My Son Josiah 2

Outside an African airport in the country of Bugalug a group of people stood at a bus stop.
"What time is the bus due?" asked a man in his 20s who was wearing a baseball cap.
"8 o' clock," said an old man with wavy white hair and thick plastic glasses.
"In that case, why are we standing here at only 7 o' clock?"
"The bus comes when it comes. I've known it to be 3 hours late and I've known it to be an hour early."
"We have to travel for 7 hours to get here by plane from South America," said a middle aged Brazilian man in a suit. "Then it takes 9 hours to get from here to Karamak by bus."
"This is rural Africa," said the old man. "Think yourself lucky there is a bus service. I went to a church in Africa that met under a mango tree which was 27 miles from the nearest road. You had to walk for 9 hours to get there." 
"We're here to see Pastor Josiah," said the Brazilian man.
"He isn't the pastor," said the young man with the baseball cap. "He's the pastor's son. He's only 12." The Brazilian man had his wife with him who was wearing a summer dress.
"The child can heal people," she said. "No one's ever told him it's impossible. People come from all over the world just to be healed by him."
"And to hear him preach," said the Brazilian man. "I've been a church pastor for 30 years, I've travelled to conferences all over the world and I've never heard anybody preach like him." The bus finally arrived. 
"Bang on time at half past eight," said the old man. 

The bus drove along the mountain tracks at high speed. It was a beautiful view but there was always the fear that the bus would go over the side. After a few hours, an elephant came out into the road and stood in front of the bus. The driver stopped.
"We need to feed the elephant or it won't let us past."
"But then we'll have no food," said a young man in a denim jacket and jeans. "It's a long day."
"You can keep your sandwiches. They're not carnivorous. Elephants eat fruit." The driver opened the doors and the elephant put its trunk through the doors into the bus and gave an excited hoot.
"I'll let it have on of my limes," said the old man. He held out a single lime in his hand. The elephant reached down into the old man's bag and grabbed half a dozen limes in it's trunk. It gave another excited hoot. "Don't be greedy!" Other people had thrown two bananas and three oranges on to the bus floor.
"We could have avoided this pillaging elephant if we'd travelled by air," said the man with the baseball cap.
"I wouldn't use the local airlines," said the man in the denim jacket. "They have a poor safety record. I travelled by air last year. I said to my wife, are we on a Comet, because not many planes have jet engines at the top of the wing, built right into the fuselage? She said she thought all the comets had been scrapped after the accidents in the early 1950s. I said there was a later comet that didn't have rivets in the windows. It provided the first transatlantic air service and had huge fuel tanks under the wings. They suffered from hull failure and this one was 65 years old. I asked the stewardess what sort of plane it was. She said it was a Comet and the other pilots laughed at the Comet pilots and called them the Mile High Club. They were afraid to go more than a mile high. They wouldn't travel at full height and pressurise the aircraft in case it disintegrated. I'd rather be on a bus on a mountain track being driven as fast as it can without coming off the road." The bus arrived at Karamak bus station at half past five. Everyone took their suitcases and carried them to the hotel. There was time to have a meal before they unpacked their suitcases and went to the meeting. They stopped at the hotel restaurant. The young man with the baseball cap looked at a menu.
"Don't bother with the menu, ask for the chef's special," said the old man.
"Why, what's in it?"
"It's better not to ask." 

