God Enjoys the Impossible — Otto Koning

God’s Power to Help Those Who Trust Him

I'd like you to turn to 2 Chronicles 16 9, and that's a portion about the, where that famous verse is that most of you know and probably have memorized, about God wanting to show himself strong in the behalf of those whose heart is upright before him, and that's verse 9 of chapter 16 of 2 Chronicles.

This, let's read the verse, For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show himself strong in the behalf of those whose heart is perfect towards him. Now this is a story of King Asa, and King Asa reigned for 41 years, that's a long time, and in the early part of his reign he had a great victory, and the prophet reminds him of that in verse 7, how there was a huge army of Ethiopians and Lubans came up against him, and the man, the king being young, unexperienced, and so on, cries out to God, and God helps him in a great victory, and that's usually what we do when we're new, and we don't, we haven't had the experience behind us, and we wonder what to do with new situations, and we cry out to God.

Now, about 30 -70 years later, he has a much smaller army, as a matter of fact, it's the northern kingdom, the Israelites come against him, and now he's got all this experience under his belt, see, and now he can handle it himself, and he goes to the king of Syria and says, help me against Israel, and what a foolish thing that is, but isn't that true, that you think you can do it now, you're further down the road, and you forget how desperate you were when earlier, and when you struggle, and you cried out to God, and so then the prophet comes, the seer, his name is Hanani, in verse 7, Hanani, the seer, came to Asa, king of Judah, and then he reminds him, were it not the Ethiopians are a huge host, remember that, remember that victory of the past, remember what God did for you, it was a miracle how he came through, and have you forgotten why did you now go to man for help instead of God for help, what happened to your relationship to God, don't you believe he exists anymore, don't you believe he longs to show himself strong, and he says, hey, for God, he scans the whole earth, he's looking, his eyes cover all the earth, looking for opportunities to show himself strong, and you've just denied him of a huge opportunity to show himself strong, and you left God sitting there unemployed, and you've been to help as if God didn't want to do it, friends, God is still wanting to show himself strong in this world today, do you believe that, see there's not many people giving him that opportunity, well, he points this out to him, and of course, the king, he foolishly reacts, and he's angry, and he throws this prophet in prison, now whenever a king puts a prophet in prison, that king is almost done, you read that in the Old Testament, and that's what we see later on in verse 10, we read that Asa was wroth with the seer and put him in prison, in verse 12, you see Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great, yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians, what an amazing statement to have said about a man, and then verse 13, you see he dies, he's diseased and very sick for the last two years of his reign, and he dies, King Asa chooses not to go to the Lord, he hasn't learned a thing, has he, the prophet said, look, remember back then you had this great victory, now why did you leave God out, get God back into your life, go to him first, and the king puts, he's so angry with him, and he doesn't learn a thing, so when he's sick, he still doesn't turn to the Lord, he's still going to man, he still goes to the doctors, and when he goes to them, you know, when you go to the doctor, you die, you see that here, very plainly, and instead he should have gone to the Lord, and maybe I should, no, maybe I said something wrong, when you go to doctor, you could very possibly die, in case there's some doctors here, but isn't it something, and now, can you look back in your own life, and you see back there that God, you cried out to God once, and God did a miracle for you once, and he really came through for you, and you praised him, and you gave testimony in your church, or whatever, now you're further down the road, now you pick up the telephone, right, and you say, call the doctor first, or what do we do, and we leave, God, you see, the world doesn't give God an opportunity to show himself strong, they don't call upon him, they don't look to him, the only ones that are here to give God a chance to show himself strong is people like you and me, Christians, and when the Christians don't do it, then God is up there, stuck with all his power, and all his wisdom, and all his wealth, and no place to use it, and that's got to be frustrating, isn't that right?

If you had all that, we read in his word that he paves the streets with gold, he's using it like concrete up there, and isn't that right? And then, and then he knows, he knows where the mines are, right?

Doesn't he know where the gold mines are? He put them there, don't you wish you knew where they were? You'd go and dig it out, wouldn't you? Sure, and then you'd have to dig another hole to keep it safe in, right?

And fools we are, God just leaves it right where it is, but he, you know, friends, God has got it, isn't that right? Now the second quality about God, he's got the wisdom to use it right. See, why most Christians don't, God doesn't give it to us, because we would, most of us are programmed, we've gone through this in our minds, and my, when my ship comes in, that's what I'll do, and you know, that's something I've always wanted to do, I always wanted, and somehow those phrases make it right, you see?

