Ghana Day 12: Still Small Voice.

I slept well last night. I woke up around 7AM. No one told me what time they were going to pick me up, so I lazed around awhile feeling rebellious. If I am not ready, they will wait. It is likely they won’t get me until 9AM or so however, so I couldn’t have been all THAT rebellious.

Not long after I woke up, the hotel sent up breakfast. They just knock on your door a little after 7 with a tray. If you didn’t plan on waking up that early, you are just supposed to deal with it. I don’t know. It is their idea of service. I set the tray down and crawled back into bed. I want to slowly wake up.

Finally, I showered and got dressed and then set down to breakfast. The breakfast is the standard hotel breakfast for Americans. They don’t serve me millet they would serve a Ghanaian, they serve me a fried egg, pork-n-beans, and some toast. I drank the rest of the juice I had and ate one of the bananas. Then I ate the bread. I looked at the egg and just felt something inside me say, “Don’t eat that egg”. No problem, it didn’t look all that great anyway, but I could have eaten it on my bread.

 

I lay back down and turned on my Bible reading. I need to catch up, AnnaMay will be miles ahead of me. I haven’t had the time to sit and read my Bible as I should with all the busyness and I have been focusing on being prayerful about the services and preaching, so that has lagged.

After some time they come to pick me up. Bro Jeff asks if I’ve had breakfast. I told him I had and he said “Oh, they did not bring me”  (He means they did not bring him anything) So I offer some of the bananas, apples, and any of my breakfast. Maybe I didn’t eat that egg so he could have it.  I reasoned. Inside though, I hoped it would be ok. I was glad he could get something to eat, as it was time to go.

This morning I could not get a peace about what to preach. I had thought to bring “Lucifer’s Style of Worship” but it just does not feel right. I bowed my head in the pastor’s study. Lord, what is it? What should I bring this morning? What do you have for your people?”  I start leafing through my sermons and pull out “Wilt thou be made whole”. Is this the one for today Lord?  As the song service went on, somebody said something about millennium. I start to look at “Millennium without repentance”. “No, it cannot be that. It has to be Wilt thou be made whole” Am I sure? Not really. Do I know it is God’s speaking to me? No, usually I question if it is just me. But I am learning to listen to Him more, he speaks so quietly, in a still small voice.

I am called up to preach, I read the scripture, pray and announce my title. I tell the people

“I was going to preach something different this morning, but God led me in a different direction. So we are very aware that God is in control, and that He has something specific for us today. Someone here is in need of healing. Not just physical healing, but healing in the heart. God is speaking to us today.”

The sermon can be heavy at times. Many times I look out and see a brother or sister close their eyes and bow their heads after a point is made. The point has made it home to their inner being, to the inside of the inside, straight to the heart. They know God just spoke directly to them.

Bro Stephen is saying “God have mercy!” so many times throughout the sermon. I know it is impacting him. After service Bro John comes to me to thank me for the sermon. “You were preaching to me. That message this morning was to me. God help me.” There is pain that is underlying his words. Pain, but also hope and resolve. I do not know what it is, but God spoke to Him. Bro John knows what he must do. God will heal him, but there is something he must do to make ready to receive. I’m thankful I preached what the still small voice said I should preach.

 

 

After service some young people want my contact information. I only give them my ministry email. One young brother wants me to bring him an iPhone next time I come. “So it’s a deal?” he asks. I tell him IF I happen to have an extra one, I will bring one, but I may not have an extra one. If his father or pastor knew he asked that, I don’t think they would have been happy with him.

Other brothers have some questions regarding Bro Joseph or various doctrinal things. I answer the best I can. I am very cautious in my answers. If I say, “oh, don’t worry about that, it is fine” like I feel it probably is, they may run away with it and fall into disgrace. I try to keep it to what the Word says and show them a balance. They must pray about their own things though.

We “foot” up the hill to a brother’s house for lunch. (we walked). “We are footing it” was a new phrase combined with accent that took me a few moments to understand.

Here are some similar phrases that are new/interesting

We are footing it

I was calling but you did not pick.  (you didn’t pick up the phone/you didn’t answer)

I will take it.  (various forms. Do you take it? As they offer something to you.   No, I do not take that one. I think we would normally say “have” and they replace it with take.)

They did not bring me.  (They didn’t bring me breakfast, or lunch, or whatever is being talked about that was not brought to whomever)

My “international chef” Bro has prepared food for me. I am sooo thankful because they brought banku to the others again. I’m not sure I can eat banku and maybe not even fufu since the banku was so rough on my stomach last Sunday. He brings me potato soup. Bless the Lord this is what I’ve been thinking I will probably have when I get home to calm my stomach! He also brings a plate of green beans, French fries, and Fried fish fillets.  “They are fillets” he says with a smile, “no bones”. I love this brother, he is so sweet. He knows Americans usually eat fish without bones whereas they eat the fish cooked whole. The green beans were cooked with some salt and garlic and were really quite good. The soup was nice, and the fish fillets were passable. I think they were equivalent to something frozen from SAMs. To be quite honest, the fish the brothers were eating was probably way better. Still, I am so thankful for the care for me, I am happy to eat what is served, no bones and all!

