MINISTRY//Jia lives with Jesus
Notes from our 316NOW team
Jia lives with Jesus
Between now and the end of the year, our 316NOW team will have the opportunity to share with you some of their stories.
As you read their stories, please do two things.
Pray for our team and the souls they care for.
Consider how you might partner with them. https://www.316now.org/firmlyforward
How gracious God is. A professor in our Bible institute reflects on God's grace to the father of one of his students.
Disung’s father, Jia, had recently become a Christian. His desire as a new confessing Christian was to become baptized. But he suddenly took ill and was hospitalized. Disung contacted me and asked what he should do since his father was slipping in and out of a coma.
I explained to Disung that he could baptize his father. But, because of his high regard for the role of pastors, he insisted a pastor must do the baptism.
One of our students who also served as an interpreter for my class was a pastor. But this shepherd was a five-hour train ride away. "Would you be able to baptize Disung's father?" I asked.
God had already arranged an opening in this pastor's schedule. And his grace had prompted a willingness to bring the assurance of baptism's washing to one of the Shepherd's sheep.
At the hospital, Jia drifted in and out of consciousness. But when the pastor arrived, Jia opened his eyes and was fully alert. "Would you baptize me?" he asked the pastor. Immediately, water and the Word assured Jia he was a child of God.
Fifteen minutes later, Jia fell asleep only to wake in the arms of Jesus.
Disung called me to let me know what had happened. He was as happy as I had ever heard him. His father was in heaven!
Ever the shepherd, the pastor who traveled so far to baptize Jia agreed to return for the funeral and to use the service to testify to all of Jia's non-Christian family and friends about God's grace in Jesus.
Disung would later tell me how the joy of salvation in their hearts and on their lips led others to ask how they could feel such joy at the death of Jia. Their answer: “Jia lives with Jesus!”