The way God has answered prayers after deciding to become a missionary. 

<p>The way God has answered prayers after deciding to become a missionary.</p> <div></div>

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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Jason Sliger

Testimony of Becoming a Missionary

You know, we live in really uncertain times.

I'm sure you've heard a lot about that recently And this morning I wanted to share with you How God has led in our lives as you just heard he used to pastor here in the michigan conference and now we're planning on heading to the mission field to work in Papua New Guinea with Adventist Frontier Missions.

And I want to share with you a little bit of the journey that we've gone through that has brought us to this point.

But before I do that, I want to share with you a passage of scripture that just kind of sets the tone for us this morning and then we'll have an opening prayer start.

If you have your Bibles you can go to Psalms chapter 67 and this is in verse 1.

I was reminded of this passage just a couple of weeks ago.

The Bible says this, May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us.

Now that's a great prayer to pray, especially in the times that we're living in today.

God be gracious to us, bless us, Make your face to shine upon us.

And I know there are many people that are going through some challenges, whether it be through health or finances.

Great prayer to pray that David has here.

But I want you to notice why David praises this prayer in the next verse, verse 2.

He says, that your way may be known on the earth and your saving power among all the nations.

And I find this passage just fascinating to me because David's not just praying for blessings just to be blessed.

He's praying that God would bless him so that he in turn could let the nations know about God's goodness in his life, thus resulting in verse 3, let the people praise you, O God.

And so this morning I just want to encourage you, some of you may be going through tough times, pray that God's blessing be upon you so that you can share that blessing with somebody else so that God's goodness can be known through all of the earth.

Several, About a year ago when we made the decision to make this transition, we prayed and we said, Lord, give us a testimony that we can share that will give honor and glory to your name.

And God answered that prayer and I want to share that with you this morning.

So I invite you, if you if you can, to bow your heads with me and we'll start with a brief word of prayer.

Father in heaven, we are grateful that we can gather together here in this digital world.

We thank you, Father, for giving us these tools that enable us to keep connected.

And Father, as we've assembled ourselves together on this Facebook page to worship you this morning in this different way, we ask that your Holy Spirit would come into our homes wherever we are at, sitting in front of our computers, that He would impress the message, the thoughts in our hearts right where it needs to be, and that Lord, we would be drawn closer to You, and that whatever challenges we may be facing in our lives right now, that these challenges would be a means of drawing us closer to you, stretching our faith, that we would depend upon you more.

So Father, we ask now that you would grace us with your presence and that you would speak to our hearts for we ask it in Jesus name.

So 10 years ago I was sitting in my living room and visiting with a good friend of mine.

We had done a lot of evangelism together at that time.

I was working with Amazing Facts doing Bible prophecy seminars.

And he came to visit us in our home 1 day to tell us about a transition that was coming up in his life.

Kyle and I had done some evangelism before.

The Lord had blessed him with the ability not only to convey the faith, but to win souls into the kingdom of heaven.

And now Kyle was getting ready to transition into the mission field as a missionary with Adventist Frontier Missions.

I was intrigued with what would cause somebody of his position, he was a sought after Bible worker, to leave his position and go to the mission field, to a place where he didn't know the culture, he didn't know the language, didn't know much about it.

And so he came to my house to share with me this story, and it was very fascinating to listen how the Lord led him to this point in his life.

But what really made an impact was when he, at the end of his visit, he opened up his laptop and he showed me a three-minute video outlining the need for missions and a need for missionaries.

In that video there was a lot that was said, but 1 thing that really resonated with me was the 3000000000 people in the world who have never even heard the name of Jesus uttered.

Now if you want to appeal to the heart of an evangelist, you tell him that there are 3000000000 people who don't even know that Jesus exists, never heard the Word of God, let alone of a Seventh-day Adventist.

And as I sat there and watched that video, I remember my eyes beginning to get hot as the tears welled up in my eyes, and I was thinking, Lord, this is such a massive need in the world to hear the gospel and the good news that you have given to us.

There's so many people out there that are just longing for more light and more truth.

And I didn't really feel at that time that God obviously was calling me to go into the mission field, but that was the beginnings where the Lord started placing this burden upon my heart.

After that, the Lord transitioned me into pastoral work in the Michigan Conference and during that time we picked up several missionary friends.

We would have them come to our districts and present what was going on in their in their respective fields.

