#52: When God Makes No Sense

#52: When God Makes No Sense

Note: The Love Thy Neighborhood podcast is made for the ear, and not the eye. We would encourage you to listen to the audio for the full emotional emphasis of this episode. The following transcription may contain errors. Please refer to the audio before quoting any content from this episode. 

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RACHEL SZABO: Hey, it’s Rachel. So Jesse is out this week. He’s doing some work on his upcoming book, and there will be more news and updates on that later. But for today, what I’d like to do is widen our lens a little bit. So one of the things I’ve noticed lately for myself is that I look at all the things that have been happening in the United States over the last several years and it’s easy to just get bogged down and weary and to get honestly a little self-focused where the drama that’s happening in my own nation is the only one that I see and I forget that suffering exists everywhere and also that God exists everywhere. So today I wanna expand our view by sharing a story from one of my favorite global storytellers, Nik Ripken. It’s a story of danger, miracles, and how the ways of God sometimes seem absolutely insane.

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RACHEL SZABO: You’re listening to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. Today’s episode – “When God Makes No Sense.” Welcome to our corner of the urban universe.

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RACHEL SZABO: So, like I said, today’s story comes from a guy named Nik Ripken, and Nik has worked in missions and with persecuted believers all over the world for more than 30 years. So as you can imagine, he’s got some wild stories to tell. And his book The Insanity of God – it tells many of those stories, but not this one. This particular story is actually one that Nik told while speaking at Liberty Live Church in Virginia, and they’ve been gracious enough to share that audio with us. So our story starts in Africa in an area of refugees and war and with a small group of people trying to help. Here’s Nik. 

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: In that time, there were eight of us. We’ve got five feeding sites we’ve taken over from the United Nations. Each one of those at 4:00 in the morning have 10,000 people lined up between razor wire that the U.S. militaries and military and others had put up, and, uh, we’re doing five of those, 50,000 people a day.

RACHEL SZABO: And this work was not for the faint of heart. There were nurses on the team who, when they weren’t trying to help feed thousands of people who were coming, they were also trying to run medical clinics. 

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: Our nurses were doing double duty on those feeding sites. They were doing mobile medical clinics, were resettling refugees. Uh, we’re doing everything we can, uh, to, to, to, to keep people alive.

RACHEL SZABO: And Nik – he spent hours each day listening to story after story of the atrocities of the war.

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: And men and women by the thousands saying, “All of my family is dead. My children, my husband, my wife, and I have no one, uh, to tell my story to.” 

RACHEL SZABO: This was not your typical mission trip, like this was not your short-term trip where you go and you have VBS and you fix a roof and then you go back to your church and you tell them all the wonderful things that had happened. Like these people were surrounded by suffering, and Nik was doing everything he knew how to try to help. And while they were there, he and his team became invested in this region and with these people, and they were gonna stay as long as they were able. And then – the dream came. One night Nik had a vivid dream in which he heard God tell him to leave where he was and go north to another region, a very particular region in the middle of the desert. 

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: Yeah, you just didn’t go there folks. That desert region is the size of Texas. It’s semi-arid, desert scrub, rocks and dust and tumbleweeds. You just didn’t go there. 

RACHEL SZABO: Well, Nik wakes up, and, honestly, he forgets about the dream ’cause there’s no way God would tell him to go there, like it didn’t make any sense. But then the next night he has the dream again and again and then again, to the point where he can’t get it out of his mind. So he decides to do a little bit of research into this desert region and finds out that there’s actually a large concentration of the exact people group he’s spent years trying to reach with the gospel. 

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: And the last time they had access to the Kingdom of God was in 1973 when a Presbyterian agriculturist was killed in the last Civil War and they buried him down in that desert. That’s not a good encouragement to be the next one to go down there. 

RACHEL SZABO: So as Christians we believe in the importance of community, and so Nik decides to get a second opinion on all this. So the next day he goes to his team.

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: And I told them about my dreams and I told ’em about what God was encouraging me to do and they just ran over me like a big old truck and reminded me of all the things I’d brought there to do. And they said, “Now you’re going to leave us and go to a place you’ve never been, go to a place where no one’s asked you to come, go to a place where you don’t have any resources, go to a place where, where, where you haven’t been invited, the government’s probably not gonna let you down there.” And they just terrorized me, so I stayed. 

