False Prophets

Pastor Zach is gone for a month, conducting a pastors school. While he is gone, George is preaching on Sundays. Today he continued in 1st John and talked about false prophets. I, unfortunately, missed his sermon. Eli didn't sleep well last night resulting in very little sleep for me. My wonderful husband took Eli to church with him so I could sleep for a few hours and meet them later. I heard George did a great job.

At the discipleship class in the afternoon, they continued to discuss false prophets which are very common in Africa. They are motivated by money to exploit the needy and take advantage of them. People here are so desperate for a better life that they will try anything and cling to the hope that is offered. Sadly, it's false hope and they are left worse off than they were before. Here is one example – one girl in the class talked about a prophet who claimed to heal people. In exchange for money, she was given five stones and told to put them in a drink. If she drank from the cup with the stones, whatever she was suffering from would be healed. Our pastors wife found the stones and threw them away, telling her to put her faith in God alone. Other prophets will tell people to bring their sheep, soil, food, anything from home to them. He will pray for them and they will be blessed... for a fee, of course. It's so sad to hear about these stories.

The discussion was in Kiswahili so I didn't understand what was happening, but the debate was lively and exciting. The discussion was so good, it went into my class time. I was going to talk about finding rest in the Lord, but decided to hold off until next week. I try to get the ladies out on time (6:00pm) because it gets dark and our church doesn't have electricity and they need to get home to cook dinner. So,we went over last week's homework which was to come up with a New Years Resolution and plan to make it happen. I gave them a preview of next week by talking about the story of Mary and Martha before ending with prayer requests.

Another good Sunday at Yesu Anaweza.