#EN2010 Day 2: The Breaking of the Walls

Second day of Every Nation World Conference. Walls were broken, spiritually speaking. And the SMX building was shaken, literally speaking.

I’m not sure if I would ever find the correct English words to write about what happened yesterday. The speakers from different countries all brought something fresh to the conference, something to drive home the fact that the gospel of Jesus has been changing the spiritual, political and cultural landscapes of the world.

During dinner, my brothers and I talked about how the conference revealed fresh truths for us as a family. CNN Hero Efren Penaflorida’s testimony of how the gospel changed his life and led him to give back to his community confronted us with a new question. How are we treating our hometown now that God has blessed us here in the city? Like Efren, we also came from the poorest of families in a distant village in Leyte where McDonalds was never heard of. Like Efren, God blessed us in our chosen careers. But the similarity ends there. Efren gave back. We relocated. Ouch.

The preacher from India and the pastor from a restricted country both shared powerful messages that are too long to recount here. (Again, you can listen to the full podcasts at EN2010.com). The one major point that I got out of their messages was the unique way they both encountered Jesus. One of them met God in the rain (and got saved through a McDonalds hamburger) while the other felt His touch as he was left on the side of the road, dying.

These testimonies are emotionally moving but what made them more interesting and more dramatic was the fact that the guy from the restricted country met Jesus through a Filipino missionary. This simple bit of information was enough to drive me to tears. It made me think of World Partners Program and little things we can do to help send missionaries abroad.

A few years back, I attended a Victory church service in U-Belt where the pastor not only preached about mission theories but really brought in testimonies fresh from the mission fields. Young people who have just been through ten-day mission trips reported on the harvest they witnessed. I remember sitting there feeling skeptical about their reports.”Ten days!” I thought. How could ten days change a nation? Are they even sure these kids are not simply taking vacation in a foreign land? Forgive my raw thoughts. I have long repented of my ignorance and I’m ashamed that the thought even crossed my mind.

Yesterday, as I heard the preachers speak of how they met Jesus through Filipino missionaries, I was sharply reminded that the money we sow into the lives of these missionaries are actually producing multiplied results in the international spiritual landscape. Whoever partnered with the Filipino missionary who reached the student (who is now leading a significant movement in the restricted nation I just mentioned above) would never have known that the money he sent is now making endless ripples in that country and the world over. The money that was used to buy McDonald’s hamburger is now being rippled back to the Philippines, setting so many hearts on fire, triggering renewed commitment among those who heard that testimony.

As the day came to a close, I saw before me the crumbling down of my own walls of excuses and alibis. I’m certain that something in me was forever changed after I saw this coming together of many nations. I can never look back now. I know that even if I am just as small as an ant crawling in a majestic cathedral, I have within me the power and the potential to make a difference in this big wide world. If I could just touch a soul, or give a thousand pesos to a student missionary, or do one to one discipleship with someone who will later become a key figure in a society, then I would have made a lasting impact on this world, an impact that would later send ripples everywhere.