Weakness

Our Turkish pastor and his wife have faithfully been sharing the Gospel with their family members for 19 years and only in the last 18 months have begun to see the fruit from their perseverance. Last month our pastor's brother Mehmet* and sister-in-law Reyhan* were baptised, praise God!

Reyhan shared in her testimony the impact of a sermon L preached last summer from John chapter 18, on Jesus protecting his disciples when he is arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was as if the countless times she'd heard the Gospel before had been pushing her towards a cliff edge, and that sermon was the final gentle nudge she needed to go over the edge and into the arms of Christ. 

L and Reyhan were talking a couple of weeks back and Reyhan was telling L that she wished that others could here that sermon as L preached it. He replied and told her that she could relate it to others and it would sound much better.

Because the truth is, our Turkish is respectable for foreigners who have been here for four years but it's not what we'd like it to be. We can talk about all kinds of issues, but the faster and more off-the-cuff we speak, the more grammatical mistakes start creeping (and sometimes flooding) in. When we're talking to supporters, our least favourite question is 'would you say that you are fluent in Turkish?' because 'fluent' means all kinds of things to different people. Yet it is undoubtedly true that to be fluent in daily conversation is very different from fluency in giving a 25 minute sermon where language ability does not distract from the sermon content, where the right words, phrases and illustrations are used to teach in a way that is clear and helpful, where the Word of God is expounded with clarity and authority. Unsurprisingly L has to work much harder on his Turkish sermons than he had to do on his English sermons. He gets a friend to double check the grammar. He practises it several times before hand to make sure that he can avoid any semblance of reading it but properly preach it. And even then, he will inevitably stumble over a few words. The flow of words is never as smooth as he would like it to be. It is not going to be the most eloquent sermon ever delivered.

But Reyhan's response to L was humbling. She told him that the sermon he'd preached had impacted her not despite, but because of the foreign preacher's imperfect Turkish. Even in our native language, we struggle with the words to convey what it was for faithful Son of God to willingly lay down his life for us, his faithless friends. Jesus' actions as he is arrested are mindblowing. He steps out in the dark to meet an armed group of Roman soldiers, religious leaders who are ferocious in their desire to see him executed, all guided by one of his closest companions who has betrayed him. He identifies himself so that his disciples might go free, knowing that just a few hours later they would all abandon him. And his sacrificial death on the cross was for us who trust in Christ today too - we who know that we would have done the same as Peter, who know that we have not always been faithful in our witness for Jesus.

But as L struggled to get across to his listeners the courage, the steadfastness, the rawness of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Spirit of God took his foreign-accented words and slight stumblingnesss and used them to deeply effect a sinner who needed to come to Christ. The Spirit of God didn't use them even though they were imperfect. No, the Holy Spirit took L's sermon and used it so that the stumbling of speech magnified what was said about our Saviour who was, and is, faithful even when his followers stumble and fall.

So we marvel at our God's embracing of our weaknesses, our lack of eloquence, our unpersuasive words. We praise God that he uses the foolish and weak things of this world so that we cannot boast but give all glory to God. And we thank God that in this large country with just a tiny number of believers, he is at work in people's lives.

*Names changed to protect identities