Wrestle Until God Does Something
Last year I read a fascinating book that was called Before We Kill and Eat You. And it was the story of two missionaries - Henry and Ruth Garlock, who went to Liberia in the 1920s when there were still many cannibalistic tribes out there.
In fact shortly before they arrived, one of the villages had been attacked by some government soldiers who tried to burn this village down because it wouldn't submit to the government's demands. The tribal warriors managed to capture the commander of this group and while the town was still burning, all the men and women of the village gathered around burned the man alive and proceeded to cut him into pieces and eat him in front of the other soldiers they had captured.
And it was to this type of setting that these two people felt cool to go and share the gospel. Bravery? Stupidity? Well, you be the judge!
Father's Transformation
But before we get into their story, early on in the book Henry tells the story of his father's conversion which was actually very powerful. He was a terrible drinker and he spent every cent he had on liquor and got very violent and caused great grief for the family.
But he writes here that one day when he was 16 years old, a famous evangelist at the time had come into the area and he says “mother bought a train ticket to Long Hill, Connecticut and gave it to father. ‘I want you to go to that meeting and stay until God does something for you’, she told him. Don't come back home until you're changed.”
And a few days later while he was working outside, Henry says he heard his father come singing as he walked up the path to the house and he writes “My first thought was ‘sounds like father is drunk again’, but he wasn't drunk at all. He was singing a gospel song and praising God. He gathered mother and all of us children around him in the parlor and told us that he'd been saved, healed, delivered from his addictions and filled with the Holy Spirit. He was never the same after that day. The change in his habits and behavior in the following months proved his conversion to be real.”
Power of Transformation
It's a great story and it's one of countless stories of people who are stuck in sin, who are in bondage to all sorts of dark habits and bad ways, who give themselves to God and find freedom and find healing.
And friends, I wonder if we need to maybe do something drastic like this man's wife did. She said, don't come back until God has done something in you. And so he obviously went to that meeting and truly sought God and truly found the healing that he needed.
Maybe you and I need to do the same. Go to God and wrestle with him until he affects the change in your life that you need.
In fact, it reminds me of Jacob who wrestled with God and said, I won't let you go until you bless me. What great work could God be waiting to do in our lives if we just submit to him with all of our hearts?
It changed this man's life and it had a profound impact on the life of his son, proving that what he did was absolutely worth it.