RACHEL SZABO: And really that was what Nik wanted to hear anyway because he knew it was an insane idea. If he were to go to this desert region, he didn’t have any contacts or direction or instruction or people to go with him. Like, it was foolish, and he just needed someone to tell him so. And so now he could just forget the whole thing. Now, while Nik was working with the refugees at these feeding sites, his family stayed elsewhere because it wasn’t safe for them all to be in one place, and especially not for his children. So the next time Nik goes back to see his family, he’s laying in bed with his wife, Ruth, and he’s telling her about everything that had been going on and about how foolish it was.

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: I told her about God troubling my nights and troubling my days and commanding me to go to that place where I’ve never been and I didn’t really want to do nor did I have time. I didn’t have the energy. I didn’t have the resources to do it. And what I expected Ruth to do, I knew, I know that sweet lady – she’s done this every time before – she’s gonna look at me and say, “Honey, you’re doing more than five or six guys can do. You’ve got so much on your plate and I’m not gonna let them give you a bigger plate and, and you’re doing this and this and this and, darling, you just can’t do any more, so you go back there and lead those teams. And I, I just know that if you just keep doing what you’re doing, it’s more than, you know, a whole host of men can do.” And, and she let me down. And that sweet, sweet lady about 2:30, 2:45 in the morning looked at me when I told her everything that’d been going on, and she said, “It sounds like to me you’ve been disobedient to God and you need to get obedient.” That’s a clear word. 

RACHEL SZABO: Well, that wasn’t when he wanted to hear at all, but deep down he knew she was right. So the next day, rather reluctantly and without much enthusiasm, Nik starts contacting all his prayer partners, asking them to please pray over this possible trip into the desert. And one of these partners that he goes to is a longtime friend, who we’ll call David.

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: And I tell him how much we need his prayers again and what I’m gonna do and, and he has a long black beard and his father is a first-generation Syrian. 

RACHEL SZABO: And as Nik’s talking, David just strokes his beard listening. And when Nik is finished, David speaks. 

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: Then he says, “Ripken, you have done, uh, some crazy things since, uh, we’ve met, but this one really, uh, does take the cake.” And, and, uh, he said, “I can’t imagine where you’ve come up with this one.” And, and, uh, and the whole time that he’s talking, he’s reaching into his desk, uh, hunting for a, a, a note card and hunting for something to write on. And, and as I’m talking to him, he begins writing on that card, and then he hands it to me.

RACHEL SZABO: And Nik sees what’s written on the card – five names, five common African names.

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: And he says, “I want you to carry these with you if you make it into that desert area.” Uh, he said, uh, uh, “We were in the country for about 20 years in, in about 10 villages, and in five of those villages we had a family come to Christ in each of the five villages. And when the civil war came and we were given days, if not hours, to get out and the last we heard five years ago was this five families fled into that, that desert region. We haven’t heard from ’em for five years. We don’t know if they’re alive or dead. We heard that one of ’em was shot multiple times and another one lost his baby somehow along the way. But, uh, we love those families and we pray for them every day, but we don’t know if they’re alive or dead. And Ripken, what I want you to do is carry these – and maybe by physical proximity, if you’ll pray over these names if you make it down there – maybe just by being there, the Holy Spirit will do something in the lives of these families.” And I said, “That sounds like voodoo Christianity to me.” He says, “Is it any different from what you’re doing?” I said, “Well, hush. Give me the card.” And I left. 

RACHEL SZABO: I mean, why not? This whole endeavor was already crazy to begin with. Why not take the names with him? So while Nik was garnering prayer support, his wife Ruth was doing what she usually did, working on securing his travel arrangements. And up to this point, you know, they had been to several different countries before, so they knew the process to get all the paperwork in order and all the steps completed to get to a place, like it could take weeks or even months. And frankly, at this point, Nik was pretty sure he wouldn’t even be allowed in in the first place, that this was just gonna be a dead-end endeavor from the start. So, needless to say, his jaw dropped when just two days later Ruth hands over his travel ticket and says everything’s squared away. 

