward a congregation I had yet to meet.

Eventually we arrived at the thatched-roof church building. Drumbeats sounded forth calling the community from the bush to worship. Zechariah, a Dinka man in training to be a pastor, serves as the preacher there and had been our translator for most of the week. Lucas Hanna takes Zechariah from village to village for daily discipleship training with those who will gather; I was blessed to tag along for the week. Zechariah had also been my student in the two Saturday sessions I taught for church leaders. He was an excellent student, and I was eager to watch him preach.

Our hosts whisked us into a small guest hut across the yard from the church building to pray with the elders and leaders-in-training. There, my heart was lifted as the men Zechariah is training locally began to file in and fill the hut. I could see firsthand the fruit of his labor—and the fulfillment of Jesus’s promises. Some of these men started to tell their stories, but we quickly turned to prayer because the church building was filling up and we needed to start the service.

God’s people praised him heartily. I couldn’t understand most of what was said, but I knew these were my people; I was united with them by the Spirit in Christ. I was called on to bring greetings from the church in Indianapolis and in North America. Zechariah preached, and it was pretty obvious that the man can preach! Each week in services, the sick come forward to the front to be prayed over, and today was no exception. One woman pushed her way to the front and knelt on the dirt floor. She said in Dinka that she had been to church once or twice in her younger years, but had recently come to this area from afar. Two weeks prior, women from the church had prayed over her when she was sick, and she had been healed. So, she came to church. She announced to the preacher that since he had preached that she was to believe and confess, that’s what she was there to do, and she wanted him to pray for her, too. Zechariah looked at us, the two visiting preachers, to make it clear that he didn’t issue an altar call, fearing we might see him as manipulative. We assured him that when God is at work, no one can stand in the way. So, I prayed for the sick, and then he prayed for this new convert.

After the service, we were again taken to the guest hut and served sumptuous chicken with the men, our fellowship a foreshadowing of heaven. Zach pressed the men on whether the women outside were receiving the same high-end cuts of meat. An uncomfortable dialogue followed, encouraging the men to honor their sisters in the Lord and to love their wives, daughters, sisters, and mothers the way Christ loves the church. It was good to see both the fruit of the ministry that day and the exhortations to further sanctification. The men shared their testimonies and what the Lord is teaching them. As I heard heard the good report from them and also perceived significant gaps in their understanding, I wondered how much the land of South Sudan spiritually resembles Scotland in the days of John Knox.

We entrusted the saints there to the Lord and stopped at Zechariah’s home, a small compound of huts. A little radio hung on the wall. Those radios are everywhere in the region, and they are all tuned to the only station in the area—Weer-Bei 99.9 FM, Redemption Radio. It was another little reminder of the progress of the mission: the ministry of the radio station under whose tower I slept every night. More than that, the radio stood as one more witness that God’s word cannot be bound. As requested, we took formal pictures of Zechariah and his wife and two children, and then we were able to hear more first-hand testimony of how he is seeking to love his own wife the way Christ loved the church. Here, the church is slowly becoming known as a community where a husband loves his wife. The wider community is beginning to notice husbands and wives enjoying being together, walking to church together, and serving together. Pray that this much-needed testimony of the church will grow.

After this final dusty trip back to the compound, I preached in the English language service, and the mission team enjoyed the Lord’s Supper together. I saw more vividly than ever the unity and delight I had already observed in the team. Life is very challenging for them due to the weather, economy, civil war, and prevalence of sickness and risk . . . all without most modern conveniences and health care. Yet, they all, young and old, chatted joyfully over the things we had seen and heard during various worship services that morning. Then, just like Zechariah’s family earlier, the freshly reconstituted mission team wanted pictures to mark their embarking on the next stage of ministry. Life may be hard, but the team is looking forward with hope because of the Savior whose resurrection we celebrated that day.

At the end of the day, all I could do was look up at the vivid, African sky, so clear that you can see galaxies—the same stars Abraham stared at some four thousand years ago. God promised Abraham that his descendants would be as many as those innumerable stars. Abraham was the father of his people, and Jesus has come as the fulfillment, the Everlasting Father promised by Isaiah. On that Lord’s Day, I witnessed God fulfilling his promises. Bright as those stars in the sky were, they were nothing compared to the brightness I witnessed in his people that day. It was a Lord’s Day I’ll never forget.