Let me encourage your heart tonight with a true story.  It's about a dear Cameroonian friend of ours. 

Like so many others, he was born and raised in a strong traditional religion family.  They were not involved in any church of any flavor, but they faithfully followed all the traditional religion obligations.  Just so you'll know, traditional religion in all it's many forms is nothing more or less than the worship of the devil and his demons.  Our friend bears scars all over his body from little cuts made by the sorcerer as he was doing his various evil incantations to ward off this and that in this young life.

He has several older sisters.  Our friend is the first born son which is a very important position. He has younger brothers and one more sister.  When he was twelve years old, his father dropped dead in front of his eyes of a massive heart attack.  His mother was very pregnant with her last child at the time.  It had not been a good marriage, but at least her husband had  a good job, and money was not a problem.  They were part of the very small middle class out here in Cameroon.  Immediately the sorcerer showed up to let the new widow know that someone had put a curse on the family. It was that curse that killed her husband.  She would soon be loosing each of her children, one by one.  She needed to do something quickly to break this curse.  In utter fear (traditional religion is a fear-based religion) she began doing whatever the sorcerer said she must do.  And he began bleeding her dry.  When she was finally reduced to abject poverty, she came to her senses and made a break with the sorcerer.  She was now feeding her family through subsistence farming.  Life had become very, very difficult.  She still clung to the traditional religion, even though she no longer had the means (or desire) to pay for protection for her family.  Somewhere along the way, her second son, who is two years younger than our friend, heard the gospel and was soundly converted.  He suffered much persecution at the hands of his family.  Basically, they were afraid of the demons.  If he abandoned their religious practices, who would carry them on?  And what would the demons do to harm them for letting their son follow this false "cult"?  That's their name for Christianity.  Our friend freely admits the he led the way in persecuting his brother, and their mother was right behind him.  But six long years later, she finally declared that her son had found something true, and she wanted what he had.  So she gave her heart and life to the Lord and has never looked back. 

About two weeks later, someone shared the gospel with our friend and he, too prayed to receive Christ as his Savior, due in large part to the big change he was watching take place in his mother's life.  But nothing happened.  He kept living his old life.  Nothing changed.  A short time later, someone else shared the gospel with him and once again our friend prayed to received the Lord Jesus in his life.  Again, nothing changed.  After a time, a third person shared the gospel with him and for the third time he became a Christian.  But this time God intervened.  Two weeks later his brother's friend learned of a job opening at Shiloh and shared this opportunity with him.  Though he was out of work himself, he decided to give this opportunity to his older brother.  And thus the older brother showed up at Shiloh, applying for the job.  When we interviewed him for the position, he told us he had accepted the Lord just two weeks prior.  

 

Many years would pass before our friend shared the whole story of the multiple salvation experiences.  He declared to us that he is confident that if he had not come to us at that time, he would still be wandering out there in the world, always accepting the Lord but never really showing any evidence of the new life.  He hates to think where he would be and how his life would be.  He has told us many, many times that everything he knows about God he learned right here at Shiloh.  It's true.  We have had the thrill of watching him grow up in the Lord.  He came to us a baby who didn't know anything at all.  We were the ones to point out sin in his life, and work with him to leave that behind, and move ever more deeply into our Lord.  What  a thrill it has been these last nine years to watch him be transformed more and more into the image of God.  He's no longer that young man who knew absolutely nothing.  Now he's a married man, with two children.  He's an elder in his church.  He's on fire for the Lord.  And he puts us to shame all the time. 

Our God can do all things.  Nothing is impossible for Him.  And it's His work.  We are just called upon to be faithful in doing our little part.  He is the One Who brings people into His Kingdom.