Category Answers for Workers

Jim van Heiningen

The way it started

Increasing blessing was attending the brand new work that was initiated in Jerusalem by the Holy Spirit. What wonderful chapters we find in “Acts of the Apostles”! Just take chapter 4, where we are told that “great grace was upon them all” – indeed, an abundance of living water was flowing! But the chapter starts off with persecution (have you ever noticed that the Jewish priests believed in the “laying on of hands” – verse 3?). This first time the persecution didn’t go beyond a night in prison for Peter and John and severe and repeated threats. That was God’s instrument to get the whole church down on its knees in prayer and supplication...

Jim van Heiningen

A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are for!
Ships are built for navigation. They do get into ports but then out again and on their way. A mission waits to be accomplished. What’s the use of a ship sitting idly in a harbor?

And then you have the Christian in his “comfort-zone”, as George Verwer would put it. Very much like that ship while it is idling in a harbor – useless! However, we must have a look not at the sea, but at the land, because our Lord points at some most important principles there.

“After these things the Lord appointed seventy others also,and sent them two by two before his face into every city and place where He himself was about to go...

Daniel Thomas

One young man in South Wales, taking God serious, and thus God’s will for his life, was ready to burn his bridges behind him and venture out to far and dangerous lands.., if God so led. When, later, his mother found out he was definitely praying and preparing for South America, she despaired. She offered him the small fortune of 100 Gold Sovereigns, if only he would give up such ideas.
To no avail! Daniel Thomas loved his Lord and Savior even more than his own dear mother. And God used him mightily in Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil and Spain, but not without a cost.

As he opened his heart to those who prayed for him, giving them glimpses of all that went on in his life and work, we too may benefit and learn from such dealings of God with a willing heart.

1913        Paraguay...

One great mission, regretting the dearth of workers, recently printed this remark in their bulletin:

“Many interested persons have declined the opportunity to work with us because they are unable to raise the funds needed to support their family while they are in full-time ministry.”

The sentiment and the statement are typical of most missions.

The NTMU does not require a guaranteed income for new workers, which makes us one of the few exceptions. It may also have earned us epithets like ‘anachronistic’, ‘stuck-in-the-mud’ and the like. However, if we want to do a “New Testament work” and be a “faith mission”, we can hardly expect the servants of the King-of-kings to go around with a virtual begging bowl.

The following article, though written well before our time, is spot on...

By Jim van Heiningen

          Simon the Samaritan of Acts chapter 8, now a Christian, felt called to the “ministry”. He could see himself a conduit for the Holy Spirit… Then his heart condition was diagnosed, and all his lofty aspirations crashed. The apostle Peter’s diagnosis spelled ‘acute heart trouble’!

          In Dutch there is a saying that “soft physicians create stinking sores”. Peter wasn’t a ‘soft physician’, as the reader of Acts already knew from chapter 5 in connection with the case of Ananias and Sapphira. But was Peter’s diagnosis of Simon’s case too stern? This particular “Thought-of-Heart” condition was, he said, induced by a fearsome “gall-poisoning” of BIS (bitterness & iniquity syndrome).

Of course, Luke, the physician, who wrote down t...