Six hours by banana boat over open ocean and ninety minutes up a flooded, crocodile-infested river lay the village of Jingada in Papua New Guinea. I stepped off the boat with eleven team mates from YWAM Ships Kona and surveyed jungle around us. Our plan was to deliver medical aid and conduct ministry programs – what God was about to do, none of us expected.
Before arriving, we had learned that Papua New Guinea had historically struggled with a culture of violent displacement and eye-for-eye tribal justice. This had often resulted in a culture of fear, anger, and resentment.
Is it any wonder then, that during a village-wide prayer session, the team was overwhelmed by requests for healing from anger? Not prayer for eyesight or joint pain, but anger. A mother asking for help with her son, a wife wanting to forgive her husband’s killer, a village elder confessing his own struggles with rage at home.
Together we prayed and sensed God’s presence in the village that evening. The next morning at dawn nine men appeared from the jungle at our breakfast fire. Some were bearing ancient weapons of war, including a stone axe, a club, and a sword. No one had called them to come yet, each one of them, sub-clan chieftains, had independently responded to an inner conviction to visit the camp at that very moment.
Led by the Holy Spirit, one of the team addressed the men, recounting the prayers for peace from the day before, revealing the connection with their cultural past, and calling the men to lay down their arms and repent before God.
To our surprise and joy, the men did exactly that!
Laying their weapons down, they dropped to their knees and, with many in tears, called to the Lord for forgiveness and deliverance from the grip of fear, bitterness, and anger that had dominated their tribe for generations.
In that moment, we sensed something deeply profound was happening as God transformed hearts and destinies.
Craig Pulsifer