How to find Persons of Peace

      Hello everybody, my name is Dean Davis and this is “Multiply,” the podcast that

provides a word of encouragement for Village Church Planters.

One of the most exciting experiences a Christian worker can ever have is to

look for and find persons of peace. You know that a person of peace is a man or

a woman, prepared by God to respond to the gospel and to respond to gospel

messengers when they come with good news. You are familiar with persons of

peace described the Bible, the woman at the well Cornelius, Lydia, the

Philippian jailer and others. You know how God prepared these people to

respond to the Good News and connect gospel messengers with other people in

their towns and villages. Their example follows the pattern that Jesus taught

72 workers to follow. That pattern of ministry that Jesus prescribed is found in

Luke chapter 10:1-10. Praise the Lord, that pattern of ministry instituted by

our Savior is still effective today.

I remember when I was helping plant a church in Quito, Ecuador. I was

attending a prayer meeting when I received a call from a hospital chaplain. She

said “There is a man here who has just been diagnosed with cancer of the

bladder. He is very worried. Now he has to leave our hospital to go to another

hospital. Can you send someone from your church to talk with him right away?

Immediately, I went over to the hospital and visited with the man and his wife.

He was indeed worried. He knew about his diagnosis. I told him that it’s always

God‘s will to heal his children, either here in this world, or in the world of

come. I found out that he did not have any assurance that he was a child of

God. I invited him and his wife to pray to receive Christ and they did. Then I

prayed for his healing. His life was transformed, and soon he shared the Good

News with his family. The next time the doctors performed a test on him, they

found that his tumor was not malignant! My new friend was a person of peace.

He showed it by the way he responded when I offered to pray. He confirmed

that he was a person of peace by his hunger to know the things of God, and by

his willingness to share the good news with others.

We find persons of peace through prayer. I was called to go to the hospital

while I was attending a prayer meeting with other Church planters. We find

persons of peace by offering to pray for others. Their response to our offers of

prayer is often an indication of spiritual hunger. We find persons of peace by

sharing the gospel. Persons of peace have been prepared by God to be hungry

for the Good News; they show that hunger by their response.

Persons of peace tell family and friends the Good News that they have heard.

They introduce gospel messengers to people they are related to. They connect

the gospel messenger with friends, neighbors, and family members. Persons of

peace are an instrument God uses to spread the good news to many people. He

does that because he is not willing that any should perish, but that all should

come to repentance.

When we look for persons of peace, we are cooperating with God. When we

find persons of peace, we rejoice because we see and believe that the gospel

can spread rapidly!

What about you? Do you have a story in which you found a young person, a man

or a woman who was hungry to know God? Do you have a story about when you

met a person of peace and they responded readily to you, to your prayers, and

to your sharing of the Gospel? If so, keep looking and finding more persons of

peace. If not, ask God to lead you to persons he has prepared as persons of

peace. When they trust Christ, teach them to obey all that Jesus commanded.

Help them connect people in their network of relations to Jesus.

This has been “Multiply,” and I’m Dean Davis asking, “Who will you share this

encouraging word with today?”

#EncouragementForVillageChurchPlanters #Find Persons of Peace