Our early Marabá church plant gathered under a mango tree—until the heavy rains drove us into the chicken shed.
A Few Houses Up the Road
It was still dark when I heard the bang.
We were in the process of buying our property in Marabá, and I was up early having some quiet time with God. A little later, as dawn broke, I walked down the road to buy bread for breakfast.
About four houses away, a crowd had gathered. A young man lay dead on a cement floor. Someone had driven by and shot him. A young woman was lying over his body, crying and kissing her brother’s face.
A few weeks later, when we moved onto the property, one of the boys from that family and a friend of his helped us unload the truck. They were about eight or ten years old.
It was the friend who began hanging around our place.
He wanted to be a missionary. He came to our meetings. He spent more time with us.
Sometimes he stole coins from us so he could go to the circus or a fair.
One Christmas, he was thrilled because he was going across town to spend the holidays with his older brother. He was willing to miss the Christmas play rehearsals, the play itself, and the feast.
That night there was a party. As he later told me, a fight broke out. Someone was stabbed. His brother fled with his girlfriend. My young friend was terrified. He took off into the darkness and ran across country, through a huge swamp, much of the night.
The next morning he showed up at our place.
He told me what had happened, then asked if there was still time for him to be in the Christmas pageant.
Years later, I was standing outside our gate when a woman I didn’t know came walking toward me, weeping.
Someone had just held her up at gunpoint and stolen her motorcycle.
She told me who had done it.
It was my young friend, a teenager by then.
Eventually, his young life ended violently. We were there when he was buried.
Stories like this were painfully common in our neighbourhood in those years. Thankfully, they have become less common.
I still think about him.
The stealing was wrong. The armed robbery was far more serious. But those things were not the whole story.
And neither were they the whole person.
I still grieve the boy who once wanted to be a missionary—and the life that ended too soon.
The Prayer of a Man Who Is Slipping
Psalm 38 leads me to think about him again.
Psalm 38’s “remembrance” title may point to the worshipper bringing their need before God. Whatever the title once meant, the prayer brings David’s awareness of his need into the open.
His sin is real. His suffering is real. His weakness is real. And his dependence on God is becoming impossible to ignore.
When I memorize a psalm, I try to see its story in my head. Who is speaking? To whom? Why are these particular images placed beside each other?
Psalm 38 begins, in my imagination, with David feeling hunted. God’s arrows have sunk into him. God’s hand presses down. Then the imagery shifts—from arrows to sickness and wounds, and finally to guilt rising over his head like deep water.
“My guilty deeds have gone over my head.”
His friends have backed away.
And the hostility of other people is also real. They lay traps. They speak destructively. They repay evil for good.
Psalm 38 lets both truths stand. David is guilty. He has sinned. AND other people are treating him unjustly.
David confesses what belongs to him without carrying everything that belongs to somebody else.
That is harder than it sounds.
Sometimes we defend ourselves so quickly that repentance never gets a chance. Other times, especially after we fail, we begin to believe that every accusation must be true.
Psalm 38 gives us another way:
Own what is yours.
Stay humble.
Leave final vindication with God.
David says:
“I am like a person who does not hear, And in whose mouth are no arguments. For I wait for You, Lord; You will answer, Lord my God.”
He does not have to answer every voice because he is waiting for God to answer.
Centuries later, Jesus would embody this posture perfectly. He had no sin to confess, yet He knew what it was to face accusations without answering every charge. Isaiah 53 gives us the clearest background to Jesus’ silence before His accusers. Peter later describes Jesus suffering without retaliation or threats, “entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously.”
You will answer, Lord my God.
Our daughters grew up alongside the children of our Marabá church plant. We shared the same community, but not the same starting points.
Where Do People Start?
I sometimes use an imaginary scale when people struggle with the spiritual maturity of others.
Suppose someone starts life at minus 200.
Their home is violent. Their parents disappear. Addiction, poverty, abuse, fear, and chaos shape their childhood.
Through the grace of God, and through battles nobody else sees, they fight their way to minus 50.
Someone else starts life at minus 10.
Good family. Healthy relationships. Education. Stability. Lots of people cheering them on.
