Mark Gillmore: Hello once again, I’m Mark Gilmore, here for our GoMission podcast. 

I had the privilege this summer of traveling to West Africa, to the countries of Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast this past June and July. I had been wanting to travel there for quite some time because I had read and heard about a remarkable, disciple-multiplying movement across West Africa.

In fact, as of now the statistics since 2005 till 2021 is that this movement has seen over 1,900,000 new followers of Jesus Christ in 127 disciple-making movements, many of them, the majority of them, in Muslim unreached people groups. The total number of churches is way over 82,000 that are gathering in urban and rural centers in over 600 different people groups. 

Well, this is an exciting thing, and the one thing that marks this movement is prayer, and the belief that ordinary believers are the key to multiplying movements of disciples and churches. 

One of the stories in the early days of this movement is about a believer whose name is Jacob. He was a committed Christian living in Africa, and God called him to serve in a Muslim area. He moved his family to a distant town where was a strong, dominant Muslim community, and absolutely no Christians were around. He had very little resources, and everyone was concerned about how he was going to care for his family. And he had one resource. One recourse. That was, he would pray. 

Well, one dark night, shortly after arriving in this area, he was walking near a forest, and out of that forest came in horrific scream, a woman in panic and in pain. He listened, he began to pray, and then he was shocked when further down the forest, another terrified scream of anguish shook his soul.

He began to realize that deep in that forest was happening a very evil gathering led by a secret occultic association. They were gathering young women, and for the next several days and weeks they were going to initiate these women using horrific abusive practices. It was actually illegal to do what they were doing, but it was cultural, and so it was about to happen. 

Jacob knew there was very little he could do, but his main recourse was to pray. He began to weep, and he knew that for the next several weeks he would not go about his normal pattern of ministry. Every night at midnight, he would rise from his bed; he would go as near that forest as he dared; and on his face before God he would pray till sunrise. 

He prayed words like these: “God, I believe that you’re God, and if you are, then these people should know your power because these things should not be happening here. I’m not going to confront them, but I’m going to invite you to use your power to demonstrate something to them.” He prayed from midnight till sunrise every night, 30 days, 30 nights for one month. He prayed that God would break this demonic activity.

I’m reminded of the verse in 2 Corinthians chapter 10 verses 3 and 4, where God’s Word says, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.” That’s exactly what Jacob was doing. He was pulling down strongholds through spiritual weapons. 

Well, after some time, a group of these young women, these initiates, came running out of the forest, screaming. They were in pain; some were near death from loss of blood. They were transported to a hospital, and this cultic activity became a public scandal! 

The leaders of the order were confused and shocked, and they said, “How did this happen? How did we lose our power over these women? How did they run away?” And the witch doctors, who consulted the spirit realm, told them, “The reason is Jacob. He has a different spirit. He is opposing us, and he is causing us to be ashamed.”

Outraged, the leaders of the societyーabout a hundred of them came to Jacob’s house and confronted him and threatened him and began to throw stones at his house, and Jacob told his family, “Don’t say a word. Let God defend us. Let them threaten. Just forget about it.”

After a while, the crowd dissipated, but then they paid some young men to come and terrorize them. They came to their house where they were staying, and they climbed atop the animal shelter and began to rip the tin roof off the top of the shed. But the moment they began to do so, the shed collapsed, the roof collapsed, and they fell in a cloud of dust and debris. They felt that something was working against them, and they fled in haste back to town. 

Well, eventually that secret order left that place. And that forest region became a place of peaceー”a garden”ーJacob called it. This was an incredible victory that God had won over the forces of evil, and it brought his faith to a new level. 

Every morning Jacob would walk in the pre-dawn darkness in that very same region, and he would worship, and he would pray. God continued to work, and one Saturday morning, as he’s in prayer, Jacob sensed that God was telling him, “If you need this place, ask me for it. I will give it to you.”

Well, it didn’t take Jacob long to kneel down and say, “God, if you’re offering this place, then you must know that I need it. And if you are speaking to me, then I believe you.” He went home rejoicing and told his wife the good news. 

