Leonard told him: "When opportunity comes, do not pass it up! You must seize the opportunity of a lifetime during the lifetime of the opportunity!"
It would be this very advice that would lead Steve Hill to stay at Brownsville A/G and to cancel all of his speaking engagements in order to preach the nightly services at the revival.
It is a simple statement: "Seize the opportunity of a lifetime during the lifetime of that opportunity". Yet as simple as that advice may seem it can be revolutionary when put into practice in our own lives...
We tend to think of opportunity as a catalyst that will somehow help us in life. As Americans part of our mindset is individuality and we respect such character traits as self-sufficiency and self-improvement. As such when I say the word opportunity the first thing we think of by default is some open door that will lead to greater things for us, our family, or our career. We think of opportunity as being something that will advance our cause.
It was just over six years ago that a different type of opportunity came knocking on our door. Aracelli (my wife) was speaking with her mother on the phone and after hanging up she came to me with a very serious look on her face. For a moment I began scanning my brain to contemplate if I had left the toilet seat up, thrown clothes on the floor, or some other deficient action attributed to those with Y-chromosomes. Thankfully it was none of the above.
Aracelli told me that her mother, an Assemblies of God pastor in Peru, and another pastor there were overwhelmed because of a small village outside Trujillo, Peru that they had just visited. She went on to say that there was no church, no school, no running water, and no electricity. The people of that village were earning an average wage of $120/year and living like modern day slaves working 14-16 hour days on the nearby farmlands.
What perplexed me most about the situation wasn't just that these poor people worked hard on the farmlands and yet had nearly nothing to eat. What surprised me most was that they lived within a half hours drive from a local church, but no one from that church (or any of the dozens of other nearby churches) had gone out to reach them. They had a church building in the center of that farmland, but it had gone abandoned years prior and no pastor would come to disciple them because there was no offering or salary involved.
There was an amazing opportunity for the local churches to reach a forgotten people but no one stepped up to help that lost village. Many of the people there were caught up into witchcraft and would go to see the shaman (witchdoctor) whenever they could. Unfortunately some there there still do. They were a lost people in need of a Savior...
As I contemplated what (if anything) we could do to help I reasoned within myself that we didn't have the contacts, the funds, the experience, or the knowledge to help these people. After all, I was waiting for my own opportunities to arise so that I could advance my own personal life. Yet that nagging feeling that I should partner with those two local pastors pushed and pushed against me and I could almost audibly hear the voice of Pastor Steve Hill saying
"Don't miss this opportunity!" After a very short deliberation Aracelli and I decided to start sending sufficient funds monthly so that my mother-in-law and the other pastor could start a Sunday school for the kids and give them food each Sunday morning. It was a small opportunity to help that quickly turned into a large responsibility.
Within months that Sunday School had over 50 children and not too long after that we began paying an out of work teacher to sit on the rocks outside of the abandoned church there where she taught about 10 of the kids how to read and write each day. Then, in 2005, we decided that opportunity once again was knocking and it was time to respond. We went to our home church pastor, Randy Czyz, and asked him if the church could help to build a school. In all honesty we had no clue what we were doing. We didn't know about the legalities of such an action, we didn't have a background in building or planting, we didn't have resources to fund the school on an ongoing basis, we had almost no contacts to help us on the US or Peruvian side of things...
BUT, Pastor Randy saw an opportunity.
Pastor Randy wasn't looking for an opportunity to advance the name of World of Life A/G (his and our home church), he wasn't looking for an opportunity to make his name known. What pastor Randy saw was an opportunity to help those in need and to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ into a forgotten area. Our church took a leap of faith and took up an offering and enough money came in for us to construct a small building with two rooms and one class with about 10 students.
Now just 5 years later we have 18 staff members, five rooms, running water, electricity, a kitchen, and much more as well as 60 students enrolled at Nuevo Jordan School. We are helping hundreds there yearly with various outreaches, humanitarian support, and free seminars. The church there has been rebuilt and reopened and many locals attend there. We are in the process of expanding the school and plan on continuing this work until the Lord's coming! Has it been easy? NO. Do we still struggle constantly? YES- just this past month we were nearly $1,000 shy of our monthly budget at the school.
We didn't benefit from these actions and have sacrificed more than I'd care to share publicly- but Aracelli and I would do it all again without hesitation if we had to and we will continue helping the people of La Carbonera, Peru for as long as the Lord permits!
It has been six years of arduous labor with many victories and plenty of defeats. It has been very difficult raising a ministry from the dust, but we are thrilled that the Lord gave us that opportunity and helped capacitate us to make it become reality.
THEN late last year another opportunity came knocking on our door.....
This opportunity came with a serious hitch: leave your family, leave your friends, leave your careers, leave your possessions and GO! Aracelli and I knew that we had to go to Peru and we really weren't sure what we were going to do there, but then a knock came at our door (more like a phone call really). We were told that there was a large project that would begin sometime in 2011 if we would oversee it and we were asked whether we would be interested in moving to Peru and helping.
Would we be willing to go to Peru and plant the first ever Teen Challenge in that country?
When we Americans hear the word opportunity do we contemplate it in it's entirety? Do we truly understand that many opportunities that are God-derived are sacrificial and difficult in nature? That the kingdom of God truly is taken by force and can often be violent (although not typically physically violent) in nature.
Would we be willing to leave it all and move to Peru to work on the streets of Villa El Salvador amongst gang members, prostitutes and drug addicts? Would we be willing to uproot our two little children (Graziella 4 years and Renato 6 months) and bring them 5,000 miles away into a lifestyle of sacrifice and hard work?
We have decided that Leonard Ravenhill was correct. We may never be multi-millionaires and we may never have huge homes with big boats and picket fences... But when it's all said and done and we sit on our death bed contemplating whether we'd spent our life for God or for ourselves we don't want to regret how we spent our time and our money. We don't want to be at the end of the journey wishing we had taken up the opportunities that were once set before us; thus, we decided to drop it all and take up the cause of Christ. We decided to start once more from the bottom up and to raise another ministry from the dust as we have with Shekinah Gloria Ministries starting that fateful day in 2004.
What about you? Will you take the opportunities placed before you? Is there something God has placed before you that you've hesitated to grab hold of because you don't have the time, the resources, the knowledge, or the passion to do?
I've failed more times than I can count and missed opportunities to self-sacrifice for Christ's glory on more occasions than I care to consider: but we have decided to move forward and take this opportunities by it's horns. I can't say how it all will turn out and I'm sure there's plenty of hardship, labor, and difficulty ahead- but I wouldn't miss it for the world!
Will you take the opportunity to pray for this effort? To give towards this effort?
Will you take the opportunities that the Lord places before you?
Perhaps it's to go on a missions trip?
Perhaps it's to give financially or materially towards someone who is doing His work?
Perhaps it's to start a small group or to disciple a new believer?
Perhaps it is to interceed for your pastor, friends, family, or neighbors?
Perhaps it is to GO- to go to your town, to your city, to your state, your nation, and even to the world!
With billions who have never heard the name of Christ and millions perishing right here at home: Will we decide to set our own ambitions aside when an opportunity comes knocking and seize that opportunity during it's lifetime OR will you sit back one day with all of your amassed plenitude and wish you had made a move when God gave you the chance?
"Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee!"
EPHESIANS 5:14
