Believers

Gabriel has just told Mary she was to become pregnant with the Messiah while remaining a virgin. 

Let that sink in for a bit. I never wrestled with doubt more than when I began to unpack stories like these for people who had never heard the Gospel before. I observed for the first time what the Bible sounded like to a person who had not spent every Christmas with a nativity in their living room. It is a sketchy-sounding story when filtered through that lens. As I unpacked the Bible word for word to explain it well to the unreached, I began to sense the crumbling of so many false beliefs I had gleaned along my Christian walk. There were disturbing things in the Bible that I had never read before. There were things I had believed that were not in the Bible. I didn't like the crumbling. I was safe in what I thought I knew about Jesus. Yet, Jesus, the Gospel, the entire message is anything but safe. The Word of God is dangerously transforming to those who will Believe it. But who would believe it? 

We never did mean to start a church. It was so accidental; it's embarrassing. Accidental is a beautiful word to describe much of what God did with us in Mongolia. It began as a knock on our gate, a sweet Mongolian woman introducing herself as our neighbor and asking, "Will you teach me about your Bible?” 

Six weeks into that first Bible study with me wresting the tension of how on earth to explain this stuff in a way that doesn't sound like a made-up story, she fell to her knees and cried out to Jesus for forgiveness of sin. She was our first Believer. And more followed, so many more. Bible study accidentally became a church when neighbors brought uncles and uncles brought friends and friends brought the taxi driver. Some would tell us that they thought we were nuts until Jesus came in a dream to tell them we were right ...He was the one true God, and we could be trusted. Thank you, Jesus, for that helpful, five-star recommendation. We tried so hard to do it right, to take it slow, to explain it well. We tried to make the Bible stories make sense. But ultimately, it had so little to do with our methods and efforts. We missionaries were small, unqualified, and prideful. But the Believers believed in Someone greater than us. They believed the story we told despite our flaws because it was the truth, no matter how out of this world it sounded. 

Mary, she too believed an outlandish plan. "Okay, I'm willing," she responds.
"May everything you say will happen to me.... happen.”