“Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.”
Matthew 18:19-20 NASB
In answer to many prayers, God provided a team of volunteers from across Zambia, and even from other parts of the world, to come disciple the government schoolteachers. The way God worked out all the details was amazing to me. God marshalled together a special team, and we were able to train them as a group at the beautiful Riverside Farm Institute.
After this team training, we went to David Kaunda National Technical Secondary School in Lusaka, Zambia, the location where we would offer Schools in Discipleship to over two hundred of the finest teachers from across Zambia. I remember waiting with expectancy as the teams arrived from every province across the nation. There were roughly twenty early childhood instructors and administrators from every province, all coming together at the invitation of the Ministry of Education.
I sat in front of the grand assembly of educators that first day and watched and prayed as they all filed into the meeting hall. When I was introduced, after praying, my first order of business was to call for revival. I wanted to train these leaders to be disciple makers for Jesus, but how can any teacher, parent, grandparent, or believer anywhere disciple the new generations without first themselves being called to revival with Jesus?
“We have three agenda items here during our days together,” I told the group that first morning. “Number one is for each of us to experience a revival with Jesus Christ. Number two is to learn how to live daily as a disciple of Jesus. Number three is to grow as a disciple maker of each of your students.”
The top teachers and administrators from across Zambia all looked at me in cold silence. Many of them had their arms crossed. I’m sure that they were all in shock. They weren’t used to such a strange agenda. They were used to coming together to discuss curriculum and discipline strategies in the classroom. There were all kinds of other issues that would be normal for government schoolteachers to consider, but this revival agenda was quite foreign to them. No one smiled. I prayed earnestly, “God, we need breakthroughs here!”
Dreadful Silence: We Kept Praying!
I opened my Bible to Revelation chapter three and shared from Jesus’ Last Love Letter, His message to Laodicea. Still there were not too many smiles, and the room was dreadfully silent. After sharing a full message from the Word, and giving them a challenge, we sent all the teams into ten different classrooms, each classroom representing a different province. We kept praying. We prayed for the people by name. We prayed for those whom God had called. And the Holy Spirit began to do what was impossible with man.
As you can imagine, there was great diversity in that crowd. Of course, there were believers from all different kinds of denominations, but there were also unbelievers there. There were people who held to the traditional religions and thoughts. But despite all these differences and influences, God began to move mightily. How do we know?
Some hours later, I got a report from one of our teams in one of the classrooms. One of the renowned educators had stood up and with tears in her eyes asked the group, “Who will pray for me? I’m under conviction, as I heard the Word earlier this morning. I’m under conviction that I need to repent. I need to turn around and make things right in my life.”
No one moved in the room. Then she blurted out in front of everyone, “My best friend stole my husband. And I have been so angry, so full of hatred towards her that I wanted to destroy her. I tried to do all kinds of things to hurt her. I even tried to take her life. Today I am repenting. I want to make things right with her. Who will pray for me?”
Everyone was shocked. Some of them were thinking, What’s gone wrong in this training? This is not the kind of meetings we have for government schoolteachers.
Despite her pleas for prayer, no one moved. The precious educator, who had just testified, then got down on her knees in front of her colleagues as she lifted her hands up to heaven. “Who will pray for me?” she begged again, as she started sobbing before the Lord.
Shyly one teacher came up and prayed awkwardly that God would bless her. And then another one, and yet another one. And then finally the educator stood up and she said boldly, “I know what I must do. I must call the woman who stole my husband right now!” Her colleagues tried to calm her, telling her she could wait. “Oh, no, I’m under conviction. I must do this right now!” she insisted. She ran out of the room and called the woman who had stolen her husband.
When the woman answered the phone, she was terrified. “Why are you calling me?” the shocked woman asked suspiciously.
The educator answered, “Because I have met Jesus Christ in the written Word of God today. I am under conviction that I must make things right with you. Please, please, will you forgive me for how I have harbored bitter hatred towards you all these years since you took my husband?”
“Is this a trick? Are you trying to get me to drop my guard when I’m around you, and you’ll try to hurt me still?” the young woman asked.
“No,” the educator responded. “Jesus Christ has given me a new heart, and He’s put a new Spirit in me, and I am asking for your forgiveness. Will you please forgive me for how I have treated you?”
The young woman who used to be her best friend started crying on the other end of the line. Now her heart was moved. “Will you forgive me for wrecking your home and your family?” she begged.
