A  Boat ( full )  of faith….

My dear children in Christ, greetings to you in the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I wish you the very best in your studies and extra curricular activities. And seek the Lord every day by reading the Bible, meditation and prayer.

The title as it looks “ A boat (full) of faith, appears a little strange. This is a brief story of a missionary couple who boarded a ship seeking to serve the Lord and proclaim His kingdom in far off places. This story happened abut 200 years back. As they were journeying in the ship, they conducted worship services for the fellow passengers and the crew and everybody liked them.

As the ship was about to pass through a flotilla of islands, the missionary couple prayed and sought guidance of the Lord as to which island they should alight from the ship to preach the gospel. The Lord showed them a particular island. When they requested the captain of the ship to drop them at this island, he was baffled and warned them not to take on  this deadly mission as the island is infested with cannibals (man eaters) ! The captain said,  to his knowledge, no outsider who ever went there, has returned back alive.

But the Lord’s direction was very clear. The missionary couple insisted,  and were dropped down there. But the captain made a specific request to them : “ I will lend you a small boat, which you tie up in the sea shore. In case of any emergency, board this boat to escape death!  The missionaries accepted this proposition as it appeared a good fall back in case of an emergency.

Two years passed by.  They had already learnt the native language and were ministering. But to their dismay , they could not turn even one soul towards Jesus. But contrary to the popular perception, the natives were kind to them and there was no life threatening situation arose. However, their small boat was still tied up in the sea shore. In case …………

This situation continued and still they could not make even one person to accept Lord Jesus. The frustration started growing deep, as they thought  they were facing a miserable failure in their missionary calling. One day, during prayer, they broke down ! They cried and cried at the feet of the Lord , for the reason for this miserable situation. The Lord asked : “In whom do you have your faith upon? On the small boat at the shore or on Me ? Have I not called you for this mission ? Am I not capable of protecting you ? “. The great missionaries were humbled.

They immediately went to the sea shore, poured some oil on the boat and lit up fire. The boat was burnt down. Seeing the flames, large number of natives gathered. The missionaries proclaimed the Gospel. It is recorded that more than 200 natives accepted the Lord that very moment. It is also documented like this in their tombs: “ There was no Christian in this island when they landed here and there was no one left with , who did not know the Lord, when they died”. I read that John Kennedy was the missionary and his wife who went to this unknown tiny island for preaching the Gospel.

Prayer :  Dear Lord ,

Please bless us to have our faith only in You. Not on the tiny boat as we read in this story but let our eyes look upon only Jesus, for everything in our life.

We seek this in the mighty name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus.

Amen.

God’s Love Missions Family