We picked up several missionaries that we started supporting financially.

We read lots of missionary biographies during that time and the Lord was just continuing to impress the need for missions upon our hearts.

I had reasoned in my mind during that time that I wasn't your typical person that was equipped to go to the mission field.

I wasn't a doctor, I wasn't a nurse, I wasn't a dentist, I didn't have anything, any skills in the medical field, I wasn't a teacher.

And so in my mind I didn't really feel like it was something that I could do.

Now obviously since then I've changed my mind on that, but I kind of reasoned it away.

And a little over a year ago, my wife came to me 1 day and she's an avid reader of the Adventist Frontier Missions magazine.

We get it every month and she reads it from cover to cover.

And 1 month, a little over a year ago, she picked up the magazine and she was reading it through and in the back of the magazine there was a little ad on the last page for the top 5 mission calls that they had.

And she looked through those top 5 mission calls and 1 of the top 5 mission calls was for a pastor family to the highlands of Scotland, to Northern Scotland.

And just out of curiosity, she showed it to me.

It wasn't like she was trying to bend my arm or anything like that.

You know, they're calling for a pastor family to Northern Scotland as missionaries.

And I was like, wow, that's fascinating, but I didn't give it a whole lot of thought.

The next month, she's reading through the magazine again.

She comes to that last page, top 5 mission calls, and it's there again, to the Highlands of Scotland, a call for a pastoral family.

For 5 or 6 months this went on and unbeknownst to me in the course of that 5 or 6 months, My wife began to pray that the Lord would place a burden for missions upon my heart.

Now she'd always wanted to be a missionary growing up.

She wanted to be 1 of those Amy Carmichael's that just lived with the people and died with the people and went to the mission field.

And so she started praying and just, Lord, if it's your desire for us to go to the mission field, either put this on Jason's heart or give me peace about us not going.

She didn't say a word to me about that prayer that she was praying.

And out of all of the prayer requests that were answered that I'm going to share with you this morning, this is probably the most powerful of how God can change a person's heart.

December, a year ago, not this past December, but the December 4 of 2018, I was sitting in my bedroom having my morning devotions.

And I had just recently gotten a new Bible and I was going through this new Bible in my devotional time in the morning.

And I was reading through the Gospel of Luke.

Luke chapter 11 was where I was at that particular morning.

And I picked up my Bible as you do on each morning, you know, having your morning devotion time.

And I started reading where I left off the day before.

I just read through that chapter and and what I like to do is I like to find promises.

It's kind of my spiritual hobby, if you will.

Whenever I find a promise in the Bible, I always underline it in blue so that it's very easy for me to find later on and claim in my prayer time with God.

And so as I was going through Luke chapter 11, I came to verse 9, which is a promise that you have heard many times.

Jesus says, and I tell you, ask and it will be given unto you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be open to you.

For everyone who asks receives, and to the 1 who seeks finds, and to the 1 who knocks it will be open.

And as I was going through this chapter I just I started praying and said Lord you know speak to me through your word.

I do this oftentimes in my prayer time or my devotional time as I'm reading through the Bible.

Pray and ask God to talk to me through that passage of scripture and what he wants me to take out of it for that day.

And as I was praying through it, the Lord, it's hard to describe this, but when it happens to you, you really understand it.

And I've only had it happen to me a couple of times, but it was a very clear, a very distinctive impression in my mind, God telling me that it was time for our family to start knocking on the door of missions.

And I prayed about it for a little while with the Lord, and I just had peace with it that this was something that the Lord wanted us to start investigating and start knocking on various doors.

Well, I went to go tell my wife, I finished my devotional time and shared with her what I had discovered and of course she was she was ready to go, she was happy to do that.

So that afternoon I went down into my office in my home And I composed an email to AFM, Adventist Frontier Missions, asking them for some more additional information on this project in Northern Scotland in the Highlands.

And I get an email back from John Baxter, who's a friend of ours.

He was in charge of recruiting missionaries at the time.

We're so excited that you're interested in missions.

We would love to talk to you more about this.

He said, right now it's really difficult for us to get work permits for Americans in UK, but nothing is impossible for God.

I said, hey, you know, look, I guess I should have told you this, but I have British citizenship.

And my stepfather is British and because of that I got my citizenship through him.

And I'm sitting there in my office thinking to myself, the Lord is already working this thing out for me.

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Testimony of Becoming a Missionary

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