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: But I, I’m not too concerned because I know someone’s gotta give me an appointment to their disaster relief part of their government and I was told I had to have 14 signatures on 14 pieces of paper just to leave the capital city and go down to that desert. “You know, folks. It’s gonna be fine. I’m gonna have a free trip, go somewhere I’ve not been, I’m not gonna get these signatures, I’m gonna come out and, and come back, and at least I tried. At least I was obedient. And, and, and I’m never gonna make it down in, in that place where that agriculturalist is, is buried down there.”

RACHEL SZABO: Maybe that was it. Maybe this was just a test of faith to see if he would listen and that’s all there was to it. But when Nik arrived in the region and got to the disaster relief office, he was in for another surprise.

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: And I walk into an office and the leader sitting behind that desk, the man I had to talk to – he was a white guy from Georgia from Assemblies of God church who had been praying for months and months that God would send somebody there. I did not want to shake his hand. And I still wasn’t that concerned ’cause he did say, “Yes, uh, there has to be 14, uh, names on this.” I said, “How many weeks do you want me to come back?” “He just check with me tomorrow, we’ll see where this goes.” And I went back the next morning at 9:00, and he had all 14 signatures.

RACHEL SZABO: And not only did he have all the signatures, but he also had a team of French doctors who would accompany Nik to the desert and said that he himself was also gonna go with him. 

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: He said, “I’ve been for months sending trucks just filled with stuff – medicine, unimix for children, water, blankets, tents down there. I’m gonna find out what they’ve done with it, whether any of it’s gotten to the people.” 

RACHEL SZABO: And so like a grumpy teenager who’s been told he has to clean his room before he can go see his friends, Nik flies out with these French doctors and the disaster relief officer from Georgia and they get dropped in the middle of this desert. And upon arrival, they immediately found what happened to all the supplies that had been sent. 

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: There were three warehouses, huge warehouses. From the floor, from side to side, front to back, the length up to the roof of those buildings were stuffed full of medicine. Uh, everything probably every village in that desert needed for life and everything he had sent was just sitting in those warehouses.

RACHEL SZABO: And the reason it was all just sitting there was because there hadn’t been anyone to go out and distribute it. 

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: Not a single person to give out a grain of dirty wheat or the horse corn that was sent for them to eat or – they make these 50 kilograms bag of something called unimix and you mix it up with water and, and it makes this really ugly looking gray soup stuff, but it will take a kid that’s on the verge of dying and bring them back to life like anything you’ve never seen. And he said, “What you’re gonna do every day, Ripken, is you’re gonna go to every village in this region and, and, and your job is to find out what’s going on in those villages and what they need.”

RACHEL SZABO: So Nik begins the work of going to the surrounding villages to see what they could possibly do. And if you had thought before that this trip was a fool’s errand, now he definitely knew it was – because as soon as he starts visiting the villages, it seems like the miracles just stopped.

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: But the first day I went about 20 miles south of that little town, and you know what folks? Everybody in that village, everybody that was alive in that village – their mouths were green. They’d eaten their seed. Now the rains are coming, and they’ve eaten their seed. They have nothing to plant. They have nothing to keep ’em alive. They’ve eaten their seed, and there are mouths of green from eating weeds and grass and leaves up on tree. I followed skeletons off a main dirt road back to village after village. And, and as the closer you get to the village, the more bodies there are. And you walk into a pristine village – birds are singing, water is flowing, the trees are, are, are in, in full leaf. And you walk into huts and there’s an old grandmother and it’s so dry and hot is as if she was still alive and she died stirring a pot of grass. And they’re laying on the ground. They’re standing against trees. They’re squatted. They’re, they’re just as rigid as they can. They’re, they’re not even breathing because the pain is so excruciating that I just hear ’em whispering to “let them die because, uh, if they die and go to hell, how could it be worse than the life that they’re living now” was their thoughts.

RACHEL SZABO: Nik had worked with refugees and in war-torn areas for years. He knew what hardship was, but this was something else. This was hopeless, and Nik didn’t even know what he would even be able to do. 

