the ayars affairs: she was.

What a Sabbath!

This is one of those stories.

Right before Matt headed to Port-au-Prince and the Heckmans headed to the airport to get their mothers, we 15 piled into two pick-ups and headed for Flavil, the tiny community where Belony is pastor.

Just to remind you, Belo graduated in 2010, works full-time at the Seminary, works more than full-time at his church and community in Flavil and is, whatever you call him, an evangelist.

The Flavil area is deeply engrained in an awful lot of lostness, which in Haiti, involves a lot of Voodoo tradition and mindedness. Belo works hard in the area of discipleship out there, little by little, training and forming away from a lifetime of voodoo mindset and into a Biblical worldview. It is no small challenge, and he has no small courage.

This past week an issue came up here at Emmaus involving a cow, an evil spirit, a cup of diesel fuel and a lot of confusion. To keep that whole thing short and as North American understandable as possible, a member--a Christian member--of the community whose cow is physically sick knows that it is because his cow walked the path of an evil spirit, who has now possessed it and is making it ill. In an effort to free/heal the cow, he is 'obliged' to try a voodoo custom of making some potion with diesel fuel (which he wanted the seminary to give him) to then rub on the cow to force the evil spirit to flee.

Frustrated that this was a conversation with a church-going member of the Saccanville community, (ie...the "Christian" response), Phil wisely found Belo and asked him WHAT the church in Saccanville is teaching about spiritual warfare if THIS is the only solution people in the church are seeing.

Turns out it wasn't Belo's first frustration with the Christian response to the vooodoo-mindset in Haiti this week.

When we filed into the church this morning, Belo already had a fire raging in his soul...one you could see. As soon as the announcements and worship time was over, he called up a rather rough young man, a woman-staring-at-the-floor, and their 3 year-old daughter, dressed to the nines, for what seemed like a child dedication or something. Belo, with great boldness and also care with his words, explained why they were there.

"As you know, this is the mother and father of this child. And they are afraid. When this woman was not in Christ, she carried this child for nine months. Nine months came and went, and the child could not be delivered. After much suffering, this mother, instead of coming to the church or heading to the hospital, as should have been done, called for a man in voodoo to come and make the baby come. He did his process, and the baby was born. However, before he left, he said to this woman, 'This child is mine, do not forget.'"

"Since then, of course, you know that this man and this woman have turned from that life and come to Christ. They are in this church and have raised their daughter in this church. I did not know about what happened before. However, 2 weeks ago, this woman had a vision. In that vision, she saw that same man and an evil spirit, and he/they said again, "Remember, this child is mine. She belongs to me."

"This is when she came to me, afraid, and explained what had happened, and asked if there is any hope. She asked if there is any way that this can not be true, now that she is in Christ."

You could have heard a pin drop, of course, and Belo did not pass by this teaching opportunity for EVERYONE in the church--those once in Voodoo (or perhaps still), those once owing something (and perhaps thinking they still do), or those wondering the same thing for their own lives.

THIS IS A HUGE QUESTION. It is the cow Question. It is most questions. In ALL cultures.

Does it really matter, day to day, if we are in Christ?

Does tradition, does superstition, does Voodoo, does our childhood, does our culture, does what always has been TRUMP ALL? Does this baby, once given to Satan, mean that she if forever Satans? Is there ANY hope in the face of darkness and voodoo? Is there ANY hope in the face of the world and all it's brokenness?

I love that Belo addressed it head on, addressed it publicly, addressed it bold and with truth and made it about EVERY SINGLE ONE of us, not just this child.

"If you are in Christ, you are a new creation. If you deny yourself and follow Him, you are HIS. This is not IN ADDITION to anything. This is not now working along with your old life in darkness. THIS IS NEW, THIS IS FREE, this is HOPE, and He is ALL powerful."

"We are going to do two things, and I want everyone to watch this and pray through this and go DO THIS in your life. If we are in Christ, we are to be entirely and permanently and drastically and completely DIVORCED from our old self, from Satan, from darkness. There is no place for the old mind, no place for the old life, no place for the old fear, no place for old debts that JESUS has paid."

"First, we're going to pray for this girl and her mother and father, and we are going to pray that the curse that ties her to darkness be broken even now and we are going to give her to God."

