Rehoboth Ministries

This is the second in a series of posts sharing stories from our years in the mission field. (This post is written by John Adams.)

In 2016, a missionary couple invited me to go to a conference in another city in Haiti. It was a 4 or 5 hour trip over rough, rutted roads and I almost decided not to go. Once I arrived, I was glad I did, though. I met a missionary there who told the story of how her faith had been strained nearly to the breaking point during the earthquake in 2010. For months, she felt wounded and angry at the Lord for all the needless suffering she had seen. It began to eat away at her ability to pray.

Ironically, she said, the turning point came several months later in Port-au-Prince, when three men robbed her at gunpoint in broad daylight. As she was walking out of the bank, where she had just withdrawn $7,000 to pay her employees, the men pulled up on a motorcycle and grabbed her bag, which contained the money, her passport, her car keys, credit cards, and all her important documents. At first, she said, she tried to resist, holding onto her bag tightly and refusing to let go. After a short struggle, however, one of the robbers pointed a gun in her face and told her, “Just let go.” She let it go and the man sped away, leaving her stranded in the capital.

Although she said felt no fear during the robbery or at any point afterwards, the man’s words to her–“Just let go”–stuck in her mind and kept repeating for days like a broken record. Eventually, she even began hearing it in her dreams. After several days of this, she realized the voice she heard in her mind was no longer the voice of the thief, but the voice of the Lord: “Just let go, Debbie. You can’t understand my ways, but I will give you the strength to trust me. Just let go.” At that point, she said, she was able to release the burden she had been carrying for months. She was able to stop second-guessing God and trust in his sovereignty.

During all my years in Haiti, I was never robbed at gunpoint. I’ve certainly carried burdens that weren’t mine to carry due to an unwillingness to trust the Lord. I’ve never seen that woman since then, but her story has helped me greatly through the years. In his second letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul writes of a similar experience he had in Asia where he and his companions were “so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.” However, Paul adds, he too was able to “just let go.” He adds, “That was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9) If you’re carrying something today that isn’t yours to carry, I encourage you to put it into his hands.