Well, now I got it, I've always wanted to make that trip, or always wanted to do that thing, or own that thing, and now finally, you know, it's possible, and, and that almost excuses it, spending it on yourself.

Now, when God sees our hearts, and he knows we're going to spend it on ourselves, he doesn't get excited to give us wealth, does he? And that's why we see so many Christians that are needy, and you say, why does the world have, have things, and us Christians, you know, are struggling, so many Christians are struggling, and there's even Christians in debt, and, you know, this shouldn't be with that kind of a father, we've been talking about the father-son, father-daughter relationship here, well, the, the father-son, our relationship with God, and he's got all this gold, wishing somewhere to use it, but then he's got wisdom to use it right, he doesn't give it to one that's going to spend it on himself, put himself first, you know, then he said, oh, he's going to be buying a boat, and he'll be sailing on Sunday morning, instead of worshipping me, and so God knows better, so he's got the wisdom to use it, and we see today, these people that win lottos, and athletes that win these great sums of money, or earn this so-called, and then they, then they, their whole family's ruined, isn't it?

You know, their whole thing is messed up, and so God has the wisdom to use it right, God has the wisdom to know who to give it to, and he's got the power to use it right, hasn't he? He's got wisdom, and he's got the knowledge how to use it, and the power how to use it, and there's God in heaven with all his wisdom, and all his wealth, and all his power, and he's looking, and he's saying, oh, I'm looking all over the earth, I'm looking for opportunity to show myself to self-strong, to show, and friends, the Christian church has gone along with the world in this thing, and we're going at it the world's way, in our homes, and in our families, and in our lives, and because of that, we struggle, because God is dealing with us, he wants us Christ-like, and that's why, friends, never, the statistics of the world don't count for the Christians, because God is in our lives.

They may say, well, you can do this, you can buy this, you earn so much, your wife earns all this, and so on, and it'll work out. It doesn't work out for the Christians. God deals with us on a different standard.

Don't be fooled by what they say. And so, this king, what a mess. He struggles with this great disease, because he does, he leaves God out, and he goes at it the way of the world, and so on. Let me give you an illustration.

God’s Power Displayed Through Personal Testimony

I lived in Huntington, West Virginia, and there was a man there, brought his little blind boy to the school, and to the Christian school where my children went to school, and this was a very poor man.

This little boy was about 11, 12, and I met him in a second-hand store later on, and I couldn't believe it. This is the man. He owned that shop there. It was a very poor establishment, and we could see that he wasn't wealthy.

And I said, you're sending your son to the Christian school? I saw you there, bringing him in. He says, yeah, he's going to be blind. He says there's nothing they can do for him. He's going to be a blind preacher, and he wants to be a preacher so bad that he said, Dad, can I go to Christian school so I can learn to be a preacher?

And so, he said, it's taken everything we got to get him there. They had hardly nothing, and money went into that. And I said, then you're a Christian. He said, no, I'm not, but my son is. Amazing. And he says, he's a good one.

He was proud of his son. And he says, he's got a lot of faith. I said, he does. He says, tell me something about him. And then he said, he said, you a preacher or something? It's amazing, us preachers.

We've got to watch what we're doing. I'm in my old clothes. I was looking for some parts for something, and I didn't look like a preacher at all. At least, I didn't think so, but somehow, he knew. So, you preachers, be careful.

You can try to disguise yourself, but hey, people, somehow, they know. And he says, preacher, and this was his question that he asked everyone that ever witnessed to him and every preacher he met. He said, when, preacher, when has God done the last miracle for you?

Does God do any miracles for you? Now, can you imagine, he asked that of any Christian. When has God done the last miracle for me? And if he would ask you that, when has God done the last miracle for you?

In other words, God wants to show himself strong on our behalf, but have we let him do it? That's really the question. And I said, well, I said, sir, I can't tell you the last miracle here. It'll take quite a while.

It was the hitchhiking story. Some of you might have heard the situation that God got me into when we were between jobs and had no money, and how I had to get through these meetings to this pastor's conference in order to schedule more meetings, and how I hitchhiked from West Virginia, Huntington, to Rives Junction, Michigan, to do revival fellowship meetings there Labor Day weekend.

And that was some years ago, and it was just a series of miracles. It's just, you know, it's almost too much, and people wonder if I'm telling the truth. But God did that, and then after that, he supplied me with all kinds of cars.

I mean, God could have done that before I went hitchhiking, but it's strange, isn't it? And so over the next so many years, I was giving away cars after that. And he says, you're different. I said, no, you, what about you?

