He Wants You (1984)
testimony from Urbana 84by Malcolm Hunter
It dawned on me yesterday that twenty-one years ago this week I first landed in Africa. And this seems a pretty good place to celebrate such a coming of age or is it a coming of middle age? My testimony, however, is that over these twenty-one years it has been a wonderful opportunity to discover something more of the depth, the width, the breadth, the height, the length of the love of God - not just for me, my wife, and my four children, all born in Africa, but to see God's love constraining me to reach the forgotten people. That's how it all began for me. God so overwhelmed me with a sense of his love, a longing for him, that when he wanted to call me I was a pushover. He had no problem.
As a young lad raised on the borders of Scotland, I didn't see much of my father because he was away in the war in Burma. He came back from the war with his nerves shattered but with a heart for God that has never been exceeded in my experience. We had to move to the south of England to a little tiny village school where there were only three schoolteachers. My mother was one, and my father was the headmaster or principal.
Soon after our move, his heart for God so impressed me that at ten years I asked the Lord into my heart. And then probably because my father was such a good teacher, I was able to get a fine scholarship to one of those ancient, anachronistic, exclusive academies that we have in England. (We call them public schools.) And it was there that I went through real spiritual struggles, because I was being taught the state religion of the upper classes. "Be nice to Granny and the cat, and you'll all get to heaven in the end." But I went through a real struggle of failure and defeat. And for seven years I became more proud, more successful in academics and in sports, but more and more away from the Lord Jesus until by the time I was seventeen I was utterly frustrated and defeated. At that point God was able to bring me to a place where I would cry out to him.
When I left school at eighteen, I went away to college to study engineering, and I found myself at church where there was a man of God who preached God's Word. And I would go there and feed upon it, morning and evening. And I prepared my heart, not thinking I was ever going to be a missionary. I just wanted to know God. And any of you who have committed your life to God - whether as new Christians or new missionary volunteers - and want to prepare for God's service, there is nothing greater that you can do than to seek God with all your heart. May your whole attention be focused on him.
Focusing on him will put everything else in perspective. When the time comes for God to say to you, "I want you to leave your home, your job, your profession, your pleasures, your rugby and all the things," it won't matter one bit. I used to love all the normal things - motorcycles, climbing mountains, rugby, girls - all those normal things that a healthy young guy's supposed to enjoy. But my experience was that God would give me so much more that I would find that those things could not satisfy.
I remember one beautiful summer's evening riding my big, brand-new Triumph Tiger 500cc twin motorcycle. Going down the road at 110 miles an hour. Fantastic! And when I came to the end of the straight road twelve miles later, slowed down and got off the bike, I said, "Thank you, God, for this experience, but this will never satisfy me. You alone can meet my heart's deepest desire."
Too many Christians go about trusting God for salvation, but wondering if God can enable them to survive. God wants us to find our satisfaction, our delight, in him. And when I put him as my heart's chief delight, I find all sorts of wonderful things happening.
I remember especially this question of goals. It was a big thing in a young fellow's life. I decided that I wanted to really focus on God, and I wanted to get that under control. So I delighted myself in the Lord and discovered several years later that he gives us the desire of our heart. That's what he promises. "Delight thyself in the Lord and he shall give thee the desires of thy heart." It's a very simple principle. But when we focus our love on him, he knows our deepest needs and desires and he gives them.
And for me it came in the shape of a little 5'3" lady, a nurse. And I was watching her and what God was doing in her life. I didn't see much of her, but she was being transformed. She was going to be a missionary. And she was quite sure she was called to Ethiopia to go with this organization called SIM (Sudan Interior Mission) that I'd never heard of.
And for a year and a half I longed to know Cod's will. I waited on God. I knew he had called me into missions by this time - it was just so obvious. When I'd heard of the needs of the world and that God could use an engineer like me, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. It was hot logic. If there were all those needs out there, and here I was able, strong, willing to do it, why not? But how was I going to know God's will? Here was this woman that kept on coming across my path, and I would say, "Down, flesh! Down with you!" And it took a wise old lady of 82 to convince me that my heart's desire for marriage was consistent with God's principles. When we have our hearts fixed on the Lord Jesus Christ, we'll discover that he knows our needs and gives them to us. So that's how I met my wife and got to Africa.
I went out as a missionary not even knowing what a missionary was. I'd been two years to Bible school in Glasgow, but I had never heard of missiology or anthropology or sociology. All we had was theology and the doxology.
And so I was this engineer out there to do something for God, and for four years I merrily built water systems, electrical installations, clinics, all sorts of interesting things. My wife was a nurse so we were able to do all sorts of useful things. Then eventually one day after four and a half years, when we thought we might be ready for a furlough, we were asked to go to another mission station in the southwest of the country to put a water installation in the hospital.
But when I got over there, I was asked, "Could you possibly teach Bible school? The two men that were supposed to do it are unable; one has got sick and the other has been transferred." And so I found myself teaching the Bible. I was supposed to be an engineer, and here I was with such a little grasp of the language. And there were these dear old men in Bible school, but they didn't know the language any more than I did, because it wasn't their language. It was the Amharic language, 257 letters in the alphabet. We had problems together. But by the grace of God, God did something in that year and a half that I was there. We saw God doing amazing things.
What do you do when a young student comes back from vacation and says he had been preaching in a village. One woman believed; nobody else was interested. Then after several more days of preaching, he left this woman alone to go to another village. Shortly after he had left, the woman died, and she was the mother of many children. The whole village was furious. They sent to drag him back. And when he returned, he was so angry at God, because he said, "God, why do you have to do this? Here am I, preaching my heart out, and this one goes and dies - my only convert!"
And so by the time he had walked several hours back to the first village, he was saying, "God, I don't want to be an evangelist!"
And the people around him said, "Don't worry, friend. We're going to bury you next to her."
And he walks into the house, confronted with a woman that's obviously dead, and he is so angry they drag him in there kicking and pushing him. And then someone says from the crowd, "You told us about this Lazarus that was raised from the dead, that your Jesus could raise from the dead. Why don't you do something now? You're her only hope; and otherwise you'll be dead too!"
And so he said, "God, why don't you do something?" And right there and then she sat up. "Nobody," he said, "was more surprised than I was."
Everybody ran out of the house. But when he managed to get the congregation together again, he had his finest sermon illustration ever. And he preached, and despite what they had seen, the others still wouldn't believe. This is one of my Bible school students. He came back here and said, "What happened? How is that supposed to be explained?"
"I don't know," I said. "They didn't teach me that in Glasgow Bible School."
Anyway, that was the beginning of my discovery of what God could do. Here's another example of God's power. From our Bible school we were able to send out 110 men. When I went off for my first furlough after almost six years, those 110 men went out on an evangelistic campaign while there was no white man around to get the glory. And ten thousand people were led to the Lord through those people.
God was able to prepare them for that through an engineer. What could he do with some of you educated people - you theologians and seminarians? But God isn't primarily interested in our profession. He wants us. And some of you have gone around the booths saying, "What can you do with an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics expert?" What is needed is yourself. Will you offer God yourself? Allow him to decide whether he wants you in your profession of allow him to use your spiritual gifts, and you'll discover the majestic wonder that God has given us a calling for his glory. May God bless you.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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