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: Anytime I could find a cow, steer, a, a goat, or an old camel and there we would put water and medicine and blankets and things that people needed for life and rope it on the back of that beast and turn it loose because I know as a, a farming country boy that those beasts would go home. That’s, that’s the, that’s the high tech distribution system that I developed. I didn’t know what else to do.

RACHEL SZABO: And to make things even more miserable – not only was the situation in each village absolutely hopeless, but also this was the desert. It would be 120 degrees by mid-morning. So as Nik is traveling each day, he develops a sort of rendezvous point with the doctors and the white guy from Georgia.

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: I’d go out, get up at five, and go out at six in that desert, and it was so hot, uh, that I’d get so dehydrated if I’m not back by three o’clock. I’d meet these guys at a, at a, the only restaurant in town. It’s a stick restaurant with a grass roof, and it’s opened on every side to the (unclear) desert. And, and, and I’d spend a couple hours just trying to rehydrate – you get where your lips are cracked but they can’t bleed – and, and, and, and sit with those three doctors and this AOG guy and tell ’em what I found and, and, uh, saying they need everything, and the next day they send me out. 

RACHEL SZABO: And that’s how it went each day – go to a village, come back to the restaurant, and relay the hopeless scene. Go to a village, come back, and tell about a little girl who had died on her bed still holding a comb through her hair. Go to a village, come back, and tell about the blisters on people’s lips and eyelids. Day after sweltering day. And it didn’t take long for Nik to wonder – was this what God had brought him here for? To witness complete hopelessness? 

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: Every day I wondered, “Why have you done this to me? Why? Why am I here? Why am I – why don’t you let me go home?”

RACHEL SZABO: Then one day, while Nik is having his usual briefing at the restaurant, something strange happens. 

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: And I’m sitting at that table and rehydrating and, and eating whatever there might be, uh, uh, to eat, and, and I look up – this is a big empty place and it’ll hold about 50 broken tables and chairs – and I look up, and coming in the far back of, of that restaurant, I, I notice somebody is walking funny and he, he looks different than anybody else there and, and he, he’s a big, tall six-foot-five. He, he, he – folks, he didn’t weigh a hundred pounds, I promise you – and I watched this guy, and, and his face had been cut up or something run through it. He was all scarred up, and, and, and, and the way that he was walking and the way he was staring just caught my attention ’cause he’s, he’s coming toward our table and he’s just staring at those of us sitting in that table. But when he came up to the table, he’s staring at me. 

RACHEL SZABO: What did this man want? Well, we’ll be right back.

COMMERCIAL

RACHEL SZABO: Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Rachel Szabo. So we’ve been hearing a story from Nik Ripken. Nik has been called by God to go to a desert region in Africa, and quite frankly, he’s not sure why. He’s working in a hopeless situation trying to bring disaster relief to surrounding villages, but right now he’s not thinking about any of that – because now, as he’s having his usual rehydrate and debrief meeting with his team, a rough-looking guy has come into the restaurant and is standing next to their table and all he’s doing is staring right at Nik. 

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: You try to eat when a starving guy’s, uh, staring at you. 

RACHEL SZABO: The man had on a T-shirt – likely the only shirt he owned because it was ragged and filthy – and he had on in a man’s traditional wrap skirt. He was scarred, worn-looking, and he just kept staring – to the point that Nik couldn’t take it anymore.

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: I finally got nervous enough ’cause he’s got his arms folded and he looks so angry and, and he’s staring at me. And, and finally I said to him, “Can I help you? Is there something that, that I can do for you?” And he said in broken English, “Are you the one? Have you come?” And he just left. He just walked out.

RACHEL SZABO: Well, Nick was confused to say the least, but he wasn’t the only one. His team was also rattled.

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: And those French guys and that Assemblies of God guy, they said, “Who, who was that, Nick?” I said, “I don’t know. I don’t have a clue.” They said, “What is this that he was saying that, ‘are you the one, have you come’?” I said, “I don’t know. He, he, uh, he apparently has had malaria so much that, uh, his elevator goes up but his doors don’t open.”