What about, what kind of miracles? And then he gave me one. He says, well, last Easter, he says, my son had six dozen of eggs. I don't know where that little fellow got six dozen eggs, but he said he had six dozen eggs ready for Easter to be colored.

And his mother had said, we're going to dip them in paint, and we're going to paint them. And he was excited about that, and he said, I took him to church, and at church, the preacher, he says, that preacher, he says, he talked my boy out of four dozen eggs.

He says, apparently, they were going to have an Easter egg hunt, and my son said, the preacher said, how many can bring four dozen, at least four dozen eggs? And this little boy sitting in front of him, he said, boy, you've got four dozen eggs.

He said, I got six dozen eggs. He said, okay, write down his name. And so they wrote down, the man that brought them home, he says, I never, he says, I take them to church, but you never know when they're going to get through over there, so they bring them home.

So the man that brought them home picked up the eggs, and he said, the little boy said to his parents, he says, well, mommy, two dozen is enough for us, really. There was only three of them in the family, so I'd, you think so.

And so Wednesday came along, and they're going to paint the eggs, and he wants to help his mother. His mother wasn't ready yet, so he goes to the fridge and gets the eggs out. And a mistake had been made.

Instead of two dozen being there, it was only one dozen there. One, one carton was empty. His father told me, he says, I don't know what happened. Somehow, it was left in there. Anyway, he only had, and he felt kind of bad about that, but he said, oh, that ought to be enough.

So the boy, anxious and excited to help his mother, got a pot on and started boiling the water, and got that water boiling hot. He didn't know any better, but he dropped those ice-cold eggs into the hot boiling water.

You know what happened? The eggs cracked open, and the white came oozing out, and the whole pot was full of egg whites, and the little boy's standing there by the stove crying, and he's crying. But you know, the fortunate thing was, he was a poor boy.

He only had a small pot, and he could only get seven in. He still had five good ones. You know, how, what a blessing, the blessing of not having much. And, and so he has five eggs, and now his father and mother heard him cry, and they said, well, talk, whatever.

He said, his father said, son, you've learned something. I hope that you'll learn this for life. You don't do that. You don't put ice-cold eggs into boiling water. And, but apparently the father, he didn't offer to go and buy him another dozen eggs to make up for him.

They were poor family. Maybe they didn't have the money, and so there was no alternative. The boy has to pray. You know, that's a problem with us. We, we've got wheels, and we've got money, and we buy another eggs to take care of our kids' problem.

Isn't that right? We got big pots, and we got fast wheels, and we got money, and if we don't have money, we go to the bank, get some. But here it is, what a blessing that they couldn't get credit, or they didn't have.

Anyway, the boy ends up praying by the stove and saying, God, please heal my eggs. Now, that's quite a prayer request, and a chemist, a chemist will tell you that egg white can never turn back to a liquid again once it's, once it's a solid.

And he prays. Now, can you picture God in heaven saying, hey, did I hear that right? What was that? Does God panic up there sometimes? No, no, no, no, I don't mean you guys praying, I mean a child praying.

These children have faith. See, this child has been told that God can do anything, and you can pray about anything, and he believes that. Now, God brags about the faith of a child. He doesn't say anything about our faith much.

And now, can you imagine those angels so helpful to God, saying, God, remember what you did with George Miller? The bread truck broke down right in front of the orphanage, and they carried all the bread.

Why? You could do that with the egg truck, that'd be simple. But that isn't, that isn't what the, that isn't what the boy prayed now. He said, no, no, no, he asked, heal the eggs. And another angel might say, ah, Master, why don't you have that Christian lady that wants to please people, and the one that's going grocery shopping this morning, and show her the house, and just have her put it on her heart to carry in a bag of groceries.

Take the one with the eggs in it, just, it'd be, we can, ah, that, that would have been a miracle in a sense, wouldn't it? And, and that's the kind of miracles we, we, ah, give testimony about, right?

Um, God says, no, no, he, he, he asked me to heal the eggs. Friends, I somehow believe that God never panics up there when we start praying. I mean, let, now, let me ask you something. Did God panic when Elijah, on Mount Carmel, he's trying to pray to get that fire started, and he got seven barrels of water and poured them all over the island, over, over that altar, and was soaking wet?

Elijah, the Fiery Furnace, and the God of the Impossible

Now, did God panic? See, now, suppose you'd been there, hmm? And say, now, just a minute, old man. I mean, did God say, hey, Elijah, you're making it hard for me, easy. Do you, do you ever try to, do you ever try to help God out to get your prayers answered?

