As the year draws to a close, Catherine Boyle reflects on how the Great Commission and disability ministry go hand-in-hand.
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The Christmas season is here, with all the plans and preparations that it brings.
But it’s also a season of remembering prophecy fulfilled when people living ordinary lives suddenly realized that they were part of something much bigger.
Prophecy fulfilled is a huge part of the Christmas story; Luke 2 is a familiar recounting of the events surrounding Jesus’ birth, and some of the 300+ prophecies that His life fulfilled. But prophecy is also part of your story, and my story, today, more than 2000 years after the birth of Christ.
If prophecy is an unfamiliar concept, consider this: the canon of scripture that we call the Bible has been estimated to be one-third prophecy.
But really everything God says is prophetic because He created with His Word. Everything Jesus said in His time on earth was—and is—true. If it was true when He spoke the words for the first time, they are still true and apply to us today.
In our day, prophecy is not so much prediction or foretelling, but forth telling. Pastor David Jeremiah defines prophecy as something that edifies, comforts, and exhorts all people to repent and turn to Him. Prophetic actions and words in our day are about correcting moral and religious abuses and proclaiming the great moral and religious truths which are connected with the character of God. Forthtelling is to speak forth or disclose anything that can only be revealed through divine inspiration…to explain God’s plans, or publicly announce in any manner the message of God intended to influence humanity.
Today, I want to share with you some scriptures that are relevant to disability ministry and prophecy.
If you are listening to this and have a connection to disabilities in any way—as a person living with a disability, as a parent, friend, caregiver, or ministry leader—this podcast is meant to encourage you that you are very much living within God’s prophetic timeline for your life, one of His appointed times, not so very different from the many other references to appointed times in His Word.
In Luke 14, Jesus shared two stories that have been used as foundational scriptures for many disability ministries. Both stories were shared at a single meal when Jesus was an invited guest at the house of a Pharisee. Included in the meal were other Pharisees, some of His disciples, and possibly other followers. Many of Jesus’ teachings were distinguished between lessons for His followers versus teachings for the crowds, where there were many unbelievers and mockers. His true followers sought to understand what was being taught and ultimately came to understand not only the symbolism of His teachings but also the relevance to their personal lives.
In these two stories, He specifically spoke to the Pharisee who had invited him, saying in Luke 14:12-14 that “when you give a reception, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed since they do not have the means to repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” Jesus goes on to share a second story, the parable of the dinner, where all of the invited guests refuse the invitation. In verse 21, the frustrated master of the house says to His servant to “Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and crippled and blind and lame.” When there is still room, in verse 24 the Master commands that the servant “Go into the highways and along the hedges and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.”
When you look at how the gospel has spread since the birth of the Church at Pentecost early in the third decade AD, an interesting thread emerges. The gospel spread primarily westward in the early years after Christ. Several centuries later, Christianity became the official religion of the waning Roman Empire under Constantine. The centuries continued passing, with various denominational missionary efforts pursuing the westward trend, including missions work in both North and South America. In the last 200 years, the gospel has continued the westward trend, all the way back to the Middle East. Nearly every country, language, and people group in existence have now heard the gospel, and have Bibles translated into their own languages; this has largely been made possible by advancements in worldwide travel. These facts are commonly understood to be a nearly completed fulfillment of the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20.
But one group of people has remained largely unreached, until the last fifty years, that is, people with disabilities of every kind.
With the advent of communication technology—think television, computers, and printing capabilities available to the masses—in every corner of the globe, people are learning about the realities of disabilities. And in this same time period, Christ-followers have come to much more fully embrace and work through the implications that the gospel should be shared with all people, regardless of abilities or disabilities.
This has been a dramatic change, just in my lifetime.
People with disabilities were largely hidden from sight as little as 50 years ago. Now, disability ministries are increasingly common, even in places where disabilities are still typically considered demonic or the result of a curse.
I’m not the only one who recognizes the progression in those two stories from Luke 14, and how the progression overlays with the spread of the gospel since the time of Christ. God’s Word is like that; it’s not going to come back empty if it’s something He spoke, and His Word is always layered with implications.
I want to leave you with another scripture that connects with Luke 14, as I close out my final podcast and blog for 2022. In 1 Chronicles 4:9-10, we learn about a man named “Jabez,” whose very name means pain. We don’t know much of his story, other than his mother associated pain with his birth. Was he a person with a disability? This side of Heaven, we’ll never know.
But something about Jabez made him “more honorable” than his brothers in God’s sight. Perhaps it was that he didn’t WANT to cause others pain—meaning he had something of a kind heart, and asked God to bless Him, to enlarge his borders, so he could be a blessing to others. Something about his request must have touched the heart of God because God “granted him what he requested.”
Why do I tell you this story about Jabez?
In addition to this being the Christmas season, it’s also the time of year when the Key Ministry team has a board meeting and finalizes plans for the following year. As part of my board meeting preparations, I reviewed ministry goals versus accomplishments for this year. During this time of reflection, I unexpectedly came upon something prophetic that God did this year, hidden in plain sight.
In 2022, God literally enlarged Key Ministry’s borders more than ever before into international territory.
We have been contacted by, provided information to, and/or consulted with ministries in the following countries, in some cases, for several ministries in each nation: Canada, the UK, India, Jamaica, Romania, Australia, Vietnam, and Uganda.
Just this week, we learned that this very podcast—which has only been in production since May—is ranked very high in the category ‘Christianity’ in Australia.
Keeping it real, the work we do can be discouraging at times.
The way forward is often littered with naysayers, and results are slow to be seen. The battles for hearts and minds are the kinds of things that typically take time to show tangible results.
But 20 years into this ministry work, like Jabez, we have seen tangible proof that God has indeed enlarged our borders, quite literally this year.
Visionary Christian author Graham Cooke said, “The place in life where you have been counted out will become the place of your greatest encounter in Me. These difficulties will now tell you a different story.” Like Jabez, we have seen so many stories of disability and difficulty, things that the rest of the world considers of little value, become the very things that He uses to spread the gospel, and reveal His wonders. The 'foolish things’ of this world continue to shame the so-called wise, as His grand plan unfolds toward completion.
We are so very grateful for the support and encouragement of our audience and ministry friends, and we are so very encouraged that, like Jabez, we have had the blessing to see God clearly and deliberately enlarge Key Ministry’s borders this year.
We also look forward to that day when no person, regardless of their abilities or disabilities, remains without an invitation to His table.
