Sligo22: Kingdom Mission
Tuesday 12 July
Nicola Neal is an activist, pioneer, speaker and author. She is founder and CEO of Every Life International, a charity working with the urban poor in deprived communities around the world. Jesus gave us a Great Commission to make disciples in all the world. How can we live out this mandate in our own lives? Nicola Neal shares from her own experience of Kingdom Mission at #Sligo22 (notes taken in week A)
I lead a ministry called Every Life international. The ministry has been running 13 years. We work in poor communities and slums in east Africa. It brings unique challenges and amazing gospel opportunities.On our 10th anniversary we reflected back on what God had done. Rather than having a dinner party we thought we’d have this worship night and looking back, I reflected that as a ministry, we have been through every kind of season. We’ve had mountain top moments. We’ve been through dark valleys. What impacted my heart was the faithfulness of God and the consistency of who He is and His presence with us through every season.
I’m a visionary and a dreamer, I love to dream big and I have no issue in believing for the impossible. Sometimes the dream or the vision God has given us feels just that little bit too big, too impossible…. You can look at the size of the challenge and then you look at what’s in your hands say, I don’t think we can do this.
At times I’ve said to the Lord, “If you don’t show up we can’t do it!” I remember the Lord saying to me, very quietly: “If you want to learn how to dwell I the land of the miraculous, first you have to learn to camp out in the land of impossibility.”
You are never going to see a miracle unless you need for one. We need to lean into that uncomfortable truth. We need to get better at taking kingdom risks.
I will never forget the first day I walked into the slum. We moved to Africa, gave our possessions away, bought plane tickets and went on the word of the Lord. We were living in a village. It was quite extraordinary. It was how NOT to do mission but it was how the Lord did it with us. A guy called Amos saw me in tears over something and said, If you cry at that you will never survive in a slum.” I discovered that there was a slum less than a five minutes’ walk from my front door. I said, “I want to go.” He said, “It is way too dangerous.” Eventually I insisted.
For me, that was my first experience of seeing extreme poverty. This child behind the Oxfam advert was suddenly standing right in front of me. It was flesh and blood, looking me straight in the eye and it demanded a response. My heart broken into a thousand pieces. There was sewage, chaos and carnage everywhere. I’m standing in it and I heard the Lord speak.
Not Enough
I remember standing in that moment and hearing the Lord speak, “Nicola, this is where I have called you to live, to love and to serve.” I would love to say that my response was spiritual. But I said, “What???!! What are you thinking?”
I came out of school with no qualifications. I’ve never been to Bible school. I do not have a degree in development. I have nothing in the natural to recommend me for anything. I said, “Lord, I am struggling to see how our little lives can make any difference in a place like this… I’m not enough”
I think as believers we are often our own worst critics. The church is good at it too. We play the game of comparison. So quickly and easily we get to a point of writing ourselves off from His love and His service.
So often how we see ourselves and what we say about ourselves or believe about ourselves (or what the world sees, says or believes about us) is contrary to what Jesus sees, says and believes. Whose opinion are you going to live by?
Impossible
Let’s look at an impossible situation Jesus faced. 5,000 hungry men.
They were in the middle of no-where with nothing in their hands. Here is a hungry crowd and Jesus turns to Philip and says, “What are we going to do?” Philip had had a front row seat on Jesus’ miracles. But he says, “Six months wages isn’t enough to buy the bread…” His answer was true. But then another answer comes along.
A small boy comes with his tiny packed lunch. The disciples and Jesus saw him but their response was different. The disciples say, “How far will this go among so many? It is not enough.” Jesus sees the boy and his little packed lunch and says, “Perfect! This is exactly what I need.” Jesus takes hold of that little offering, the “not enough” and he begins to fill it with Himself and what was impossible becomes possible.
Feed Everyone
I remember the first time we ever saw multiplication of food. It was Christmas. We had been for two years in Uganda. One of my staff members said, “Let us throw a banquet feast for our community.” The team were pooled their money and we found some women in the village with big saucepans. We knew we had just enough but word spread and people started to join the queue. Slum culture is volatile and very violent. If you promise and you don’t deliver they will kill you. I began walking towards them to form a human barrier and stop any more people coming in. Then I heard the Lord and he said, “Feed everyone, refuse no one.” I said, “We don’t have enough food.”