You know, you know what I mean? Help him out. And, and then, of all things, Elijah pours seven more barrels on there. Wow. If you'd been in the crowd now, what were you thinking? They're going to, we're going to find out who God is.

Boy, we're going to find out who God is. And then the third time, he had to go all the way down the hill, probably to the Mediterranean Sea. It hadn't rained for so many years that, you know, and get that water, barrels of water up the hill.

Can you imagine? This took time, this, and he pours it. Now the whole thing, the whole moat around the altar is filled with water. There's, there's no doubt. He hadn't hidden any fire under that. Everybody knew that.

If there was fire hidden under it, it wasn't there anymore. And then he's, can you imagine God saying, Elijah, step back. I'm going to hit it dead on. And, and God, God just, well, he did it and he, God didn't panic at all.

He, as a matter of fact, God's thinking up there, hey, give it some more water. The more water, the better this is going to be. He's set me up for a good testimony here, for a big one. You know, isn't that, isn't that what he's doing?

Hey friends, is that what you do? Ah, now that's the difference. Would we, hey, think this over. Would we let the problem get bigger and say, God, we're creating a bigger opportunity for you to show yourself?

Aren't we, aren't we quick to panic and say, oh man, we got to do something here. We got to run. We got to whatever, right now to stop this from getting worse. Because somebody said this is probably, you know, one percent possibility of this being fatal.

And no doubt it's going to be me. Hey, you've got God, just a minute. You've got a big God. God enjoyed it. He would have had like to have had more water on that, but you know, they would have lost a crowd because they're taking too much time.

Now think of, think of the other one in Daniel, the fiery furnace. They would not bow the knee to the image of the king, remember, to the false idol. And that king in a rage, and I believe God stirred him up in his rage, whatever, he said, he got so angry, he says, stoke that fire seven times hotter.

Now friends, that thing was so out of control that because the strongest of his soldiers cast the Hebrew children in the fire, they died right there at the door. They weren't even in it. That's how, that thing was so out of control.

I believe God probably helped the thing from exploding, you see, in order to pull this out. Now he, this thing was so hot, and God, you don't see God up in heaven panicking and saying, hey, easy on the heat, you guys.

Easy on the heat. I'm going to have them walk around in there, but I mean, there's a limit. No offense, there is no limit with God. There is absolutely no limit with God. And we've got to realize who God is.

And then it'd be a whole lot easier for us to live with our families and our situations and our needs. God is far greater than any limit we can imagine. And so God says, stoke it some more, give it the fire, give it the fuel.

And man, that thing is so wild that now the, and then he has them walking around in there. Just, he loved it. Now you take the story of Gideon, we could go on all day. Gideon is up against the enemy of Midianites and the Amalekites, I think, Amalekites, Midianites, anyway, 150 ,000 of them.

And Gideon has 32 ,000 troops. He's outnumbered five to one, almost five to one. Now, if you were that captain, you'd get on you say, God, there's only five guys fighting with each one of my guys. We haven't got a chance.

God, what do I do? And God says, oh, I'll tell you what to do. Get rid of some of your men. You could say Gideon saying, who said that? But you know, Gideon did it. Why, that's better than some of us would do.

Gideon did it, and he ends up with 10 ,000 men. He's outnumbered 15 to one. He gets on his knees again and says, God, what do I do now? Get in, get rid of some more men. You see how God sets it up. He knows this is going to be in the Bible for all the ages to come.

And then he's down to 300 men. Now he's outnumbered. Somebody told me 500 to one. It's getting better. And he probably would have liked to have cut them down more, but he had to have at least 300 to surround the camp of the Midianites.

I mean, there was such a big group there. So 300 was about where he had to stop. And then Gideon says to God, God, we don't have any weapons. They took all our weapons years ago. And he says, oh, no problem.

Each one of you, get each one of you a clay pot, weapons, real sharp. God has a sense of humor. Don't you think he was, clay pot, we're going to throw it at him. But we only got 300, only 300. And then he said, get each one of you a torch, going to burn them.

Get each one of you a ram's horn, we're going to kill them with sound. And that's how, and you know, but they did it. That's so beautiful about the whole thing. They did it. They did what God said, even though it was way out.

I mean, it was so ridiculous. I mean, we're going to fight a huge army with a clay pot. Now, and then they, and then they do that. And you know the rest, how God defeats that terrific, and God got the glory.

