A New Brother!

Well, unfortunately I had some computer issues the last time I wrote, so now I must retell this story from my memory, weak though it is.  The story is alive with the Spirit, so I trust It to help me remember.

As I was visiting with a local sister, she was sharing with me some wonderful things that the Almighty is doing in her village.  She, along with a local brother who was in town working, was hosting gatherings on an evening during the week to allow those who had questions about our beliefs to come forward to ask them and hear stories of the Good News.  The gathering just previous to my visit with her involved three young men choosing to follow the Way.  Wow, what rejoicing there is over just one!

It would have been a happy story if it had ended there, but the teaching was no where near done.  The challenge then becomes teaching them how to live out their new faith in the face of all their traditions.  One in particular had some major questions, which I am sure will impact his friends as well.  This one is actually of another people group.  He had a particularly pressing question.

In this new brother's tradition, a young man will go through a ritual where blood is drained from his hips.  This blood is then combined with finger nail cuttings and hair trimmings to be sacrificed to a spirit.  This spirit then is supposed to be bound to protect the young man the rest of his days.  The spirit world is very real here, and people live and die in fear of it. 

This young man needed to know how to respond to his family about this tradition and whether he would even travel there the following week to undergo this.  It does not end there though.  He needs to know that our God is greater than any spirit.  He needs to know how to answer his mother who will surely beg him otherwise because she fears for her child's safety.  He needs to know how to answer his father when he can no longer follow in his father's steps.  He will have to know how to answer the father of any girl that he might wish to marry and risk the stigma of not being fully one of them.

The gathering after my visit with my sister would be followed by the young man's travel to his people to follow in their traditions or his refusal and pronouncing his new faith.  Intercede with me for wisdom for my
sister and for this young man and his friends.  May they have the confidence that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had as they went into the fiery furnace!