RACHEL SZABO: It was strange for sure, but there really wasn’t anything more they could do about it. I mean, the man had left. So they continued talking and rehydrating. And then 15 minutes later, another man comes in. And 20 minutes later, another man. And then another and another – five men in total each come into the restaurant, and they each come up to Nik.

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: And, and, and each one of them asked me a question – “Are you the one? Have you come?” And then they just leave. And these French guys are – they’re, they’re not having a good time. They said, “Nik – you – who are these guys?” I said, “I, I, I don’t know.” They said, uh, “You told us you’ve never been here before.” I said, “I haven’t.” “You told us you didn’t know anybody.” I said, “I don’t know a soul other than you all.” “You told us you’ve never done a project here, that you’ve never known anybody, that nobody’s invited you.” And they started peppering me with all these questions. I said, “Let me, let me make this clear. I’m here” – looking at those French guys – “because God made me to come.” Well, that freaked them out, and they want me to have an evaluation. And I said, “I don’t know who these guys are. There’s got to be some kind of mass problem going on. Uh, they have me pretty well, uh, scared. Uh, I’m here because God made me. If I ever get out of here and come back, it will be my fault the second time, so you’ll never see me here again. And, and there must be some kind of mass hysteria going on, but, uh, these guys have me pretty well terrified.”

RACHEL SZABO: Who were these men, and what was it that they wanted? Nik had no idea. But then later that same week, something else happened. 

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: That was Tuesday afternoon, and on Friday morning I do a foolish thing. 

RACHEL SZABO: So the foolish thing was this. Running through the town was a wide, dried-up riverbed and this river was, like, our equivalent to railroad tracks, meaning that instead of saying “the other side of the tracks,” you would say “the other side of the riverbed” and it was understood that you did not cross from one side to the other. Well, one of Nik’s kids had asked him to bring back a knife as a souvenir because the people group there was known for their unique craftsmanship of knives, but you’d only get one of those knives on the other side of the riverbed. And so Nik goes to the other side.

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: And I cross that riverbed by myself, and I don’t tell anybody where I’m going. You don’t do that, not if you got even part of your brain intact. And, and you’re, you’re going through a maze of, of huts and, and little, uh, dirt – they’re not even streets, there’s pathways – and, and I, I can hear where their, uh, hammers are beaten on an anvil and I – that’s where I know that, uh, those metal workers are, are, are, are got a goat hide bellows that they’re pushing and, and there’s where they’ll be making things that people need on their farms and in their house. And, and, and I’m, you, you walk down a maze of street as you listen, and you go like five yards this way, then you go maybe three yards this way, then you might go 10 yards this way, and then it cuts back on itself. And the whole time I’m listening, trying to find where they’re beating on their anvils, and I, I, I turn around a little dirt street and, and turn back and, and I come up against the side of a, of a house. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s, it’s just mud-covered, a hut, and, and it’s a dead end. So I turned to walk right back up this dirt – 120 degrees, it’s just as hot as it can be – and I come to the next little dirt pathway and as I cross over it these men came out of each side of that alleyway. And they closed the alleyway off and their shoulders are touching and their arms are crossed, uh, uh, their chest and they looked like the, like the wrath of God. And, and I thought, “Okay, uh, this is not a happy thought.” 

RACHEL SZABO: Nik was trapped. He had made a mistake by crossing over, and whoever these local men were – they were clearly not happy with him. And very likely he was about to get beaten up or taken captive or potentially – if they were angry enough – even lose his life. 

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: So I did what any redneck from Kentucky would do, I think, and I flexed both of my muscles and, and I put my hand on two of their shoulders just seeing if they’d let me pass through and they put their hands on my chest and pushed me against the wall. Now folks, there’s been hundreds of times – and this is probably the biggest time – when I wondered, “What seminary class did I miss? What Sunday school class was supposed to teach me how to be a New Testament person in the Old Testament? What do you do when you meet Goliath and you don’t have a rock? Uh, what do you, what do you do in, in a situation like this?” And I’m praying and my heart is thumping out of my chest and I know I sounded like a 13-year-old boy trying to grow up when my voice broke. And I told him, “What do you want? What, what’s this all about? Uh, can’t you leave me alone? Who, who are you?” And, and, uh, I’m leaning against this – just the, the heat is just on the mud side of that house, is burning through my shirt, my T-shirt. And I said, “What do you want? Who are you?” And this big, tall, scarred face said to me, “Are you the one? Have you come?” And I said, “Oh, you’re the five crazy guys from the restaurant.” And I said, “What is it? What do you want?” And they said, “Well, we have to tell you our story.” I said, “Can I leave?” He said no. 

