Fruit That Remains
This passage from John 15 has been a great help to me over the years. It shows very clearly that God is involved in our daily lives and that His will is for the Gospel to have a life-long impact on the people that we win to the Lord. I am constantly in awe at the power of the Gospel to change the lives of people. Here are some stories of what the Lord began several years ago and is still accomplishing in the lives of His people. I am writing this as a testimony to the faithfulness of the Lord.
In August 1997, we started soul winning in a new area of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. It became obvious very quickly that, in this new area, the Lord had already prepared a group of people who were ready and willing to listen.
The first person that was reached was a widow lady named Lacrima Chis who had four children. She was in desperate shape, and she was very angry with God for letting her be in the situation where she found herself. She came to our Bible study with her children and listened carefully. In November 1997, while my pastor from the USA, Dr. Ed Johnson, was visiting us and preaching in our kitchen, she received Jesus as her Savior. Very soon her oldest son, Mihai, also received the Lord as his Savior, and all came regularly to the Bible study in our home.
They lived about 3½ miles from my house, and we did not always have transportation for them. One Sunday they walked in the rain, without umbrellas, all the way to our house. The youngest girl in the family was only about five years old at the time. Suffice it to say, they never missed unless sickness did not allow them to attend. She and her son, Mihai, were the first two people baptized in our new church in Romania.
My, oh my, did she begin to change. She was a smoker and a fairly heavy drinker, yet she wanted to be a witness for the Lord. My wife, Lynette, started to have weekly Bible studies with her in her home, and she soaked it up. She wanted so much to be a witness. She would purposefully look for long lines at the store so she could strike up conversations with the other people and ask them if they knew they were saved. She handed out tracts; she witnessed the best she knew how; and she invited everyone to church.
One week she was so excited to talk to us. She had a new idea for evangelism, and she wanted to tell us about it. She was inviting her “posse” to her house to witness to them. She told me that she had a good way to get them to come. She served them whiskey and talked to them about the Lord. I told her that was probably not the best idea, but I appreciated her attitude. I told her to keep witnessing…only to please find a new “hook.”
She found a new “hook” which was simply Scripture. She would sit around with them, and they would all smoke while they talked about spiritual things. One day, as she was smoking and witnessing, she told a neighbor lady about Jesus dying on the cross for her sins. She stopped and looked at the cigarette in her hand. The Holy Spirit was speaking to her, and she decided that it was a better idea not to smoke when she witnessed because the Lord would be more pleased if she refrained.
One other area in which she wanted to be a blessing was in picking up people in their own vehicles and bringing them to the church. She so wanted people to come, yet she had no driver’s license and virtually no money.
Today she is free from the use of alcohol and tobacco. Her oldest son, Mihai, is now in his early 20’s and is the youth director at our church. He also has a car which is used weekly to pick up five children from a local orphanage. All of these children have trusted the Lord as their Savior.
Her oldest daughter, Codruta, has been a Sunday school teacher in our church for four years and is one of our best children’s workers.
Lacrima is still faithful to church. She has been directly (or indirectly) responsible for over FORTY members in our church.
There is one more story about Lacrima that testifies to the changing power of Christ. I taught our people how to tithe. Lacrima came to church several times and put the last money she had in the offering plate because I told her that the Lord would bless her if she tithed. One Sunday night, with four children still in school, no food in the house, and not one cent to her name, she put her last money in the offering plate. Her family went home and gathered in the kitchen and prayed for the Lord to feed them. About 30 minutes after they prayed, there was a knock on the door. They opened the door and found a man standing there with an envelope in his hand. He owed her a debt, but said he did not have the money to pay her. That night he showed up with $200. She asked him when he had decided to pay the debt. He replied, “30 minutes ago!” They ate very well that week.
A similar situation happened again. She put her tithe in the offering plate and went home to a house with no food in it. They prayed, and God “rang my bell.” I was driving home; I was exhausted; and I was looking forward to my Lazy Boy chair and a big glass of Pepsi. The Holy Spirit told me they were hungry, and I argued with God about it. I was too tired. They could wait until Monday. The Holy Spirit then simply began to say the names of my boys. I dropped my family off at home and went to the grocery store and bought as much as I could carry. In fact, I think I emptied my wallet because I felt very guilty. They live on the 10th floor of an apartment complex, and when I went to the elevator, it was out of order. It served me right. I trudged up to their door and, totally out of breath, I knocked on it. They answered and told me to come in and put the food on the table. I asked her how they knew I had food. They said they had arrived home and prayed for God to feed them. He had done it before, and so they figured He’d do it again! The table was already set! I was speechless…how do you top that faith? Fruit that remains is what I long to see.
Our church had just moved to a new location, and we had a whole new area in which to go soul winning. I led a lady named Maria to the Lord in her home one evening. As soon as she finished praying, she asked me if God expected her to remarry her husband, Constantin, from whom she had recently divorced. I explained that God would be honored by that. Maria told me she was afraid of him because he was violent when he was drunk, and she did not trust him. In fact, he was considered by many to be the town drunk. I told her to be baptized, be faithful to church, grow in grace, and let God worry about her former husband.
Maria was to be baptized that next Sunday, and she invited Constantin to the service. When he arrived and saw me on the sidewalk in front of the church, he walked straight up to me, put out his hand in greeting, and told me he was a very religious Orthodox and happy to be so. After he went inside, I turned to my Romanian assistant, Beni Lariu, and told him the man will be happy after he is saved and baptized and a member of our church.
