“To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in His throne.” Revelation 3:21
I was thinking about the Gogodala people as the year turned pages from 2022 to 2023. They claim to be Christians. They have had missionaries in their territory for a long time. Each village has an ECP (Evangelical Church of Papua New Guinea) congregation. They have large conventions in different villages from time to time. But often in the evening, we hear yelling and fighting going on.
One young man recently broke into someone’s house to steal something. The owner came home, caught the thief and chased him down the ladder with a machete. The owner swung his knife at the young man and chopped his arm off, completely severing it except for a piece of skin holding his limb. Sadly, the young man died from blood loss on the way to the hospital. Who committed the greater crime? The thief? Or the out-of-control, machete-wielding victim of thievery? The truth is, they are both at fault. Unfortunately, this kind of situation is not uncommon in PNG.
I prayed, Lord, what can we do to help these people with their out-of-control tempers? I talked to Laurie about it, and we went to the Bible to find answers. We were reminded that in each of the seven churches of Revelation, there are overcomers. God expects His people to be victorious over the sin in their lives. But how can this be? Sin has such a strong hold on people. “And they overcame him [the accuser, Satan] by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony” (Revelation 12:11).
We were only three months away from dedicating our new training center, and there was much to do to prepare for the event. Should we dare break into that time with an overcomers’ conference? Of course! Helping people find freedom through Jesus Christ from the strongholds of sin is why we are here. We were convicted that this issue was sufficiently urgent to warrant putting together a conference as soon as possible.
We selected January 22-29, 2023, for the conference dates. In record time (two and a half weeks), we prayed, assembled notes, put together slide shows and advertised the conference. By design, this would not be just a one-program-per-day conference. This would be more like a camp that started each morning at 6:00 with worship, then a pause for breakfast followed by a two-hour work bee outside to help clean up the campus for the upcoming dedication. Afterward, we would hold a midmorning meeting which would last until noon and a look at Bible stories dealing with the day’s topic. We picked stories that showed examples of people who failed to overcome and people who overcame with God’s help—each day with a different focus: appetite, anger, sexual sins, addictions, and overcoming words.
Afternoons would include meetings to discuss practical solutions, followed by an evening video covering that day’s topic. We also asked the conference attendees to fast from eating meat; only a plant-based diet would be eaten for the week. The conference would not be free either. We would charge a nominal fee to cover the cost of the food (and if they did not have money to pay, we would ask them to bring food from their gardens). Despite the requirements, we had 85 people sign up.
Everything was going well with plans for the conference until the morning of the day the conference was to begin. I woke up with a high fever and felt very weak. There was much work to do to prepare the training center for the evening meeting. Laurie, a nurse, said, “Steve, you need to stay in bed. I will find people to help me get things ready. Then you can come and do your presentation in the evening and go back to bed.”
Thinking I had a flu or virus, I kept my distance from people. But the evening program proceeded fine, with me giving my presentation about the fruit of the Spirit while sitting in a chair with my leg elevated. That night, I woke up with a soaking wet shirt, a sure indication that my body was fighting an infection. The next day, I noticed my left leg was red, swollen and painful. That leg was badly bruised a month before when I fell out of a canoe while trying to cross a creek.
Until this point, my bruise seemed to be healing well. Now I noticed pimples popping out around the site of the bruise and one in particular, which, by Wednesday, grew into a cavernous hole the size of a dime and going about a half inch into my leg. With no doctors around, we treated it the same way we have treated other people’s tropical ulcers, with betadine, charcoal, honey and lots of prayer. We monitored the sore daily to watch for signs of healing, and it responded well to the treatments.
The Overcomers’ Conference was the first of its kind for us. The fact that this malady hit on the opening day is an interesting coincidence. Could it be that the enemy, Satan, was doing everything he could to stop the conference? I am sure he was. On the other hand, one could ask, “If God was able to keep this sickness from hitting me, why didn’t He?”
For answers to that question, we need only to go to the book of Job, which gives us a glimpse of what goes on behind the spiritual curtain. Job was a man “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1 ESV) and yet his life was turned upside down in one day with the loss of his riches and children. Finally, boils popped up, not merely on one leg but all over his body. I am counting my blessings. Thanks to a doctor friend in our home country who advised me to immobilize my leg for a while, my leg started healing quicker. Slowly but surely, the wound decreased in size until it completely closed up. I was so thankful when I no longer had to pull bloody gauze out of my leg every time I showered.
Despite my handicap, the Overcomers’ Conference was a tremendous blessing, not just to those who attended but to Laurie and myself as well. We have been asked to do another similar conference as soon as possible. Thank you for your prayers.