Bro Jeff gets up from the table. “It is not going so good with me, I need to rest”. He sits in the living room to rest. After a few minutes he got up and motioned he was headed to the rest room, and we hear the sound of Bro Jeff throwing up.

It was the egg. I’m sure it was the egg. It HAD to be the egg. God showed me I WAS listening to His voice this morning. It wasn’t just a “funny feeling”, it was the still small voice that speaks to the heart. I feel bad bro Jeffrey had to throw up to prove it though. God help me to have more confidence in listening to that inner voice.

As Bro Jeffrey revives we had finished our lunch. We depart the house and Bro Stephen has more questions. He has already asked some Marriage and Divorce questions, now he wants to know about birth control. Oh goody. I have to be sooo guarded and careful in how I answer. I know he is not trying to find loop holes or excuses for things, he is wondering how to handle situations as a pastor.

Back at the hotel we talk about the plans. They are going to pick us (back up) at 4 and we will go to the coffee shop I read about on the internet before I left. Then we are going up the road 30-40 minutes to another little church for me to preach. How this happened I do not know, Bless the Lord I feel strong enough to do it though.

I felt good so I did not sleep. I wrote some of this and read over some of the last few days. At 4(ish) they come to pick us (back up). We go to the coffee shop, this is obviously where the Americans hang out in Ghana. Everything is MUCH nicer here. The coffee shop is closed, but the attendant there says to go to the Marriott if you want coffee. I don’t need a cup that bad, I actually wanted to try the coffee shop because of the reviews it had on the internet, but this has turned into “get brother Trevor a cup of good coffee” so how can I convince them otherwise. We find the Marriott. It is a very American Marriott. The glass doors part automatically and the cool air in a centrally air conditioned building hits me. Oh how sweet it is!

I ask the bellman if there is a coffee shop. There isn’t per se, but they have a cappuccino machine at the bar. I sit down and get an iced coffee. They don’t have caramel, but that’s ok. I take hot coffee black, so I can take iced coffee that way too.

It was a really good cup of coffee. It smelled heavenly when he made it. I fully enjoyed it. I could have languored there all afternoon. The nice comfy chairs, sipping on nice beverages, enjoying the central air.

God Bless you Marriott. I am spoiled. I enjoy it too.

We depart after my coffee. (Let’s not discuss how stupid I felt that someone brings me to a hotel, I get out, go order a cup of coffee, and then we leave.)

I had told Bro Jeffrey that if there wasn’t a service scheduled for Sunday night, do not schedule one. He doesn’t listen well. Thankfully, I feel as good today as I did at the start of the trip. Perhaps the pressure of what’s ahead is so much less. Either way, praise God! So we head to Arunda or something like that. It’s a funny little walk to the church. Feels very safari/jungle like. I took a video of the walk to the church:

 

 

I preached on Relationship vs Nicolaitanism again. If you’ve made it this far on the blog, you understand the basic points of the sermon. However, the power fluctuated so often on us. It’s a decent sized church, but my voice could do it without the microphone, so we just kept on going in the dark. (With the aid of cell phone camera lights!)

At one point, I am in the middle of an illustration with a brother on the platform. I come to the part where they are really supposed to see him doing something, but how can they without lights? I am about to just describe it to the people and I say “if the lights were on….”

Do I even need to say what happened as soon as I said “on”?

I also realized that when I do this illustration here in Ghana, as I am trying to illustrate what it means to know Christ, and I am describing a brother to the audience and then have someone “meet” him, that to ask a Ghanaian what his favorite food is so I can describe the person to the people, is silly. It is Banku. It will always be Banku. I don’t expect to meet a Ghanaian man and them to ever have a different answer than Banku as their favorite food.

We had a nice service and I trust the people were blessed. There was one family who heard about the service earlier and they were in Accra. They drove all the way over just to hear me preach, and they arrived to hear me speak the last word before “Shall we pray”. The poor people. That is probably the equivalent of driving from Jeffersonville to Fort Wayne (or farther) without using the interstate. God Bless them for their efforts.

I am done. I have preached 13 sermons over 12 days. The pressure is off. I feel free. I am excited to go home and be with my family again. I will eat at Panera Bread, drink tea with lemonade, and then perhaps cry before God for my precious brothers and sisters here in Africa. Not that they don’t have all the comforts that I do, but that the going is so very rough in so many ways.

I’ve found Africa to be like that though. You have to fight almost for everything. At the restaurant, it feels like you are fighting the waitress to bring you food. At the hotel, I felt like I had to fight to get an internet connection. Everything seems like a battle, I suppose everything is a battle spiritually as well. Yet we find that the believers are flourishing here. There may be more churches and believers in Ghana than perhaps the US. Certainly that can be said of Congo, but Ghana makes a case for it as well.

While our money would probably help, they don’t need it per se. Infrastructure in their country would certainly help them. Truly they need our prayers. It is a hard way of life, and it will take a lot to make it better. We thank God that we are looking for a city that is to come, and not trying to make a millennium down here. If we were, we’d have a long way to go!

Tomorrow, we will leave Takoradi, stop by Cape Coast Slave Fort, and then head to the airport in Accra for me to be ready for my flight. Hopefully AnnaMay can check me in for my flight tonight, or where can I find internet as early as possible so that I can check in for the flight and choose a seat. I DO NOT WANT A MIDDLE SEAT!