DECEMBER 5 "YOUR LABORS ARE NOT IN VAIN"

 For months the man felt called to be the 1st missionary to Malaysia. He wrestled over this for months in prayer. After much thought in prayer he and his wife decided to go, however they had two children they could not bring because of the dangers involved in the brush. They left their children behind. Only every six months would they be able to see the children that they loved so much and as time went on and the resources diminished it became once a year. While out in the bush the wife of the missionary gave birth to another child.

They labored and labored to no avail. They lived by whatever they could get their hands on, what in America would be considered worse than abject poverty, all to no avail, no fruit, that the missionary believed awaited them as he answered the call of god other than this 8 year old boy Tumba, that faithfully showed up to do Sunday school with the missionaries wife.

3 years into their efforts his wife and newborn son contracted malaria. He prayed and prayed to no avail, he wife and child died in his arms.

At this the missionary cried out to God with enraged bitterness, I have left all lord, I have left my children, my home, my life for what, my life has been wasted and you have taken the very things I’ve loved the most, from me!

Those were to be the last words he ever spoke to God before many years. He went back to London, where he became a bitter, enraged alcoholic man.

His children that he and his wife had left behind were now older and they were all Christians, but the father would have nothing to do with them because of their faith in god, "he would say, there is no God"

This went on for the next twelve years, one day there was a large conference there in the heart of London, a great conference of missionaries. One of the man's daughters was walking by and was intrigued when she looked in and saw this tall skinny Malaysian man ministering to a crowd of close to a thousand.

She walked in with her fiancé and listened to the message. At the end she found the young preacher and introduced herself and said that she had a heart for Malaysia and what God was doing there ever since she had seen the commitment of her parents to god to forsake all to go to a nation and people they did not know. She asked if he had ever heard of them.

He said yes, "your mother taught me Sunday school, her love and the commitment of these two showed me beyond a doubt that Christ was real, it was through their lives and ministry that I was introduced to Jesus Christ and his saving grace. I know that your mom died and your brother; unfortunately, that you never got to meet, but what ever happened to your father? One day I went to his hut and everything was gone. He just disappeared.

He came back here to London and unfortunately grew bitter towards God, he has completely turned on God, all the years he spent there.

I must go see him. When they left I took what they taught me about Christ and began to teach to the other tribes, the whole town which he was in has come to Christ and is spreading throughout the whole region. Most of the churches and speakers at this conference are from Malaysia. The whole region has been impacted by your father and mother's investment; there are hundreds of churches that have been birthed from their efforts.

The daughter went on to take him to see her dad, when he walked in the room their eyes met, he immediately recognized Tumba and Tumba began to tell him of all the wonderful things that were happening in Malaysia and all the hundreds and hundreds souls that had come to Christ, the churches that had been built and this large conference here in London representing those works all because of his labor.

At that point the old man broke down and began to cry and sob like a baby, all those years he had wasted being bitter at God, little had he known, that God had truly fulfilled his promise in calling him to the mission field, this one, what seemed like such an insignificant convert, became the man that reached a whole tribe and region, God was faithful to his promise. He had called him to the mission field, He had promised to use his life to reach a nation, and that He did.

In his eyes, their efforts were a failure, but God's ways are not our ways, He is the one that brings the increase and we will reap, if we faint not, in due season