Watching God Work

Dima Plugatarev

During school holidays seminary students from Zaoksky Theological Seminary spread across the Euro-Asia Division to hold evangelistic meetings and sell faith-building literature. They return to school with stirring stories of how God works in the lives of those who decide to trust Him. The following stories come from evangelistic meetings the students held in a large city in northern Russia.

What About the Sabbath?

Toward the end of the meetings the students made a presentation on the Sabbath. After the meeting a woman approached Dima, a team member.

"I believe all you have taught us during these meetings. But what you said about the Sabbath troubles me," she began. "I must work on the Sabbath. This is the only obstacle I see to becoming a member of your church."

Dima knew the difficulties many people faced when confronted with a conflict between the Sabbath and their work. Jobs were difficult to find, and often did not pay well. He encouraged her to trust God to work out the problem. "You will see for yourself that God is faithful and will honor your desire to follow Him."

"I will try," she said. Dima promised to pray for her and invited her to come to the meeting on Sabbath.

Sabbath morning the woman was at the worship service. She told him that she had not gone to work that day, but she would not know until Monday how her Sabbath problem would work out. When Dima invited her to consider being baptized on Monday, she declined. "I need to know that this problem is solved first," she answered.

The woman continued to attend the nightly meetings, and the following Sabbath she told Dima that she was ready to be baptized.

"What happened to change your mind?" he asked her.

Putting God to the Test

"You see," she said, "I run a food shop, and Sabbath is usually our busiest day. When I came to the church the first Sabbath, I had asked someone else to run the shop for me. But when I returned to the store on Sunday, I found that the store had sold very little on Saturday. So the next Sabbath I closed the store. Still I wondered what God would do for me, because it was important that the store make up the money I would lose from closing on Sabbath." The woman paused and smiled. "During the following week, we sold twice as much as we would have sold during a week, even if we had been open on Sabbath! You were right! God is faithful. Now I am ready to be baptized!"

A few days after her baptism the woman returned to talk with Dima again. "Some friends came to visit me the day after my baptism," she said. "I told them that I had joined the Adventist church, and they warned me that this church is a sect and that I should get out as soon as possible. I don't know what to tell them."

Dima told her, "When someone takes a stand for God, Satan tries to shake their faith. Hold tightly to God," he urged her. "God will never let you go; don't let go of Him, either." The woman has remained faithful and is sharing her faith with others in her city.

Trouble With Spirits

Another young woman came to Dima during the evangelistic meetings and told him that she had attended all the meetings thus far and was enjoying them very much. "But," she said, hesitating. "Something strange is happening with my little girl." The woman explained that her 5-year-old daughter had begun crying out at night, saying such things as "I don't want to live! I want to die!" She explained that her daughter enjoyed coming to the children's meetings that were being held in connection with the evangelistic meetings, but when her family heard the child crying at night and saw her restlessness, they felt that something bad was happening during the children's meetings. "What should I do?" the woman asked. "My daughter wants to come to the meetings, but my husband and his mother--and even my mother--say I should not bring her."

Dima asked the woman if the family had ever taken the child to a psychic healer, someone who heals by prayers or spiritualistic rituals. The woman answered, "Several weeks ago my daughter was quite ill, and my relatives urged me to take her to an old woman who heals with prayers. After the woman prayed over her, my daughter seemed to get better, but she also became quite restless and nervous. Eventually the problem seemed to go away, and I did not think anything of it. But when she began having so much trouble sleeping at night, my relatives told me to take the child to this same woman again. I hesitated and have not taken her back, but I am not sure what to do."

Dima suggested that the devil was trying to discourage her from following God by troubling her daughter. "You must follow what the Bible says to do rather than take your daughter to the healers. The Bible says to let believers pray over those who are sick or troubled. If you will bring the child to the meetings tomorrow, we will pray that God will deliver her from the devil's torments." Dima reminded the young mother of the talk they had given a few nights earlier about how the devil works through spiritualism, through psychic healers and diviners.

But this young mother still was not sure what to do. "If I do not take the child to the healer, my husband, my mother, and my mother-in-law will be angry. They will say I am not a fit mother and do not care about my child."

Experiencing Power in Prayer

"Do you believe in the power of prayer?" Dima asked her. She nodded. "Then bring the child to the meeting tomorrow, and we will pray for her."

The next evening the young mother told her family that she would not take her child to the psychic healer, but would let the seminary students pray over her as God commanded. She brought her little girl to the meeting, and the young people went into a side room where they read Bible promises and talked with the mother and the child before they prayed for her. The mother smiled bravely and thanked the young ministers for praying for her daughter.

The next day the mother hurried up to Dima and reported that her daughter had slept quietly all night after they had prayed for her. The child had no more problems with restlessness, and her mother continued attending the meeting. She told others that the pastors had prayed for her daughter, and her restlessness disappeared. She invited them to come to the meetings with her. At the end of the meetings this woman and two of her friends were baptized. Her own family saw the difference in the child's behavior and allowed the child's mother to attend the church without harassing her.

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Dima Plugatarev is a fourth-year student of theology at Zaoksky Theological Seminary in Russia.

This story originally appeared in the adult edition of Mission, 3rd quarter 2001, edited by Charlotte Ishkanian. Used by permission.