RACHEL SZABO: So standing there in that alleyway against a mud hut with the sun beating down, Nik listened to what these men had to say.

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: And they said, “Many years ago, some people who are the same color that you are and, and a little bit they, they talk like you do, uh, they came to our villages and, uh, and, and, and in the midst of helping the people they, they told us about this man whose name is Jesus the Christ and we believed in that man. We believed in him. And then the Civil War came and those people were gone and they started hunting us down and, and, and, and, and killing us and, and we had to flee from our home villages. Even our families were after us.” And the big, tall guy said, “I was shot through the face five times, and, and this guy, uh, lost – uh, his baby, starved on the way.” And they said, “For five years we’ve been in this desert for five years, and the closest we’ve been to each other is 500 kilometers, about 300 miles. For five years we’ve never known, uh, uh, whether anybody else was alive or whether they were dead. Uh, we didn’t know, uh, uh, whether we were gonna live.” Uh, and, and, and they said to me, “All five of us, two months ago, almost to the day, all five of us began to pray and we prayed the same prayer. And all five of us prayed the same prayer with two parts, and we prayed, ‘Jesus, are you whom we were told you were or have we believed some kind of fairy tale that those white people told before they left? And Jesus, if, if you are who, uh, uh, uh, you, you told us you were, if you are who they told us you were, does anybody care? Does anybody care whether we’re alive or dead?'” And they said, “We prayed that – same time, same prayer, two months ago, 500 miles, 500 kilometers separate to each other.” 

RACHEL SZABO: And then the men said that as they each separately prayed this prayer, God also answered each of them separately with the same answer. And God said, “Go to this desert town. Wait for my servant. I’m sending you someone to answer your prayers.” 

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: And they said, “For six weeks now, we’ve been following everybody that is a westerner who gets out of the relief trucks or gets off of the small planes that the United Nations flies in.” And they said, “We’ve been following all these different westerners,” and they said, “The last two weeks we’ve been following you.” That’ll make you sleep well. And they said, “It looks like to us when you get up on, out of that Ron Davo at five in the morning and sit on the porch that you’re reading from a book that looks like it could be a Western Bible that those other people used to have. And unlike anybody else, it looks to us, well, uh, you pray over your morning bread or in that restaurant. It looks like you’re doing what those others did and they, when they ask God to bless their food, and we find a way every day to follow you to every village that you’ve gone to.” And they said, “We, we’ve never seen anybody pray over our people and cry over our dying children, and we wanna know – are you the one that God has promised? Have you come?” And I was beyond conscious thought in that heat and in that time of life, so I don’t remember reaching into my shirt pocket and pulling out a sweat-stained piece of paper. 

RACHEL SZABO: It was the paper his friend David had given him that had the five names written on it, and he read aloud each name to the men standing there in that alley.

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: And when I finished reading those names, those five sunburnt sons of a desert, they jumped away from me in terror and they asked me, “Where did you get our names?” And I said, “I gotta tell you my story.”

RACHEL SZABO: And so standing there in that alley against a mud hut with the sun beating down, Nik told them everything that you’ve just heard and about how Jesus had called him to Africa to work with refugees, about the feeding sites, about the dreams from God to come to this desert, about the clear word from his wife, and about the white guy from Georgia and the 14 signatures.