It's got to be obvious who gets the glory. That is such a main part of this thing. God wants to show himself strong. He will not share his glory with a man. You see, he will only, and what I love about Jesus in the New Testament, he's just like his father God.

I mean, he does the same kind of thing. In John 9, they cry, say, come quickly, come quickly, your friend Lazarus is dying. He's very sick. And Jesus, what does he do? He stays two, three more days where he's preaching, as if he hadn't even heard him.

And then finally he makes his way, and on the way he heals some people. And finally he gets there, and he says, and they all say, oh, if you'd come. And he says, well, open the, roll away the stone. He said, we can't do that.

I mean, this is, he's already decaying. I mean, it's going to smell bad. I mean, if you had come, but now there's no hope. And that's just about God's time, isn't it? He says, oh, that's why I waited.

Now, he didn't tell him that, but that God would be glorified. And then, you know, he waits till he's good and dead, you know, till there's no doubt about him being dead. Till they could smell it, right?

That's it. And then when Peter's in jail, remember that? All these quaternions of soldiers at the door and at the gates, and chains on his hands, and guys sleeping up against him, and he's, all this, you know, and God says, oh, this is neat, isn't it?

And I see the more amazing the problem, the greater the challenge to God. God enjoys the challenge. God enjoys the impossible. God is the God of the impossible. And when we see these things like this, you know, can you imagine?

Peter doesn't believe in himself. He gets up, you know, and follows the angel, and he's outside, and he wonders if he's dreaming. And he comes to the door of John Mark's house, and they're praying in there for Peter, you know, because Peter's going to probably die in the morning.

And he's praying, and Rhoda comes to the door, remember that? And Rhoda says, hey, Peter's at the door, Peter's at the door. They said, no, no, Rhoda, what do you think we're having this prayer meeting for?

Now, this is the church we're all trying to be like, that first generation of the church, the church with all this faith and all that, you know. So we've come a long way. Friends, they were needed, isn't it?

God’s Miracles in the Eggs and the Feeding of the Five Thousand

But you know, the story, probably the favorite Bible story is the feeding of the 5 ,000. The bigger the crowd, 5 ,000 men plus women and children, 20 ,000 people, maybe, the bigger the crowd and the smaller the lunch, the little boy's lunch.

That's just about how he works. He says, now I'll take this very small lunch and feed this whole big crowd and have 12 baskets full left over. So when the little boy in Huntington, West Virginia, that I personally know, my wife here knows him, when he prayed, God healed my aches.

God says, wow, this is neat. I like this. I've never had one of these requests before. How many here have asked God to heal your aches? All right, so God, and all of a sudden, the boy jumps up and down for joy, stands by his stove, screaming and yelling and jumping.

And the parents came in and the father said to him, what happened? He said, God healed my aches. And the father looks in a pot and the mother looks, and I checked this story with her. I wasn't going to use it as an illustration in a message, that's for sure, until I knew that this was verified.

I later talked to the wife and he says, I can't believe my husband told you this. I said, why not? He said, well, he told it a couple of guys at first and they laughed at him and it made him feel so silly that he never told it to anybody since.

So, but yeah, it happened. We ate those aches, he said. There's seven aches in that pot, were totally perfect aches. Water was still boiling away. And the father said, he went to the counter and felt those cold ones.

He thought maybe it's to exchange them, but there was only, there was five cold ones still there, had never been anywhere near the pot. And there were seven. He said, son, what happened? He says, daddy, just like the white came, came squeezing out, so it squeezed right back in.

He saw it, he saw it go. And I bet God got the right white and the right ache. What do you think? He, they marked his aches, you were two. They put a little X on those aches. They painted those seven as well as the other five.

And he says, on Easter morning, we couldn't wait for Easter morning. He says, we grabbed for the ones with the little, little crosses on them, little Xs on them. And he says, he says, sir, I, I cut the first one right clean in half.

He said that yellow was right in dead center. The white was around it. It was perfect. Well, he had told his boy, we can't paint them because the, the shells are cracked, you know, the paint will get inside.

And he says, we held him to the light and there was no cracks. He says, God healed the shells too. He says, and then he says, I, I peeled some completely, very carefully. And that membrane was in place and everything was perfect.

They were perfect aches. And he says, that's what my, my boys got faith. And he bragged about that faith. And you know, some people say, is that really true? And I told this in a Baptist church and they had a hard time with it.

And I said, all right, let me ask you a question. How many believe that God created everything out of nothing? I'll believe it. Baptist doctrine. I said, wouldn't it be far easier to make eggs out of egg material than out of nothing?

