She was born into a disadvantaged and poor ethnic minority in the rural interior of Asia. She was the apple of her hard-working father’s eye, and he saw to it that she received a college education and a master’s degree.
After concluding her studies in a large, distant city, she returned to her home prefecture to teach at a small college. She soon found herself teaching the new (and only) foreign student on campus. He was there to study the national language, but his ultimate and unspoken purpose was to connect the teacher’s unreached people group with Jesus.
As the only foreign student on campus, his classes had one-to-one student-teacher ratios, so classroom interactions, at times, could be steered toward spiritual things. Nationally, sharing Jesus was illegal, with the ban more intensely enforced in the hinterlands where the college was. Although the teacher was part of an organization requiring atheism of its members, she was open to gospel conversations, having met a few Christians while studying in the big city.
One morning she called to cancel class for two weeks. Her beloved father, back in the village, had died, and her tribal group’s funeral tradition would take two weeks to complete. Several days later, the student traveled to the village to pay his respects. The occupied coffin was on the floor in the main living area of the family home. The waiting gravesite was at the edge of a nearby field. The feasting was continuous. The homemade rice liquor flowed freely. Hopeless animism and useless ancestor worship were on full display.
Upon her return to the college, spiritual matters dominated her mind. During their next gospel conversation, she asked the student the hardest question he had ever faced thus far: “Where is my father?” This was no academic case study, nor was it a missions training lab. After an emergency silent prayer, the student answered.
Saying it out loud to his grieving teacher, he nearly choked on the words: “The Bible says that those who die without Jesus will spend eternity in hell.” Her face turned deep red, and her eyes filled to overflowing. Although he knew the answer, the student asked her anyway: “Did your father know Jesus?” “No. No,” she said. Then she really went there: “Is my father in hell?”
There was no time for a sermon, so he simply said, “Yes.” She replied, “In that case, I don’t want to be a Christian. I don’t want to belong to Jesus if it means I’ll never see my father again … I would rather be in hell with him.”
The student didn’t know what to say, but the Holy Spirit reminded him of Lazarus and the lost rich man of Luke 16. The rich man, after he died, begged for someone to warn his living brothers not to join him in the place of suffering.
So, the student asked his teacher if her father loved her? “Oh, yes, very much!” He asked, “Did he always do his best to protect you and provide for you?” She said, “Yes.”
He asked, “If your father is in a place of suffering, would he want you to come there, too? What would he say about you wanting to be there?” With resignation and relief, she said, “He would say, ‘Don’t come here … go to Jesus.’ ” And, before long, she came to saving faith.
God used Southern Baptists to put the student in that place, at that time. He used the reality of death and of hell to speak to a grieving daughter’s heart and bring her to faith. Someone may be waiting for you to bring them good news, but you may have to share bad news first. Even so, “Let’s Go!”