What I Do Have, I Give to You
When I lived in India as a missionary, I had to live just like any of the other villager. I cooked with fuel made from cow dung, had no electricity and had no running water. I even had to wash my hair with plants instead of shampoo. Funny thing about washing your hair that way, is that the plant is so alkaline that after shampooing the hair, the residue would act as a hair gel and you could style your hair in any shape.
One of the more fundamental difficulties I had as a missionary, was that there was no way to really plan for things. I didn’t know what to do as a missionary, having no organization to support, nor train me. The first thing that I thought of, was to play with the kids. The kids loved it and would follow me around everywhere. One of the first phrases I learned in Indian was, “Go home!”
But I still wanted to do something but didn’t know what I could do, to reach the people in this poor village. So I decided to hand out some of the medicine that I had brought with me. Nothing too fancy, just things like aspirin and vitamins. After doing this for a few days, people started lining up for the pills. And in the beginning, I merely handed them out but I started to realize that there was an opportunity that I was not capitalizing on. So I started to pray for each person, that I was handing out my small parcels of newspaper wrapped “medicine.”
Even though the Indians were poor, they were relatively healthy because they lived as laborers and farmers, and were very physically active. A lot of their complaints came from muscle pain. So I started to apply some muscle pain reliever on the parts of their body that were aching. And as I applied the creams, I started to massage the affected areas also. But the massages that I gave were not spa-like, relaxing ones but those that applied hard pressure on the nerves that were affected. This type of massage I learned from my mother, who gave therapeutic massages as a personal ministry for over twenty years. The combination of simple pain relievers and massages were very effective and I started to get a reputation for being a “healer.” The news spread and before long, there were extended lines to see me. Villagers would get in line to see the “American doctor” that I developed the reputation of being, although I was neither American nor a doctor.
The lines grew as my reputation grew, and in a short amount of time, I was even invited by the mayor of the town to come to his house to heal his sister. Besides the mayor, the types of pains that the villagers came for started to become more serious and more complicated. But amazingly, each person got healed. In the beginning, it was so amazing to see people healed by my ministrations and after countless and continuous healings, even I started to believe that I had great healing powers.
Perhaps God was trying to humble me because one day, a mother brought her daughter to me. Her name was “Star.” Star was twelve years old and from birth she was lame in both feet. Her feet were twisted and unusable and they were rotting. She had serious infections in both her feet that had traveled up to her lower legs and the doctors were recommending that she be amputated to her thighs. Her mother implored me with tears and pleading, to please heal her daughter. I was shocked and scared. I had never healed anyone, of something so serious, before. I told her that I was not a real doctor and that she should take her daughter to the hospital. But she cried out, “No! I can’t take her because the doctors will cut her legs off! You are our only hope!” I was so flustered and disturbed, that I actually ran back to my “house.” My house was only a little space in an abandoned church, where cows were being raised.
I shut the gate and prayed to God. “Lord, I don’t know what to do. People are looking to me to heal them of serious diseases. I never claimed to be a doctor but they are expecting me to treat and heal them. I am scared, overwhelmed, and I just want to run back home to Korea.” But when I was crying out to God, I heard a voice telling me, “There’s a reason why you are, where you are. I have a purpose for you in India. Do, what you can.”
When I heard that voice, I resolved to do what I could, which was to pray and give massages. So I went back to Star, and I started to pray and massage her legs. Usually when I give massages, people cry out in pain because of the hard pressure that I put on the body. But the girl didn’t cry out. There was no response, because her nerves were so deadened by disease. I pressed so hard, that my nails were about to fall off.
But after a few days of no response from the girl, she started to cry, “Stop it, you're hurting me!” Those words actually made me so happy. I was so excited because it signaled that there was feeling in her legs. Because of her cries, people started coming into the hut to see what was going on. Amazingly, she started to get sensations little by little, starting from her thighs and traveling south, until after a week, she said that she could feel something in her toes. “And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” James 5:15-16.