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: And I just told ’em that whole story, uh, that covered a few months and, and they looked at me with a, uh, excitement they couldn’t hardly contain. And they said, “You are the one. You have come. Now answer our prayers.” And I stood in one of the hottest places on Earth and I looked at these five sunburnt sons, now brothers in Christ, in the desert and I said to them, “You haven’t believed in a fairy tale or a fable. Jesus is Lord of lord. He is King of kings. He was killed and he rose again and now he reigns in heaven with his father and he sits at the right hand of the throne of God. You wanna know where I got your names? Those workers who brought the gospel to you, uh, gave me your names on this piece of card and said they didn’t know whether you were alive or dead, but would I take this with me into the desert and pray over those names just in case God would do something?” And they looked at each other and they looked at me and they said, “That’s all we needed to know,” and they turned around and started walking back in the desert.

RACHEL SZABO: Nik stayed in that desert for two more weeks, then God told him he was allowed to go. So very relieved, very exhausted, and very hot, Nik went home. And as is his custom, once he was back, his wife Ruth cooked a big dinner and they got their team together and their supporters together and Nik updated them on his trip.

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: And just chronologically I take them through the last six weeks of being in that desert, and, uh, an hour or so or more into the story Ruth starts to cry. You know, folks, that’s not unusual. Ruth cries ’cause it’s Tuesday. You know what she does? She cries at airports. Not only that, when we with the boys drive by airports, she imagines people saying goodbye inside and cries in the car and she doesn’t even know who the people are. But what’s really unusual is my boys are crying. They’re tough. They don’t cry. They don’t cry. And they’re sobbing, and, and everybody else is crying. I said, “What’s wrong with you people?” That’s a good thing to say. And they said, “You don’t see?” I said, “See what?” “You don’t, you don’t see how God created you in your mother’s womb and how he’s taken hundreds of thousands of hours and maybe twice hundred times, I mean dozens of times more that in money to move you, to grow you all, to shape you so that you could be taken by God like, like something on a chess board and be moved until God could pick you up in one country, take you through another country to a third country, and set you down in a desert so that you can just tell five of the neglected lost sheep of the kingdom of God that Jesus is Lord and that they are loved and they’re prayed for?”

RACHEL SZABO: When I was in youth group, one of the volunteers used to say, “Wherever you go, there you are,” meaning that God is working everywhere and there are opportunities everywhere. And where you are right now is probably not in the African desert surrounded by five men. And now that we’ve kind of widened the lens a little bit, I wanna focus it back in and ask the question – where are you? Who are the people who are around you? Who do you come in contact with? Who needs encouragement or a prayer or just to know that somebody cares? Maybe it’s an elderly neighbor or a single parent in your church, a child in foster care, or just a friend who’s having a hard time. Who is God calling you to reach out to? You don’t need to go to Africa to experience the power of God. Nothing is small in the work of His kingdom. So look around you because wherever you go, there you are. 

NIK RIPKEN CLIP: Can you be that person that when that lost soul is crying out to God, “I don’t know how to live and I’m afraid to die,” can you be the one – you don’t have to be practiced at it. You don’t even have to be good at it – that can tell them what Jesus has done for you and what he can do for them and know when Jesus changes their eternal destiny that forever they will know that you are the one and you came when they needed you the most? Now when I die, I want my family to take my ashes and take ’em back to Africa and sprinkle some of ’em on a quarter horse somewhere. But if they were to raise a, a stone to their daddy and my boys put on it, “Our dad was the one. He came when he was needed the most,” I’m gonna be one ecstatic daddy.

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RACHEL SZABO: If you’ve benefited at all from this podcast, please help us out by leaving a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Your review will help others discover our show.

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RACHEL SZABO: Special thanks to Nik Ripken and to Liberty Live Church for the use of his audio. To hear more from Nik, check out his website at nikripken.com. Today’s episode was hosted and produced by myself, Rachel Szabo. Jesse Eubanks is our senior producer. Anna Tran is our audio engineer. Music comes from Lee Rosevere, Poddington Bear, Blue Dot Sessions, and Murphy DX. If you’re a young adult looking to get involved in the work that God is doing, come serve with Love Thy Neighborhood. We offer personal discipleship and community missions for these modern times. Learn more and apply at lovethyneighborhood.org. Which of these was a neighbor to the man in need? The one who showed mercy. Jesus tells us, “Go, and do likewise.”