deliverance – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

May 2, 2017August 28, 2017

Solace For Mourning

My foolish act, passing an anguished mother along a roadside so I could make a preaching appointment, kept me stuck in long-term remorse.

For years I periodically revisited in my mind’s eye the awful scene. Each time, left sorrowing, self-detesting, grieved.

I had been given, at my own hand, a teaching moment of a severe kind. Any hearing the term good Samaritan thereafter drew a self-inflicted stab. If I had been a character in Jesus’s famous parable that Sunday morning, I was anything but the generous passerby readily lending aid. I was one of the other guys, the Levi, the Priest. Preoccupied. Dutifully religious. Hurrying to my assigned post.

Over time I gleaned insights – and healing – through my reflections as I learned to bring them, along with their pain, openly to God.

Interior questions got verbalized in one way or other. How could I have done it? What drove me to shirk responsibility? How can a string of roadway tragedies witnessed over time so desensitize a man to human suffering?

The hardest question to resolve went unspoken, even unformed. It lay churning within, begging a response. Do I find closure? Do I forgive myself?

In time the dark voice of self-loathing quieted enough that I caught a whispered message, a merciful intervention, surprisingly tender in tone. God’s voice.

I found that he had whispered it all along, but that had drowned the gentle voice by my own self-accusing chorus. His response to my inquiries came themselves as questions. Something after this fashion.

Was my mercy withheld from my servant-king who defiled a man’s wife then murdered him to cover his wrong?

Was not my friend who three times in succession disowned me not afterward commissioned as my trusted emissary?

Have not innumerable followers who have offended, failed and invited shame been welcomed, embraced and celebrated as was the prodigal of my long-ago parable?

He gently pressed on.

Were the negligent priest and Levite on Jericho’s roadway valued less by me than the assaulted man? And you, my son, does your worthiness trace to your own virtue, to your forever choosing rightly when testing comes? Does your goodness qualify your worth? Did my sacrifice at Golgatha prove adequate for the sins of all except for yours – are you the lone exception?

Through the questionings, and further whisperings, healing had entered.

The tragic roadway picture reemerges occasionally. But between me, that scene and a myriad others spotlighting my frailties, stands another image – of a cross-marked hilltop outside a middle eastern town.

I taste the nectar of deliverance and offer the one response I can, “Praise you, Praise you, Lord”.

November 20, 2017

World of Spirits

Spirits. Good. Evil.

What is this thing, this world of spirits? How real is the unseen world? Do invisible personalities carry influence, power with people – sometimes over them?

I pondered the questions off-and-on. Growing up in the Pentecostal tradition, I had heard things about the spirit-world referenced plenty of times. Demon-oppression – Spiritual warfare – Deliverance ministry, and the like. My understanding was limited but the idea seemed reasonably simple.

Those good, powerfully strong beings of the angel variety represented God’s good presence at work in the world. By contrast, dark, evil, destructive forces issued from the kingdom of Satan, God’s biggest adversary. These dark beings were real and to be taken as seriously as angels. Teachers of scripture and the bible itself had shined light on the subject. That, though God himself is supreme, having no rival, no equal, much of humanity suffers in some measure under the deceiver, the accuser. This view, with plenty of Bible to commend, had informed much of my belief on the issue of spirit beings.

For me, it was also personal. I had sometimes sensed a a thing that felt like a dark, eerie presence. Not often but enough to trouble me, leaving me unsettled and sometimes fearful.

Living now in deep Africa, I discovered something I had long heard. The world at large – outside North American, European and other Western cultures – needed no persuading whether the spirit world existed. They required no convincing if spirit beings might play a role in living, breathing human beings.

First-hand encounters with witchcraft jarred me out of any guesswork about the matter.

I was enjoying lunch at the home of a missionary friend – another Jerry – in Southwestern Kenya. Jerry taught in a vocational school. The tribal people of the region had generations-long histories featuring spirit powers they knew to be evil. Placing curses on people was as common in some areas as the presence of moisture was common to a rainy season. Divination, witchcraft and the like, saw powerful spirit influences, fueled by fear.

A youth on a bicycle sped toward the house where we were. He came from the school’s direction a mile away.

“Mr. Jerry, Mr. Jerry!”

My friend set his tea cup down and moved outside.

After a brief visit with the boy, my host called up, “A student at the school is in trouble. Want to come with me?”

We set off on the ragged road – hardly more than a foot path. Less than five minutes the car jostled to a stop.

A tall, robust-looking youth sat on an outcropping of rock – one common to the area, rising about four feet out of the ground. In every way the student looked like, from a distance, a fine specimen of health. Except, that is, for his demeanor. And the trembling hands. His eyes shifted repeatedly away from direct contact. They seemed dark, fearful. He held his head as in a vice – sandwiched in a tight grip between the palms of his two large hands.