My heart cried out loudly in my chest as I stared at the little girl dressed in white in the front, Sofie's age. She belongs to God. He made her. We each and every ONE belong to Him.

"Then," Belony continued with great boldness and passion, suggesting something I have NEVER heard ANYONE suggest, nor ever even thought of suggesting. "We are going to pray for great courage and boldness for this father and mother, and they are going to go to that man of satan and they are going to tell him."

"They will stand in his face and they will say, 'We were in what you are in, and when we were in it, we did what we did. But we are NOT any more. We are now in Christ, and what you are in holds NO power over those who are in Christ. We are free from your curse and we are free from those you serve and we are free from any debt and we are here today to tell you that we are done, the curse is broken and we are children of the Almighty God, and our daughter is HIS."

"WE WILL NOT," Belo professed passionately, "Continue to think that we owe what we owed when we were in Voodoo, when we were in darkness. We will NOT live in ways of voodoo and superstition and darkness while we are claiming to be in the Light. The Light has overcome the darkness we continue to choose to live in, and WE WILL NOT."

"We are going to pray for this girl, now!"

Any good prayer time in Haiti starts with song, and before the song even began, God broke my heart and moved my butt.

I do NOT go up front in church and I do not get involved in things that missiologically, my brain knows is not of my culture and best done by those in relationship with the family, those of the same culture, etc.

But God doesn't always (ever) care about my grand missiology or what I've read and learned and decided, and darn it, I do a lot of things wrong, but the ONLY great regrets of my life are the times God has clearly told me to GO, DO, SPEAK and I have cowered and refused. Jonah moments.

And usually, when He has pushed my heart to GO or DO or SPEAK, it has been NOW and the window is NOW or never.

With unexpected tears on my face, I went and grabbed that girly's hand and I prayed like all of life depended on it, because it does.

ALL OF LIFE depends on this truth, and I'm not just talking about in Haiti.

Does it REALLY MATTER if we are in Christ?

Yes and yes and a thousand times yes.

It's ALL that matters. And it has to affect everything we do, say, believe, every habit, every superstition, every response.

We prayed over that little girl throughout the song and into powerful prayer time.

I prayed her mom and dad would give God every inch. I prayed God would redeem. I prayed there would be NOTHING kept from Him. I prayed that this little one He knows intimately and created carefully and loves dearly would grow up in the freedom and love that ONLY HE OFFERS to Haiti, to her, to me, to the world.

I didn't tell God about what Satan thought or what Satan had or anything about his defeated enemy. I'm sick to death of what we let him do, and I'm not too concerned about who he is.

I'm concerned solely with who HE is. And God filling what is already His and always has been is not much of a challenge.

But neither God nor Satan take what they are not GIVEN. God doesn't force our love, doesn't force our commitment, doesn't force our decisions, doesn't make us _______. Satan doesn't take what we're not making room for him to, doesn't step where there is no place for his foot, doesn't make us sin any more than he made Eve eat.

So I was praying for that family, and I am praying again tonight. That they would give Him all, that He would fill them with Himself, that they would close EVERY door and shed EVERY fear and break EVERY bond with darkness, by His mighty power and grace, and that the testimony of the life God is offering, that Belo offered today, becomes that little girl's LIFE.

We all finished by the blood of Jesus, and then the actual sermon, just as powerful, naturally began as Belo poured through the Word's support of suffering being a part of taking up our cross and following Him.

I couldn't have been prouder of Belony, humbly and boldly confessing, reconfessing, re-re-confessing the truth again and again and again to the many young men and women who call him pastor and brother and friend, engraining, little by little, a NEW old reality...patiently persevering despite discouragement after setback, in a NEW worldview for a very long lost world.

I couldn't have been prouder of him, after confessing it over and over, for the way he DOES and LIVES and TESTIMONIES the truths he is confessing. The confidence the whole church had that when they GO to that man of darkness, Belony will have a hand on their shoulders. The way that instead of holding on to the truth and light that he has, he boldly APPLIES it to EVERY situation, not shrugging it off as "Haitian" or "human" as "how it is" but FIGHTING it with every fiber of his being...Haitian, once, but now SOLEY HIS.

He was a drummer, Belo. He doesn't let us forget it any more than Paul let others forget that he was once Saul. Beating the drums all through the night at voodoo sacrifice events. Lived by it, known for it. Belony beat the drums.

And she was Satan's.