Well, Constantin was intrigued by a Baptist church and by the change in his former wife. He was still a drunk, but he was acting differently. After about three months, I went to see him again and witnessed to him. It was the first time that I witnessed to anyone without the help of a translator, and I put my all into it. I was standing in front of him in his living room with my Bible in my hand, preaching up a storm, and sweating like a marathon runner. He held up his hand and said in Romanian, “Pastor Nibbe, please, if you will sit down and be quiet, I will receive the Lord Jesus as my Savior.” So, I sat down, shut up, and he prayed and was born again.
Well, Constantin was baptized, and the Lord took away his desire for alcohol. In fact, he told me he hates the stuff now. He knew Maria did not trust him. I advised him to be faithful to church, let the Lord work through him, and quit trying to change his former wife. That is just what he did, and the Holy Spirit began to change him. He came to our Bible institute and graduated with a four-year degree in Bible.
While he was in the Bible institute, Constantin came to see me with a big smile on his face. I knew something was up, and he told me he was going to ask Maria to marry him again. I asked him if he thought she would say yes. This stopped him, and he shrugged and said that he hoped so. In any case, she said yes, and we had a wonderful wedding ceremony in our church on a Sunday night after the service. I stood there and cried like a little kid amazed at how God put this family back together.
The couple started to tithe, and God started to bless. Constantin has an orchard on the edge of town, and recently there was a serious drought. One day a neighbor sauntered over and asked him to explain his green thumb. Why was it that his orchard was green, and the trees were heavy with fruit when everyone else’s trees were anemic and burned up? He said it was simple. All the man had to do was to be born again, baptized, and give at least 10% of everything he had to the Lord, and God would bless him with a good orchard. The man waved his hand and walked away. I guess he did not like the recipe.
In 2000, an “older” man and his wife, Ioan and Maria Tamas, came to visit our church as soon as we moved to the Intre Lacuri (Between the Lakes) neighborhood. They were real “salt of the earth” type people. Ioan was a retired silversmith, and Maria was retired as well. They were still in their 50’s but looked quite a bit older due to their hard living.
Ioan and Maria owned some land in an out-of-the-way village named Campanesti (pronounced khum-pun-esht) that is about 25 kilometers from our church (about 15 miles). They both hated the city and longed to move back “home.” A few years ago they began to build a small house, more like a hut, on their land in the village. They had planted an orchard and had a “garden” over one acre in size. They bought animals, dug a well, and moved back in time to the village that time forgot. They still came to church each Sunday and Wednesday and remained faithful.
As they approached their middle 60’s, they began to slow down but insisted on staying in the countryside. His animals gave birth, and he began to sell the cows, pigs, and chickens. His land gave up its fullness very stubbornly; and yet they always seemed to have enough, although they never seemed to get ahead.
Recently I went out to see them and asked Ioan how his orchard was doing. He told me he had to cut it down. I asked him why. He told me that it was my fault. He said he had planted it to sell the plums to the whiskey makers. Now in good conscience, he could not pray for rain and good fruit then sell it to a whiskey maker, so he cut them all down and burned them. Well, he planted pear and apple trees and a host of other trees. He now has a nice orchard from which he sells FRUIT not fire water starter.
The village where they live is only populated during the summer. In the winter there are about 5 to 10 people that remain there, with his family being three of them. (Maria’s mother, a very old lady, lives there as well.) Recently I was there for a visit and asked them if the mountain of hay by their front gate was theirs or was someone else’s. He assured me it was all his as well as the full pantry, the full storage sheds, the small barn that was full of animals, and the two pregnant cows that were ready to calve. He said that for the first time in his entire life, he not only had what he needed, but he had more than he needed.
Now, here is the interesting part. The people that are from the village are very religious and very serious members of the Romanian Orthodox church. None of them will talk to him. None of them will do business with him. And none of them will offer help if he needs it. The reason is because God has blessed him too much. They have a word for a Christian in Romania; it is the word “pocait.” It means repenter, and it is like a curse word for an Orthodox. They spit it out at you and are not being kind when they say it. They said that the “pocait” is a bad person. The reason is because it is obvious that someone is helping him since he is rich now, and they are all poor. He is evil because he is not sharing his good fortune with them.
Ioan is a very giving person. He is an honest man. He is simply being blessed by the Lord. Now, in his 60’s, he is finally seeing the blessings of God on him in a material way. He and his wife are happier than ever to be blessed by God. I asked them how they felt to be shunned because they were being blessed and their drunken neighbors were living in mud, manure, and poverty. He said he would rather be blessed by God and be a shunned “pocait” than to be miserable and naked and destitute and spiritually blind.
It is hard on them to be shunned. Imagine getting blessed and having someone try to curse you for it. They still come faithfully to church, driving their old car (a communist-era Dacia 1310) 25 kilometers each way on Sunday. It is harder for them to get there on Wednesdays, but she comes when she can hitch a ride. This is the fruit that remains! I pray that you will have fruit that remains.
Time does not permit me to write about the 18-year-old girl whose father told her she could choose baptism or a place to live, and she chose to be baptized; or the lady whose husband said he would beat her if she attended church; or the boy who witnessed his mother’s murder yet comes to soul winning weekly and loves the Lord. What about the man who prayed me into the country when 24 years ago he asked the Lord to call someone to Cluj to tell him what eternal life meant? The list goes on and on. Every single name, every single story, every single event was ordained by the Lord. It was not, is not, and never will be because of Brian Nibbe. It is the Lord giving fruit that remains because of the changing power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. May the Lord be praised, and may the name of Jesus Christ be lifted high among the heathen. Jesus saves, and there is NO hope without Him. We have a great God!