Later that same day, a man named Jamal had an unusual sense that the next day he was supposed to go to church. Now, Jamal was the son of a prominent Muslim businessman, and Jamal had never been to church in his life and had no intention to go to churchーno reason why he should go to church. He was a Muslim. Muslims don’t go to church. But somehow, he knew he had to go. 

So the next day on Sunday morning as the worship service was concluding, Jacob announced that if anyone in the church knew who owned this garden place, this region of the forest, that he’d like to talk to them about buying it. 

Well immediately, Jamal approached Jacob and said,” I heard your announcement about the land. It was owned by my father.” Then Jamal told Jacob that his father had bought the land years ago in order to build a mosque on it, but he had died before the land could ever be used in that way, and so it was unused. 

Then Jamal said, “I had this conviction that I should come and attend church this morning. I’ve never been to church. This is my first time in church. I just walked in, and I heard this announcement. This must be from God. I want to be a follower of Jesus, and you don’t have to buy the land. I will give it to you for free.” And that’s how Jamal became a disciple of Jesus and how his family’s land became part of a ministry center that has now trained thousands of intercessors for the nations of the world.

More than 100 pioneer disciple makers have been sent out into Africa’s most difficult Islamic regions from that place. Today, in that same ministry, more than 1,000 new churches in that region among Muslims give testimony to the power of prayer. One man standing in prayer all night for 30 nights opposing the forces of evil. 

Our last episode, I gave you that challenge to give your 15-second testimonyーto step out, to take that step of faith, tell someone else your life before Christ, how you met Christ, how we changed your life. And I have been thrilled to receive some feedback about that step of faith. But you know, whenever we take that step of faith, we’re always going to encounter spiritual opposition. How do we deal with those difficulties, with perhaps satanic strongholds that are in other people’s lives as we are endeavoring to lead them to Christ? 

Well, Jacob provides an incredible example. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal. They are not of the flesh. They are not our just “normal, winsome influence.” The weapons God wants us to use are “mighty through God,” and those weapons are accessed in prayer. I want to encourage you to look at whatever is in front of you, and to access supernatural intervention in those lives through determined prayer. 

As we conclude here today, I want to just ask you to continue to pray for Myanmar. I mentioned this a couple episodes ago, and I just received an update regarding Myanmar, and it is not getting any easier there. There’s been two incredible…. terrors, if you will. One has been the military coup that we mentioned before, but also COVID-19 has spread throughout Myanmar. 

And a good friend of mine, a ministry partner, has reported that 148 Chin preachers, pastors, have passed away due to COVID just in the last several weeks. It’s been a hard time of heartbreak. A good friend of mine, Brother Paul, himself passed away just a couple weeks ago, and I felt the grief. 

So we need to pray for these believers as they are facing the loss of life of leaders through this COVID sicknessーthat God would comfort and that God would raise up a new generation of leaders. Already, He’s doing that. You might pray for a young man, his name is Issachar, who has taken leadership of frontline evangelists in his country. Pray that God would strengthen him to fill the shoes of these who have passed on to their eternal reward into the presence of the Lord. 

But another battle in Myanmar has been the political situation. And you need to know that just in the last 24 hours, the resistance government has declared a state of civil war against the military coup. So there is not…peace is not increasing right now. In fact, war is increasing. The sound of bombs, the fighting, the shooting is increasing. And we need to pray that God would preserve his people, that God would give an end to this conflict. We prayーwe need to pray that God would stand against these evil leaders who have taken control of the country illegitimately. Pray that God wouldーthat God’s purposes will be fulfilled. 

I’m glad to let you know that what Satan intends for ill, God intends for good. And that the Gospel can advance, the demonstration of God’s power can be in the middle of this. People there are filled with faith, but they need our prayer. And I just ask you to continue to pray for the land of Myanmar. 

So as we conclude here today, I just want to remind you that the only way to stay at peace in a world of turmoil and uncertainty is to stay on-mission with Jesus in His GoMission.