A Soft Answer
A Jesus For Asia Bible Worker Story
Representative Photo
A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
- Proverbs 15:1
How do we react when someone is unkind to us, when they yell in our faces and spew hatred at us? Do we respond with kindness? Or do we retaliate?
Our human nature demands we fight back, but that is not God’s way. He knows that while we may feel better in the moment, we often make things worse in the long run. Still, responding to our enemies God’s way isn’t easy, and many professed Christians fail to do so when a crisis hits.
Nearly three thousand years after King Solomon penned the above famous proverb, a Jesus for Asia Bible Worker named Salaman and his young congregation faced such a crisis. How did they respond?
Salaman shares the following testimony:
One Sabbath, we were worshiping the Lord in our small church hut when suddenly, a pastor from another denomination and fifteen church members barged in and demanded we stop the service. They were frustrated that many of their members had left their church to start worshiping with us on the Sabbath.
They were very rude to us, but we all remained calm and did not react to them; we did not want to disturb the sanctity of the Sabbath. After screaming and shouting at us for a while, they left, and we continued our worship service.
At the end of the service, the pastor and a few elders from the other denomination came back. But this time, they didn’t yell.
“We are sorry for the disturbance we made,” the pastor said. “We were touched by your tolerance. God spoke to us through your silence, and we want to apologize for our mistake.”
We as a church learned that arguing will lead us to lose people, but keeping calm will win souls.
What a fantastic discovery for these believers. We pray God will continue to teach and use them to bring many others to faith in Christ.
Please pray for Salaman, his congregation, and our other Bible Workers to continue shining as lights for God. Even in the midst of difficult situations.
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