Written by a Cafe 1040 student
It was a warm night on the upstairs balcony of a coffee shop. In the orange glow of the string lights, I sat across from Anthony, a young local man roughly my same age. Between us was a small table, our two drinks, and a hefty language barrier making the conversation a challenging task. Nevertheless, we persisted, and in a short time we had broken the ice and were well on our way to getting to know one another.
As we continued to talk, I did my best to steer the conversation towards something spiritual. Fortunately, in an animistic culture that is often easy to do; all you have to do is start asking. I asked Anthony two primary questions that night: “What do you believe about religion?” and “What do you believe about the beginning of the world?” I can’t remember now why I presented them in that order, but the brief moment that occurred before he answered the second question made me glad that I did. He smiled, looked at me, and said, “Those are the same questions Colton asked me when we met.” I was blown away.
Before our coffee-meeting, I really only knew four things about Anthony: he had a brother, he worked a lot, his mother makes a mean rice wrap, and he used to meet regularly to study the Bible with a former Cafe 1040 mentorship student, Colton. With the possible exception of his mother’s cooking, it was the last fact that had me eager to form a relationship with Anthony early on during my time in Southeast Asia. My hope was to continue where the last student had left off by studying Bible stories with Anthony yet again, but I didn’t really know how to get to that point. For this reason, I was ecstatic to see how the God Colton and I both serve had used us to probe Anthony’s heart in the exact same way. Clearly God wanted Anthony to hear His Word, because with those familiar questions paving the way Anthony agreed to meet with me, and by God’s grace we did shortly after.
It isn’t often that God peels back the curtains on someone’s life to show us how he has been working in them long before we met them. We can sometimes believe that we are a person’s only hope for salvation, and that if we do not bring them to faith in the Gospel then they will be lost forever. That is not how God works. My interaction with Anthony reminded me that it was not I who was the first one to desire Anthony to believe the Gospel, nor was it Colton. It was God Himself. Colton and I were merely workers assigned to demonstrate God’s love to one man for a limited time, a planter and a waterer of the seed only God can cause to grow. It is a humbling and peace-bringing thought to realize we are not God’s only servant. We never know who God might bring next to reach the people we long to see saved, and I find great hope in believing I may not be the last Christian to ask Anthony to get coffee.
“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”
1 Corinthians 3:6-7