Missionary Jerry gently questioned the boy and one or two friends. He summarized the problem as best he could. The boy suffered an overpowering head-throb. It pulsed with searing pain. Indeed, he looked tortured.

But the pain’s source was not biological. Not really.

June 1, 2018June 2, 2018

Learning Curve

It’s unnerving getting interrupted when giving a public talk – more-so when demons are involved.

Through our Kenya and Tanzania years I grew thankful for the wisdom and courage of African servants of Jesus. Many challenged me in positive ways – not so much by direct words, but by life-example – in things like discernment and spiritual authority.

Scenario: How do you counsel the second wife of an unbelieving polygamous husband who has come to faith in Christ?

Such tricky problems, I discovered, don’t get easily fixed through pat answers by well-meaning outsiders. Put another way, simple solutions do not fare well in the world of the complex. Cultural divides compound things. Reconciling family traditions to the Way of Jesus demands patience, grace and wisdom. What a relief discovering I served among church leaders who – though some lacked greatly in overall Bible knowledge – understood how to rightly address baffling questions that I and my fellow expats were, frankly, clueless about.

***

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.” (as usual, few people can distill a truth better than C.S. Lewis)

What’s with all the screaming?

The lake region was a magnet to demons, or so it appeared. Generations of witchcraft practice seemed to fling regional doors open to dark displays of the invisible underworld.

Taking my place behind a simple wooden pulpit I rested my Bible there and surveyed the gathering. A light lake breeze made its way inland now and then to blunt the oppressive mid-day heat. It was District Convention time and congregations from the area had set up makeshift shelters of straw to shield from the sun’s brutal rays. Three days of teaching, of celebrating, of praying and of feasting were getting underway.

I had barely begun my message when a clearly troubled woman rose in the audience. Her first cries were soft but quickly became louder. A rhythmic chant followed, growing more shrill, more distressing by the moment. Soon she seemed out of control. . . or under the control of some alien influence.

Without my uttering a word or signaling for any help, two tribal gentlemen moved quickly to the woman’s side. Addressing her in moderate but deliberate tones, the men succeeded in relocating her to a space a short distance from our gathering. I learned later on that these intervening men had experience in exorcising bad spirits from the demonically-troubled.

My audience seemed unrattled by the interruption and I resumed preaching. Several minutes of my early remarks from scripture were only slightly muffled by shouts from the deliverance quarters, “Come out of her. Out in Jesus’ Name!” All the while the poor woman’s unnatural voice ebbed and flowed with irregular volume. At last all went silent. Soon the freed lady re-entered the meeting and conducted herself in a perfectly civil manner.

Again I thanked God it was they – the wise and Spirit-equipped Africans – who answered the call to such crises, and to puzzlements “beyond our pay grade”. Gaining appreciation that useful missionaries. . . if they are anything. . . are observers. Learners.

Thank you, Lord. And help us.

August 17, 2018

Aidini

“I go to the Coast to mock him. And to beat him when he shows the lie.”

The big man was strong, menacing. Anyone having experience with Alexander Aidini knew his threat was not small talk.

“He is no man of God, this foreigner!” the angry African went on. “He comes to our land a trickster. Come, we shall beat him together, all of us. We go to Mombasa!”

The object of Aidini’s contempt was an American preacher. T. L. Osborn had come with his evangelistic team from Oklahoma to Kenya’s coastal city on the Indian Ocean, “to preach the gospel, to proclaim Jesus Christ in power. . . to heal and deliver and bring salvation.” He labeled the open-air meetings “crusades”.

Osborn’s preaching campaigns had been many and were known to draw thousands, with large numbers of sick and suffering among them. Aidini was sure all was a hoax to exploit the masses. He would show it up for what it was.

Among the half dozen toughs accompanying Aidini was a man whose mother was blind.

“Bring your mother with us, bring Mama Zaila. When the white man makes prayer for healing in the meeting, we will put her there. When her eyes remain dark and she is not well this will show the lie. And there we will move, we will break the mzungu just there!” Three days travel brought them to their destination.

Leaving their Land Rover beneath a gnarled tree next to a kiosk, the group entered the stream of tribal people making their way by foot toward the blaring loudspeaker. Mombasa’s port-city-atmosphere with its salty aroma was heavy, humid.

“Take care, Mama Zaila, do not rush. Hold tight to my arm.” The woman clung to her son’s forearm, her useless eyes staring into blackness.

Africa is a vast place with pockets of equally dense populations swarming across sprawling cities. Still, the crowd flooding Mombasa’s big outdoor field, was bigger than any the Congolese visitors had known. It was clear the name Osborn evoked interest.

The band of half-dozen strangers from a thousand miles westward pushed their way deeper into the crowd, their goal the big wooden stage where the mzungu preacher and his wife, Daisy sat. At either side of the American couple were invited local dignitaries along with a number of Africa church and mission heads.

Poised at last before the stage, the Congolese gang – their sightless companion in tow – awaited their moment. For Aidini it could not come soon enough.