“Yes, I will,” replied the educator.
Some days after that phone call, there was a knock at the educator’s home door, and her little girl ran out to see who had come to visit. Seeing the young woman at the door who had stolen her daddy from her mother, and knowing that her mother hated this young woman, the little girl was terrified. Afraid that there would be a horrible fight in their home, the little girl ran inside her bedroom, closed the door, and hid under some pillows and blankets.
As she waited to see what would happen, she heard
the front door open and her mother’s calm voice, inviting the young woman
inside. Then there was silence.
“Oh no! What terrible thing must have happened!” she wondered fearfully.
The little girl came out from hiding and ran out to see if there had been a terrible fight, or if someone had died. She was so scared. But much to her shock, she found her mother—the educator—sitting down, smiling, and quietly laughing as she and her former friend, the young woman, were talking together. The little girl spoke up, “Mommy, Mommy, how can you be so happy to see this lady who stole Daddy? How can you laugh with her? How can you talk with her? How can you smile at her?”
With tears in her eyes, the educator softly responded to her daughter. “Baby, Jesus has given me a new heart, and He has given me the love to forgive my friend and to ask her to forgive me for hating her.”
The Holy Spirit Moves: Three Generations Reunited!
This miracle was so special and so dramatic that when the teachers at the training heard the story of the educator forgiving her enemy, the Holy Spirit convicted many more souls.
It wasn’t long that in another classroom, something similar happened with a renowned educator from another province. This time it was a man. He stood up and asked, “Who will pray for me? I’m a bitter, bitter man. I have pushed my son away from me for many years. He has greatly wronged me and hurt my family name. He disrespected me. Because of all he did, I did what all fathers are expected to do. I pushed him away and told him I never wanted to see or talk to him again. But as I listen to the Word of God, I’m called to have the heart surgery promised in Ezekiel 36. I have asked God to do that heart surgery and to cut out my bitterness. Who will pray for me? I want this to be a completed work, and I want God to help me know what to do for my son.”
He got down on his knees. Again, everyone was stunned in the room. They didn’t know what to do with this man’s request. They were not used to receiving prayer requests at their teachers’ training meetings.
Finally, some got up and prayed for him. This man then got up from his knees, and immediately, as the Spirit of God convicted him, went out of the room, and called his son on the phone. His son answered the call and heard the voice of his father for the first time in many years.
“Dad…Dad, is that you?” the son asked with surprise.
“Yes, my son,” the father answered.
“Why are you calling me? This is not according to tradition!” the son said incredulously. “Why are you calling me? I’m the one who has wronged you.”
The father began to weep on the phone. “Son, it is I who have wronged you. I have not forgiven you. I have chosen to resent you. I pushed you away. I refused to talk with you. You and your wife have given birth to my grandson, and I’ve never even met him. Will you forgive me for pushing you away? Will you forgive me for not forgiving you?”
“Dad, are you for real?” the son asked again. He was quite shocked, and unbelieving.
“Yes son. Will you forgive me?”
Then it was the son’s turn to weep. “Father, yes, I forgive you. Will you forgive me too for how I treated you?”
That night the father and son began a new chapter of life.
“Come here to the school in Lusaka where we’re having Schools in Discipleship,” the father invited. “Come. I want to see you again right away. I don’t want to wait until after this training to see you. I don’t want to wait any longer to see my grandson for the first time.”
Within 24 hours, three generations were reunited because the Spirit of God had healed what was terribly broken.
Call to Action: Let the Holy Spirit Bring Reconciliation Through Humility
My friend, that is what the Spirit of God is longing to do for each and every one of us. He wants to call the parents back to the children and the children back to the parents, and He will do this if we humble ourselves before Him. God promises in His Word:
“Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD. He will turn the hearts of the fathers back to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and strike the land with complete destruction.”
Malachi 4:5-6 NASB
Well, the stories don’t stop here. God’s Spirit continued to be poured out on those training sessions with the top educators from across the provinces of Zambia. Miracle after miracle took place. It didn’t take long for the leadership in the Ministry of Education to hear the amazing revival stories taking place. As a result, they came to meet me and called me into a room there at the school where we were training. “We have never seen a meeting like this before,” they told me. “We want to see God do this work of revival and discipling with all our teachers in every province of Zambia!”
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman \ Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org