I realized at that point that there was work for me to do, but it wasn’t doing more massages. It was to pray. Not just any prayer, but the prayer of repentance. Except. the prayer of repentance is not so easy, because our tendency is to rationalize any sinful feelings and blame others. But I realized that even the ability to repent doesn’t come from myself but it comes from God. And when you actually repent, he sees you as righteous. When you offer the prayer to ask God to help you because you are a sinner, that’s when you can truly see God working in you and through you.
So I started to repent. I repented of all the things that I could remember. I went back as far in my memory, as when I was twelve-years-old and stole a few coins from my mother’s purse, to play in the arcade. I started to realize that repentance is not about trying to ask for forgiveness for all the wrongs that I had done, but it’s about true dependence on God. And as I started to pray for a true repentance, something started happening in Star’s feet. Not only was she getting sensations in her feet, she started to grow fresh skin. An amazing healing was happening in her feet.
As Star’s feet started to heal, the news spread throughout the village and in my daily visits to her house, people would follow me. They would follow and they started copying me when I prayed. This was amazing because the villagers were not Christians, but Hindus.
With the amazing healing of her feet, I started to become bolder with my prayers for her. I prayed not only for her feet to be healed of her infection, but that she would be able to walk. One Sabbath day, three weeks after I started her treatment, she suddenly stood up on her feet. And I asked her if she could lower her body and put weight on her feet and she was able to! I asked her to do it ten times. And the other townspeople egged her on, too. They told her to squat over and over. At the end of the day, she had done 101 squats on her formerly unusable legs. I took her hand and walked with her through the village. Everyone marveled and were praising God.
During this incident, I stayed at a big abandoned church. Maranatha Ministries had built this church years ago, but because there were no pastors to foster growth, the membership died and the building was relegated to housing cows. After seeing Star’s miraculous healing, people started coming to this church in droves. Previously, I had begged and pleaded with them to come but they wouldn’t. Now they came in masses.
But God spoke to me and asked. “Jun, are you going to massage each person’s feet? Is that going to be your ministry?” And I realized that God was asking me to preach the gospel to these people. Up to that point, I had never preached a sermon in my life, in Korean, in English or Hindi. I never imagined that I would be asked to preach.
In Acts 3:6, Peter and John said to the lame man, “Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I thee, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” I realized that my mission was to preach about Jesus because it was something that I had, that I could give. Although I felt unworthy and ill-equipped to do so, I started preaching because I had the love of Jesus in me. The gospel is preached not only by those who are good public speakers. People believe because of the faith they see in you.
Soon, the whole village came out to church, to listen to my sermons. And they received the gospel, even though my English was broken and the delivery was not smooth. They heard the messages because Jesus was shared. As they sat in the church, people started noticing the decrepit conditions of the church and they resolved themselves to fix the building. But where were the funds going to come from, to fix the church? There was no one, who could fund the renovations. So, we had an all night prayer meeting.
There was one Christian family, in the village. The head of the family said that God spoke to him, and said that he could help with the construction even though he was not a professional—he was handy and that he would do, what he could. When that man volunteered his time, another family said that they would donate 10 bricks. Then it was decided that each family would donate 10 bricks, which was for them, not a small sacrifice. Eventually, the whole village came together to work on the church building.
God doesn’t ask, what talents you have. But, He asks that whatever you do have, you do in Christ’s name. When that happens, His blessings will be upon whatever you undertake. My account of what happened in India is one of the numerous stories that revealed a God of miracles. The miracles happened not because of my great talents or abilities, but rather my lack of them. The fact that God used me in India was a great testament to His goodness and blessings. God can use whatever you have to further His kingdom if you allow Him to use it. What you do have, give to God and He will make miracles happen in your life and for those around you.
Pastor Jun Sik Kim and his family are currently ministering at Westchester SDA church, in NY.