Immigrants, Refugees, and the Gospel Opportunity

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Explore the powerful theme of bold humility in ministry, as demonstrated in Red Deer, Alberta. Discover how perseverance and friendship have shaped this journey over 18 years.

Transcript

About a year ago, we've been pressing in on this concept of bold humility in prayer. Bold humility sounds like an oxymoron. It sounds like a juxtipositioning of two extreme things because boldness doesn't usually show up with humility. But we felt in the spirit to be praying for bold humility over Canada. We were in Alberta just a couple of weeks ago in central Alberta, actually based out of Red Dear. Our friend Richard Roth put this all together with some other leaders in the city. We had an amazing time. We were up in Sunchild First Nation and Mascu as well. We put on a Israel Why Israel conference with Stockwell Day. We built citywide prayer. Met with many many men's prayer breakfasts. I love that because a lot of the prayer movement is is um there's a lot of females and I'm grateful that there's so many. But to see so many men's breakfasts in one city was amazing. And I think the highlight for us was attending a church called River Church in Red Dear on Sunday night where we proclaimed the gospel with an unbelievable amount of freedom. I was able to preach with an interpreter to a congregation that had eight different languages represented by all kinds of new Canadians. Not

even Canadians yet. All kinds of new people. All kinds of refugees. Sudanese, uh, Rwanda, Ugandan, Assyrian, Iraqi, Afghanistani, um, Ukraine. I mean, all these these languages and people groups were represented in one congregation. And I read from a passage of scripture. I actually was preaching from Isaiah 61, my most favorite place to preach from, you know, and you know the verse from the spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me because he's anointed me to preach good news. And we pre and the the the um the reference went down to verse three ending at oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. Many of you know that. So actually what happened in this service they uh it was a a Lutheran service a Lutheran church plant and they they before the scripture this was the scripture reading so they read it during the service the Isaiah 61 1:3 except they read it eight times in eight different languages and every time they read it you could sense a boom in the spirit because we were declaring this over red deer, but we weren't just declaring it in English. We were declaring it in Sudin and and uh and Swahili and and Ugandan and French because there were

congines people there. It was incredible the amount of people that were there in different places. So, we were able to preach the word of the Lord freely. The crux of the preach was this. God sent you here to be a blessing to Canada. God sent you here to preach good news to set captives free. So I know that many of us, many of us have a lot of political opinions on the amount of immigration we have and we have a lot and and uh I would agree uh we maybe have a little bit too much and maybe a lot too much because we just don't have the the wherewithal to care for these people. But nevertheless, they are here. And because they are here, it is our responsibility to preach good news to the poor. How many times have we heard this about Revelation 22 that this is Canada's role to be leaves of healing to the nations? And we know that they're coming here. So, I want to encourage you today. Today, cast your net on the other side of the boat. Jesus said that to the disciples, you know, cast your net on the other side of the boat. We have people coming right to us, our nation. We could complain. We can we could be concerned. We can worry. We can even say, "Hey, we there might be even a

takeover or an overthrow. There's a lot of that talk out there. You know, we there could be a lot of this." But cast your net on the other side of a fence. Cast your net on the other side of opinion. Cast your net and go fishing. It is time to go fishing. Let me tell you the highlight of that trip. And there were a lot of highlights. There are a lot of amazing things. I've said this often and I believe it wholeheartedly that God is doing big things in little places in Canada. Brad and I had the opportunity to meet with 30 young Muslim men to discuss Israel and Palestine. You can imagine how vigorous a discussion that was and it was. But our real intention wasn't just to argue about the validity of Israel where it stands in the Bible, the history of Israel. We were there to really talk about Jesus. That was the that that was the main deal. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing and the main thing is Jesus. And so we wanted to talk to these young men about Jesus. We had a powerful time and the outcome of the hours of debate. 30some against two. That was the odds and it was vigorous at times. Some were even offended and left. But that's okay. The vast majority stayed.

And the vast majority said to us, "When are you coming back? I'm so grateful for that, for the opportunity to preach. And I want to say this to you. We see all these people coming. We see all people from all over the place. A lot of distress. Whether it is a plan of the enemy, whatever God use, what the enemy uses for evil, God will turn it around for good. And this is the opportunity to preach. So I will say to you one more time, get out there. You're the pastor of the street. Better yet, you're the evangelist of your street. You are the evangelist in your workplace. You are the evangelist at your school. You're the evangelist. And because you have a testimony, because you have a testimony of the goodness of God, pull out your testimony and use it. Pull out your testimony and testify to what God has done in your life. The prayer movement is not supposed to stay in the closet. It is time for it to move out of the closet and move on to the streets. How beautiful are those are the feet of those that bring good news. The prayer movement has feet. My name is Chris Byber, the director of the National House of Prayer. And if you like this video, please like and share. We'll see you next

time. Bye for now.