Encountering the Gospel in Discomfort
As I’ve reflected on over 30 years of ministry with Every Home, the moments that stand out the most are those unexpected encounters with God as he truly is.
I sometimes think that the surest way to live a vibrant Christian life is to commit to continual unsettling. When we regularly abandon our comfort zones, surrendering our embarrassment and concern for what other people think, we meet God on the holy ground of what frightens and confuses us. We need those moments when we stand like Moses before the burning bush, earnestly seeking God in the experiences that do not fit neatly into our expectations and assumptions.
Tanner Peake, my friend and Every Home’s president-elect, recently returned from just such an experience. A few weeks ago, Tanner visited our Every Home work in the Gwembe Valley of Zambia, a place that has also touched my heart.
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SubscribeThe Gwembe is home to the Tonga people. Decades ago, the Tonga were victims of social progress: A water project for the greater region of Africa forced them from their riverside home to the desert land of the Gwembe Valley. The area is nearly uninhabitable. Roads are rough. Clean water is scarce. Their despair runs deep. The world turned its back on the Tonga people, and they have suffered ever since. Tanner stepped into this unfamiliar, uncomfortable context with fears and misgivings.
He went to spend time with a man named Albert — Every Home’s ministry director for Zambia. Jesus has moved powerfully in Albert’s story, but his life has been far from easy. In tragedy, danger, and significant obstacles, Albert has encountered Jesus. And in bearing witness to Albert’s work, Tanner also encountered Jesus in the Gwembe. He saw the Tonga people through the eyes of Christ.
It reminds me a little of my experiences in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There, I met the Pygmies — a people so systematically oppressed and abused that they lived and slept in trees to hide from those who would harm them. Like the Tonga, the Pygmies suffered. And in their story, too, the love of Jesus raced to embrace them.
The broken, unsettling places and seasons we experience call the true gospel into sharp relief. Against the backdrop of our fears and weaknesses, we see the gospel not as a task we accomplish in our own strength but as love. It’s a love that remembers the forgotten, refuses to abandon the hurting, and runs toward the desperate. The gospel seizes hold of us when we are least able to reach for it.
As you walk through unsettling moments, the prayers of your Every Home family surround you. As you pray for your brothers and sisters around the world, stepping into their challenges and hopes, may you encounter Jesus.