But he kept saying “Feed everyone, refuse no one.” So I spoke to the staff give half portion sizes. But they continued to pile on large portions. We fed everyone and when I looked inside the saucepan, there was just as much food as when we began. To be honest I was confused. So we offered them seconds. And after that there was still as much food as when we began. I was still confused. No one wanted any more. But food is a gift. So we picked up these huge saucepans. We went through the community and offered food to anybody who wanted some. People started to come. We poured the food into jerry cans and containers and even into carrier bags. When we got to the end, the food ran out. And I finally realised, “We’ve just seen a miracle.”
I hate hunger. It is now the world’s biggest killer; killing more people every years than TB, AIDS and malaria combined. If we think we’ve seen hunger, we’ve not seen anything yet. As a church, we have a responsibility. If we have food on our tables, we must do something for those who don’t.
Surrender
For us our testimony of the last 13 years is a constant daily laying our lives down, our little offering of ourselves, the very small amount that we have to give saying, “Jesus, I’m not very much. I surrender all that I am to you. Now come and fill me with yourself.” He takes that little offering of our lives and fills it with Himself. Suddenly what seems impossible becomes very possible.
Do not disregard the significance of your life. Do not disregard the significance of His life expressed through your life. You were born to help change the world. Katherine Booth, a huge hero in the faith would tuck her children into bed and say, “You were born to help change the world.”
It is often when we feel small, insignificant and weak that scripture tells us that it is in those moments that His power is made perfect. It is Christ in you that is the hope of glory. It is Jesus who multiples food, who heals the sick and who raises the dead.
Our circumstance does not get to define who God is. Who God is defines your circumstance.
Circumstance says 5,000 hungry and not enough food. Then Jesus comes. A community that is broken and fractured and consumed with addiction and violence and crime and abuse and poverty and death… impossibility in your face everywhere you turn. Then Jesus comes and it changes everything. He is not remote. He is not distant. He is eternal. He is within you. Where you go, He goes. He is with you all the time. We need to surrender, to lay our lives down before Him. It is something you have to daily, every hour, even every minute.
Only the power of Jesus
Many years the men would go into the slum at night. They met a man who said, “I don’t believe in your Jesus but over the years I’ve had this dark presence in my home and I’m haunted by it. Will you speak to your Jesus?” They prayed very simple prayers and then left. Two weeks later, this guy says, “You will not believe what happened. I have not had any more night terrors. I’ve been sleeping every night. I want to meet with Jesus.” But then he asked us to help his aunt who was suffering from the same thing. He said she lived in a town that was about 45 minutes drive away. So we drove to this town but he then directed us to left and keep. I’m getting nervous. He was recently out of prison for a serious crime and we are driving into the middle of nowhere. WE are driving further and further into the bush and he says, “We will be there now.” – in Uganda that can mean anything. Suddenly he said, “stop the car.”
We had to get out of the car and walk the rest of the way. Hacking our way through the bush he tells me that his auntie is the highest ranking witch doctor in the whole area. She was dedicated to the demonic at birth. But he said she is desperate to be free. Now I’m freaking out. I’m “not enough”. I’m so far outside of my spiritual depth.I wonder if I’ll ever see my children again.
Suddenly we arrived in a little clearing, with mud houses and I see this lady with white hair. She looks at me and then screams and started to run towards me. It is scandalous for an elderly person to run. She falls down. She says something in her language. The man with us says, “Yes that’s my aunty and she is saying ‘Give me Jesus’”. And I thought that is too easy.
I asked one of my interns to tell her about Jesus and the cross And she says, “Give me Jesus.” I asked him to tell her the gospel again and to make sure to tell her that this was going to cost her everything. For her, it could even cost her life. Then she said, “Give me Jesus.” She encountered the power of God. So we decided to burn the shrine and she piled everything onto the altar and poured over some flammable liquid. I’ve no idea what to do now so we decide to worship while this bonfire is burning.
And then the auntie says, “Tell the rest of the village, they all need to know and follow Jesus.” There were about 25 people. Men women and children (everyone except one man) gave their lives to Jesus. We baptised them in water and they were filled with the Holy Spirit. In my wildest dreams, I never imagined I would see that. n books.
I wanted to go back and take her a bible and to make sure she was okay. We managed to find her and we drank chai. I asked her “Why? What happened that day…” She told me, “The moment you walked into my village I saw that the power that was inside of you was far greater than the power that was inside of me and I had to bow to it.” Only the power of Jesus brings a witch doctor to their knees.
When we lay our lives down, He comes and fills us with Himself. And suddenly what is ridiculously impossible becomes possible.