At the end of last year (2018) we had the chance to give our last TLR Kickstart. It took place at a small African church in northern Belgium. It was a very small audience. Every day someone different came in, so it was hard to build up the sequence of the training. Nevertheless, an entire Polish family came to faith, and three guys from Brussels were there full of enthusiasm from beginning to end.
My good brother Peter, who traveled with us through Scandinavia with his family and camper (you can read about it here), took care of discipling the Polish family. There was plenty of work to do, since their background was very rough and there was a huge amount of brokenness in their lives. He is still working with them, and it’s beautiful to see the restoration God is bringing, while saddening to see those who fall away through Satan’s attacks or their own bad choices.
The guys from Brussels told me they worked with certain ministry called Recruits, where they trained young men to follow Jesus through weekly activities and studies, with a good multiplication dynamic. Shortly after the Kickstart these guys invited me to minister to a group of young men they were leading at their base, near Brussels, so I went there with Jeremy (one of our guys in our Kingdom Family).
We taught for a couple of days there to a group of about 10 young guys. As usual, it was a battle to strengthen the foundation of their faith by ministering about the new birth process. I learned that in Belgium there is a conservative branch of Evangelicals, for whom all that has to do with gifts of the Spirit is wrong. Part of it comes as a rejection towards false ministers who make a show by misusing gifts and using them out of order. The other branch is quite free and accepts almost every sort of teaching about spiritual gifts, but without filtering truth from error. Most of the guys here came from the conservative branch, and they had a very hard time accepting that the baptism in the Holy Spirit and deliverance from demons, and I could understand where that skepticism came from.
A remarkable experience was that after teaching about repentance, most of them opened up and started confessing several sins. One of the guys, about 21, asked for prayer since he found his sinful condition very hard to break out from. We ministered to him, and while talking a demon manifested and he was set free privately. It was beautiful, because the next day I found out he totally did not believe in manifestations or demons. His brother heard about it, and he joined the lessons to see what had been able to break down his brother’s skepticism.
The two leaders who had invited us kept contact with Peter, and we were able to expand their understanding of holiness and new birth. Awesome to see what God can do in such a short time, and great to have a brother who lives there and can continue what has been sown.