But see, because it happens in our day, we have a hard time with it, but what a blessing for a family that's poor, that cries out to God. And that's what we had there on the jungle of new Guinea. We had these people cried out to God.

Missionary Work and the Growth of the Church in New Guinea

And, uh, I was there. I came back from the mission field. My wife and I came back from the mission field 18 years ago. When we left there, we had three small churches going. After about eight years, there were no missionaries there.

And all of a sudden I realized that there were no missionaries with our people. So I felt it my responsibility maybe to go back and, and I thought about it and to go back at least for a trip. My wife still has liver damage, so she can't go to the tropics.

She's fine in a cooler climate. But, um, so finally I started taking trips back and I went, my son, my oldest son went back once to make, to see if God wanted him to be a missionary there. And then my son and I went back after a number of years, uh, in 89.

Last year in 93, neither one of my sons were able to go with me. So I was looking, praying for somebody to go with me, and I met a fellow named John Gilliam, who was, uh, lives in Arkansas. And he, uh, was willing to go with me.

And we went through and got to all these churches. And I was so thrilled. In three villages, there were churches where I had never thought there would ever be a church. One was a village of Jaffo, where my wife and I first came.

And they ran us out of there. They didn't want us there. And, uh, friends, these three villages, I never prayed for them. Well, I prayed for them for a while, but then I gave up praying because I thought there's no use.

Have you ever had people so wicked and such a mess that you didn't want to erase your prayers on them? And you just, you know, and so I didn't even pray for them. I thought there's nothing can change them.

And I went to this village. One was that Jaffo village and a small group there. And they were Christians there. And I said they could hardly preach for the emotion because, uh, and the other one was, um, this Itsy village.

What a name, Itsy. And, um, government post. And there we preached to them in Indonesian, not in Aoryo, because there were so many government workers in the services. And the people had learned some Indonesian there.

And, uh, amazing that there was a church. And then that final place was the Jaffo where we lived. And I, they had built that little church right in the spot where my house used to stand, stand in there.

They said, well, this was a missionary's place. Let's build the church on it there. And, uh, and I preached there and there was these Christians and two ladies there, except the Lord that day. And I don't know if you remember, but friends, we went on from church to church.

And then we got caught there in the middle of the jungle and we couldn't make it to this Sorokia village. And so there was this bivvac, they call it this jungle house. And, and we were so tired and we were falling because we couldn't see well, and it was dark.

And we said to the carriers, to the men with us, we're going to sleep here. We're going to hang our mosquito nets here. We can live here with nets, you know, and they went on to the village in the dark.

They said, we'll come back in the morning when it's light to get you. So we stayed there in the dark and that thing, we had some candles and some lights and we had flashlights, but anyway, we hung our nets up.

And, and just before we went to sleep, there was this man came to the door and John tried it. He started to talk to him in English. He was so taken, this guy in the dark, you know, who is he? And finally he, he realized he didn't understand English.

So I started talking to him. I said, what, who, who are you? And he says, my name is Marcus. He said, I said, well, what village are you from? And he told me, and he said, I said, are you alone? He said, yeah.

I said, what are you doing out here in the night? He says, I'm hunting pigs. He had a flashlight. I said, you are by yourself in this jungle? He said, yeah. Aren't you afraid? No, you're not afraid. See, friends, these are spirit worshipers.

They're animists. They were fearing demons. The demons are out at night. The demons are in these jungles. And I'd get such depression going through these jungles many times because the demonic thing was so strong in the early days.

And I didn't even want to go through these jungles many times. I'd feel sick so often, so discouraged. I didn't want to go. I'd be depressed in those jungles. And yet I didn't know how to react to this.

I didn't know my authority that I could silence him in Jesus' name, command him to leave me, like James 4, 7 says. I didn't know all this. And here I'm a carnal Christian, or I'm certainly not a spirit-filled Christian, not knowing his authority, trying to reach an animistic people of spirit worshipers.

There's no way you can do it. And I remember the fear I had through these jungles. And I said, aren't you afraid? The people used to say, they used to show the scars where they got beaten in the jungle by maybe just a hand or a stick, and they didn't see anything else.

Unbelievable things happened. They showed me the scars and so on. And you know, I said, you aren't afraid of this? No, I'm not afraid of this. This fellow is maybe almost 18, whatever year about that.

He was born, you know, about the time we left. And I couldn't believe that. And then when we got to the village, I found out that houses were built far apart. They used to build close together because fear of demons, you know, they'd all be together.