They make it to plus 50.
Now stand them beside each other.
One is at minus 50.
The other is at plus 50.
Which one looks healthier today?
Probably the second.
Which one has travelled farther?
The first.
The numbers are imaginary, of course.
The histories are not.
We usually meet people somewhere in the middle of their story.
We see the cigarette. God may see the hundred they didn’t smoke.
We see the relapse. God sees every time they got back up.
We see the angry outburst. God may see someone learning, for the first time in their life, to tell the truth instead of disappearing.
Knowing that we rarely see the whole story makes mercy intelligent.
It should make judgment slower.
It should make love more curious.
And it should make spiritually mature people safer to be around.
Psalms 36-38
Reading these neighbouring psalms together, I noticed something.
Psalm 36 ends with the wicked fallen, unable to rise.
Then Psalm 37 says something very different about the righteous:
“When he falls, he will not be hurled down, Because the LORD is the One who holds his hand” (Psalm 37:24).
And then comes Psalm 38.
Now David is the one saying:
“My foot slips.” “I am ready to fall.” “Do not abandon me.”
Psalm 37 gives us the promise. Psalm 38 gives us the prayer.
The Lord of My Salvation
In 1992, Deanna and I attended a conference in Anaheim where John Wimber spoke from 2 Kings 7.
Four men with leprosy were sitting outside a starving city under siege. When they entered the enemy camp, they discovered that God had driven the army away. Food, silver, gold, and clothing had been left behind.
After eating and gathering some of it for themselves, they stopped.
“We are not doing right. This day is a day of good news, but we are keeping silent.”
I remember Wimber describing ministry, in words to this effect, as one beggar showing another where to find bread.
That image has stayed with me.
Psalm 38 puts me back in my place too.
I am not the person with all the answers. I am another needy person who has found mercy.
Near the end of Psalm 38, David appeals to God:
“Do not abandon me, Lord; My God, do not be far from me. Hurry to help me, Lord, my salvation.”
That last line matters.
David’s confidence is not in how far he has progressed. It is not in how much better he looks than somebody else. It is not even in his ability to hold himself upright.
Lord, my salvation.
Deanna and I are preparing to return to Portugal soon.
The census categories are not perfectly identical, but the contrast is striking. In Brazil’s latest census, nearly 37 percent of respondents in the North identified as evangelical. In Portugal’s latest census, just over 2 percent identified as Protestant or evangelical.
Those numbers do not tell us who needs God more.
We all need God more.
But they do make us wonder how God might form communities of faith in a country where relatively few people identify with evangelical churches.
So one of our prayers as we go is simple:
God, what are You already doing here?
Where are people hungry?
Where are they secretly crying out to You?
Who are You already speaking to?
And how can we help create communities where ordinary people discover the delight of knowing You, and help one another thrive with You?
We go without any pretense of superiority. We are simply people whose feet slip, too, and who are still praying desperately, “Lord, do not be far from me.”
In the end, the people best able to help others thrive with God may be those who never forget how deeply they need Him themselves.
We return to Portugal this October for our third survey trip—still listening, learning, and asking how God might invite us to serve what He is already doing there. We’ll spend our first few days with Beth, waving in the background, whom we met on our last trip.
Three Things I Want to Remember
1. Own what is mine.
Repentance does not require me to carry every accusation. I can confess my own sin and leave the rest with God.
2. Remember that I rarely know where another person started.
I usually meet people somewhere in the middle of their story. Mercy stays curious.
3. Stay close to the hand that holds me.
Spiritual maturity is not needing God less. It is knowing more deeply where my salvation comes from, and becoming eager to show someone else where I found bread.
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A Prayer
Lord Jesus,
Keep us honest about our own sin And gentle with the struggles of others.
When our feet slip, Hold our hands.
When accusations fly, Teach us what to own And what to leave with You.
Help us see people Not merely as they are today, But as people You are still pursuing.
And wherever You send us, Teach us to notice What You are already doing.
Lord, our salvation, Do not be far from us.
Amen.
With gratitude,
Rick and Deanna
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Scripture quotations are from the NASB 2020 unless otherwise noted.
