14 April 2019
Dear Phyllis,
This week is Song Khron in Thailand. This is the biggest festival week of the year in Thailand. What Christmas is in the states, and Obon is in Japan, Song Khron is in Thailand. The whole
country shuts down for one enormous national water fight for four days. You can't walk 200 meters without getting doused with a bucket of water. It is a time of family reunions and mutual blessing. The water fight started by the Buddhist tradition of the younger
pouring water on the hands of the elderly as a sign of respect and blessing. But the blessing got out of hand when it went from pouring water on the hands to buckets of water on their heads.
Several years ago a lady who had a nursing school asked me if I would participate in a blessing service for her students. She asked me if I would bless her students. I said I would be glad
to bless her students, but it wouldn't be the Buddhist way. I would pronounce the blessing of Jesus on them.
Gomen, I've told this story several times but the best blessing story I ever heard was that one about the missionary I Kenya.
God loves crazy people. Some of the finest servants of God are those who are the craziest. The two craziest people I ever met in my life were Ron Blough and John Cathcart. Both of these guys were out of their minds. They would do things that no one in
their right mind would dream of trying. But Ron and John are right at the top of the chart as two of the finest five star missionaries I ever met.
This guy in Kenya was nuts. He had been there for 12 years and couldn't draw flies. He had given it his best shot at evangelism but nothing happened. In his discouragement he decided, “If
I can't see anyone saved here, at least I would like to be a blessing to the community”. So he started a stupid thing of going around blessing every thing in town. He blessed the traffic lights, he blessed the childrns play ground, he blessed water fountains
and everything in sight.
One day the Iman from the local mosque came to him and asked him to bless his mosque. He asked, “Why do you want that?” The Iman said, “Things have been down lately. The people have become
back-slid at prayer time, offerings are down, and we need something to pick us up”. So he went down to pronounce the blessing of Jesus on the local mosque. You can't get any dumber than that. Shortly after that, one evening the Iman came running to his house
at prayer time, saying, “Hurry, hurry, please come to the meeting.” He went with the Iman to the mosque and was taken right up front. The Iman asked him, “Can your Jesus heal the sick?” The missionary reluctantly replied, “Yes, of course He can.” Then they
bough a 12 year old girl who looked just like a pretzel and asked, “Please heal her”. You talk about a man with a problem – now there is one. This poor guy is Baptist. He is not Benny Hinn, and he just put Jesus on the spot to perform the miracle of the century
in front of five thousand people. What do you do now? He poured out his heart in prayer, and pleaded, “Lord You have got to do something here to vindicate the honor of of Your Name. Lord Jesus, please heal this girl.” Fearfully, he opened his eyes and she
still looked just like a pretzel. He was crushed. But the girl's father was a gracious man and said, “Thank you, sir. You have done what you could. Thank you for praying for us.” He turned around to walk away, and then stopped, looking back, he said, “Sir,
I would still like the blessing of Jesus on my family. Would you pronounce the blessing of Jesus on us?”. With that the little girl stood right straight up – totally healed. The place exploded. Five thousand people began shouting, “Praise Jesus! Praise Jesus!
Praise Jesus!”
The next day the Iman came to the missionary and asked if Jesus had any writings. The missionary told him, yes, He did. “I would like to study the writings of Jesus.” The next day the missionary
gave him a Bible. But the Iman replied, “No I don't want this. I don't want a Bible. I want to read the writings of Jesus.” “Oh, I'm sorry.” So he tore the cover off the Bible, glued on some card board and wrote on it “The Writings of Jesus”. “Oh, thank you.
This is what I want.” So the Iman began to read the writings of Jesus.
It wasn't long before he became a genuine born-again man. As the. missionary discipled him, he had a tremendous burden for his teachers in his seminary in Tehran. He said, “I must go back
there and tell them this truth.” The missionary told him, “You can't do that. You will get killed.” “No, they don't know this. They must know this truth.”
One day the missionary stopped by his house to see his dear friend. The son came to the door and he asked, “Is your father here?” “No, he is gone.” He thought, “You dirty rascals. You have
killed your own dad.” But the son went on, “We have been concerned about our father. He has been acting very strange lately. We thought he needs a vacation. We didn't have the money but we had a little land that we sold to pay for his trip so he could go on
a vacation to Tehran.” So the family paid the money to fiance the first missionary trip to send the Gospel to Tehran.
I'm sorry, I know I have shared this testimony with you a couple of times before, but it is the best blessing story I have ever heard. I wish I could remember more detail. I can't even recall
the missionary's name. I heard a tape of this testimony that he gave to his home church in Texas 30 some years ago. There was another story that was on that tape that was almost as good but I don't have room to share it here. Maybe in another letter.
The point that I am trying to make here, is that it helps if you are a little bit nuts. The best missionaries I know are the ones who are the craziest. God loves people who are not bound by
tradition and conventional ways of doing things. You have got to be a little off your rocker to stick your neck out to do really bazar things. It is when you get out into the ridiculous that the Lord is able to step forward to bless this in a way that you
don't get with the conventional. By this I am in no wise suggesting that everything that is stupid is of God. There are some things that are stupid and they really are stupid. Don't expect God to bless that. But God knows our heart and why we do things.
One of the worst things I know in the Bible was when a fallen woman went into a Pharisees house uninvited and interrupted a good meal by knelling down to wash Jesus' feet with her tears (Lk.
7:36-50). How disgusting! Who let that lady in? What about the time when four men tore the roof off a house to let a sick man down by ropes to Jesus (Mk. 2:1-12). That was pretty bad. There was the lady in Tyre who spoiled a good vacation for Jesus and the
disciples by making such a commotion that the disciples pleaded, “Please, send her away.” But that woman rang a bell I Jesus' heart that never happened in any other place (Mk. 7:24-30).
I don't think the nurse who invited me to come to the blessing service was too happy when I didn't join the other dignitaries in waving a branch and pouring a little water on the students
hands to bless them, but stood, raising my hands and pleading the blessing of Jesus on them. I warned her before hand. I told her, “If you want me to bless the students I will be glad to bless them but I won't do it with water. I will pronounce Jesus.” I don't
know what happened. I never saw any of them again, but I do pray that somehow Jesus has revealed Himself to them.
I'll be glad when the water fight is over and we can get back to life as normal.
Have a good one, bill
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