The meeting was in a huge tent in the middle of a field that was about a mile from the hotel. It was a big field and was full of small tents where visitors to the event were camping. There were hundreds of people there from all over the world. At 7 o' clock the meeting began. Josiah spoke into the microphone.
"God wants to heal all our diseases. Jesus didn't go around making people sick. When the leper came to Jesus and said, 'If you are willing, you can make me clean,' Jesus didn't say, 'Not today, Sunshine. You've got to learn how much closer to God you can feel when you're really ill. Go back to the leper colony and learn how much having leprosy will help you empathise with other lepers.' Show me a single time in the New Testament when it was not Jesus' will to heal. Jesus died so that our sins could be forgiven and our diseases were laid on him. By his wounds we are healed." A man in a wheelchair was sitting in front of the stage. Josiah looked at him. "Brother, is God going to heal you tonight?"
"I'd like him to."
"You'd like him to but you're not really sure?"
"Pastor," he said to Josiah, even though Josiah was only 12 years old, "I'm really struggling with my faith."
"Why are you struggling, Brother?"
"I went to another meeting and I wasn't healed. People told me I didn't have enough faith."
"You didn't have enough faith?" Josiah started laughing. "You didn't have enough faith? They are the ones who didn't have enough faith. If it was just you and God, you'd have been healed long ago, without those nay sayers. 'Oh, of course, God can do anything, but God is sovereign, so it's probably not his will to heal somebody in a wheelchair tonight.' There are 9,999 other people sitting in that stadium who haven't got enough faith for you to be healed. They blame you but you're the only one who had the faith. Have we got enough faith to believe that our brother will be healed tonight? People in the audience, do you believe it? People watching at home, do you have the faith to believe that our brother will be healed tonight? We're on television worldwide 24 hours a day. We've got a livelink on Youtube. We've got hundreds of viewers. People in this meeting, people watching at home, can you please join us in our prayers? Can you please join us in believing that this brother will be healed tonight, right here, right now?" The man leapt out of his wheelchair and stood upright.
"I don't need this thing anymore." He picked up his big, heavy electric wheelchair and threw it across the tent. It landed on the ground on its side.
"Can we sing a hymn?" asked Josiah. "It's important that the glory goes to God." The musicians began to play and the congregation began to sing.
"Hallelujah praise the Lord, Hallelujah praise the Lord, Let everything that has breath praise the Lord." When the hymn ended, Josiah spoke again. "I'm going to ask the event stewards to empty the litter bins. We need lots of empty bins because we're going to be putting our crutches and our walking sticks into those litter bins tonight. The worship band are going to keep leading us in praise and God is going to keep healing people." The congregation sang another hymn.
"Blessed be the name of the Lord, Blessed be the name of the Lord, Blessed be the name of the Lord Most High." At the end of the hymn, Josiah said,
"If the person next to you says, 'l'm deaf, I'm blind or I have cancer, don't send them to the front. Don't send them to me. Just pray for them, there and then. It doesn't have to be me. It's God who's healing people tonight, not me." The meeting continued for several hours, long periods of people quietly praying for each other punctuated by the musicians spontaneously leading the congregation in another hymn. 

Late in the evening, Josiah once more stood behind the microphone.
"God has opened the eyes of the blind tonight, God has unstopped the ears of the deaf tonight."
"Hallelujah!" came a shout from the crowd. "Yes, Brother, yes indeed!" came another.
"But there's one thing that's more important than being healed and that is, do you know Jesus tonight? Are you sure he's your personal Saviour? If you'd like to know him tonight, come down to the front, and one of our team will explain to you the way of salvation." A huge crowd of hundreds of people came forward. Tom and Barbara stood in front of a large group of about a dozen people.
"We feel guilty about some of the things we have done during the war," said one of the men.
"God can forgive you," said Tom. 
"Even for that?"
"Jesus took all your sins on the cross, even that one. That's why he had to die in such a brutal manner."
"I am an orphan and nobody loves me," said one of the women. "I have a job, I can support myself, but all of my family are dead. I'm so lonely."
"Jesus loves you," said Barbara. "The Christians will be your family." An hour later Pastor Boris was excitedly waving around a mobile phone. He turned to speak to Josiah.
"I've just emailed Operation Mobilisation and informed them that they must update their website. The Killagonk tribe are not an unreached people group anymore. I've just led an entire family to Jesus. They've got their first house church."

The next morning Josiah and the other members of the Africa team from Weedon Reservoir Community Church sat around a table having breakfast. Josiah took two slices of white bread out of a cheap supermarket loaf and spread them with margarine and marmalade.
"Dad, we only came here for a week. I think we should extend the event. I think we should stay here longer."
"God bless you, Josiah, my son, you're everything I ever hoped you would be."
"Oh Dad, it's not me doing these things, it's all of these people and they're finding God."
"Everything I brought you up to be and so very humble. Yes Son, give the glory to God, not your doing, God's doing. That's what the great revivalists always used to say. And you'd like to stay another week?"
"I'd like to stay another 5 weeks until the end of the school holidays."
"Wouldn't that disrupt your other holiday plans?" asked Tom.
"Who cares?" asked Barbara. "He's leading a revival. There's people being healed left, right and centre and there's people from unreached people groups finding God. Would you really rather be walking along the beach on a sunny day in England?"