That Still Small Voice

It is 14.10 hrs, Tuesday 29th July 2019. I am on a hike in Bungoma County, Kenya.

Well, so this conversation has somehow dragged into its sixth minute. I stare into this man’s eyes trying to figure out exactly how this happened. It is so evident, his persistence outlasted my patience. I immediately appreciate his determination, but I am concerned about where this conversation is going. I hear that still small voice is now prompting me to preach to him. I’ve tried this before, preaching to a random stranger, and it went south too quickly. And so, I understandably hesitate. But then judging from the events of the last few hours, a public ridicule couldn’t make my day worse, could it?

I am on a hike that should have happened two days earlier, on Sunday 28th July. Perhaps if I had tagged my friend along as we had previously planned, I wouldn’t be subjected to such a long small talk session with a stranger. On that Sunday, that still small voice had prompted me to attend a worship experience at Word of Life Church. My friend must have been inconvenienced by my sudden change of plans and I wondered the amount of begging it would take to convince him to accompany me today. Soon after trying to call him, I find that the answer is none, because his phone is off. At this moment, I have close to twenty reasons why I should not go, and my mom adds twenty more. Truly, which mother would want his son to go on a hike to a strange place alone? Certainly not mine! But that still small voice insists that I should. I had to go in order to rejuvenate my spiritual energy. Indeed after encountering the presence of God in the worship experience, I experienced intense demonic attacks over the following two days and I was spiritually exhausted. And so, I knew nothing would re energize my spiritual being more than pursuing God’s presence out in the wild. But based on the number of the interruptions I got on the way, so did the devil.

So, it has been barely thirty minutes since I arrived at the place and everything since then has been disappointing. The place is lacking the glamour I had envisaged it would have. And the place was just way too open for me to have some private time with God. I am distressed for a few minutes about what to do, but then that still-small voice speaks, and prompts me to sit at the bank. The place is uncomfortably open, and so as I worship at heart, every passer-by interrupts with a greeting.

But this particular stranger, in addition to greeting me seemed to greatly enjoy my company, oblivious of the fact that he is preventing me from getting the fullness of God that I had come to pursue. I knew he would walk away soon, but it has now been 6 minutes and he seems unrelenting. At this moment, I remove my earphones because I am hardly listening to any music. That still small voice is heavily prompting me to tell this man about Jesus and I am really wondering how to start. But as I am in the middle of that thought, he asks a rather bizarre question for such a small talk session;

“Do you think people are born as homosexuals or do you think they develop into them?”

I am puzzled at his audacity for half a second and then I immediately get excited realizing this is the perfect chance to immediately talk about Jesus. But then, I hesitate, knowing that an all-out attack on homosexuality will make him lose trust in me. And so, I try to formulate a politically correct answer.

“I don’t think people are born gay, but rather it is something that gets ingrained in them as they grow up and they accept it as their identity.”

He really thinks long and hard about my answer and at this moment, my intuition strikes that he is gay. He then offers to walk me around the place, to a hidden waterfall. I oblige, although I am a bit troubled because I now realize that the reason he is talking to me is probably because he is attracted to me. Consequently, I calculate my questions expertly for him to reveal as much about himself as possible, as I throw the word of God here and there in the conversation, for him to realize that I am born again. My strategy slowly starts to work, and he starts revealing more and more about himself. When he finally asks me whether masturbation could lead to homosexuality, I know I have struck my breakthrough in understanding. This man, a secondary school teacher who had come to that place to pass time, is gay and is really distressed about it.

At this moment, the still small voice becomes louder and louder and I now open my mouth and let it speak through me. Before I notice it, the Holy Spirit is preaching through me and I cannot even control what I am saying. I am at awe on the unpredictably of the Holy Spirit and I cannot imagine that a spirit would be dumb enough to let the man walk straight into a person who knows about deliverance. Five months ago, I thought evil spirits were theoretical beings and that God was a creation of man. I could not imagine how a God would create me to be depressed for years, and so, I wanted to hear nothing about Him. In the midst of that depression, I would do anything to feel something. And so all I would look forward to was smoking cannabis with my peers while listening to bawdy music. And so in the quest to make something out of life, we I found myself depressed and trapped in sexual addictions. The world could not perceive how dead I was inside, and so I would spend my nights listening to melancholic music just to find a bit of happiness in my sadness.

But one day, I understood that there was more to life than that, and so I cried out to God and for the first time, and I heard that still small voice which told me that I am greatly loved. That voice then told me to fast for two weeks for my deliverance. On my third day of fasting, God came into my room during worship in the most intense spiritual experience I have ever had. At that moment, I realized that I was created to be loved and I immediately fell in love with Jesus. But it was one week later when I felt a demon leaving my body, and at that moment all my addictions went. At the time I did not know what was going on, I had never learnt that from Church. But because I obeyed that still small voice, I now understood the demonic and deliverance, and because this man needed to learn about this too, that small voice led me here.

It is now 16:30 hrs and the Holy Spirit has been preaching through me for almost two hours about the spiritual realm and how demons operate to cause bondage and addictions, the necessity of fasting for deliverance, and how to be established as a new believer using the parable of the sower. This man is heavily convicted at this point and he agrees to give his life to Jesus. After he does, I pray for Jesus to baptize him with the Holy Spirit to break the bondage of homosexuality and other sexual sins. After the prayer, he says that he felt something flowing through him during the prayer and he immediately felt light. The overwhelming peace of the Holy Spirit immediately manifests in him. After he tells me about his financial needs, I give him some money and exchange phone numbers and part ways. At this moment, the still small voice turns into a warm embrace and I feel the Holy Spirit’s warmth cover me in love. That was the presence of God that I had come to this place to seek, and it came in the most unexpected way. If there is one thing that I have learnt over the 5 months of my salvation is you will never understand God. He will always manifest in the way you expect least. My heart melts in joy the next morning when he calls, informing me that God had communicated with him in a dream through a pastor telling him that he will get his deliverance as he continues to trust in God. I never knew it would be this fulfilling seeing the devil’s loss, especially in an issue where he has managed to cause so much confusion. I hope that a few months from now, his sexual partner will be delivered through him….

…as he obeys that still small voice