“Please pray for my brother-in-law to believe in Jesus,” Sabin requested at staff worship one morning. She then added, “He says that when he reads the Bible, he always gets a headache and can’t understand what he reads. He believes in Satan and says that when he is sick, he offers sacrifices to Satan, and then he feels better.”

The prayer request haunted me over the next few days. This man felt a concrete connection in his worship of the spirits and experienced tangible relief when he performed the ‘correct’ appeasements. It must seem to him like he had a certain amount of control over his life through these practices. Yet the source of relief was also the source of the sickness.

So how can we help him, and others like him, see that following God is better? How can we help them trust a God that they don’t know and, instead of manipulating Him for what they want, submit themselves to His good judgment?

My mind grappled with this question. I was not doubting God’s goodness and sovereignty, but wondering how to help people like Sabin’s brother-in-law want to experience it for themselves. I come from a strong Christian background and never had to make that transition. I decided that I needed an insider to help answer my question.

During worship the following week, I asked the local staff the following questions: “What was it that made you decide to leave spirit worship and follow Jesus? What was life like for you before you started following Jesus, and how is it different now?” Several of them looked thoughtful, but Sabin was the first to share, her face lighting up as she spoke.

“I had a job where my boss was very unkind. When I couldn’t keep up with the work, he would say unkind things and cause me a lot of stress. My friend Tang told me about his Christian boss, who was kind to him. He told me how he started to believe in Jesus and that Christians love each other and help each other. I thought how nice that sounded compared with my boss. That’s when I decided I wanted to believe in Jesus. I used to live with constant fear. Now I have very little fear.”

“What was it that you were afraid of?” I asked.

“Before I believed in Jesus, I was afraid of many things. If I went swimming at a waterfall that the spirits claimed, walked on a path that they didn’t want me on, or did anything that they didn’t like, they could make me sick or get headaches. Then I would have to go to the witch doctor, who would ask the spirits what the problem was. The spirits would tell them what I had done wrong and what sacrifice they wanted in order to release me from the consequences of my offense. After I made the sacrifice, I would feel better.

“My brother used to have a spirit that would partially paralyze him. If the spirit attacked him while he was walking, my brother would fall, and we would have to move him to the wooden platform under the house. He had to stop going to school because he would get sick like this so often. Then we would call the witch doctor, and he would come and tell us what to do. One time, he waved his hand over my brother’s stomach, and white stones came out of his belly. After I started following Jesus, I told my brother about Him, too, and he started believing in Jesus. Since then, my brother really hasn’t gotten sick like that. Now he can go back to school again.”

“Is life better?” I asked.

“Well, we don’t have to spend all the money to make sacrifices, so that is a lot better. But the best thing is the peace that I have, knowing Jesus loves me. Sometimes I still feel afraid of things, but it isn’t like it was before,” Sabin said as she concluded her testimony.

Sabin is a precious young lady who desires to follow Jesus with her whole heart. This past week, she told Jonathan and me that she was selling her smartphone to get a regular one. When we asked her why, she said she felt addicted to her smartphone and wasted too much time on it. She said with a smile, “If I get rid of my smartphone, I won’t be so distracted, and I will be able to spend more time with Jesus and be filled up with Him all the way.”

Praise God with us for this young lady’s dedication, and please join all of us here in praying for her brother-in-law to be set free from the control of the spirits and to believe in Jesus, too.

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