They Helped Us Expand Our Radars

Hultner Estrada & Bethany Beachum

When a worldview is improved, the changes that people experience are always surprising.

This past month, more than 100 leaders from different churches in three Nicaraguan cities completed the first level of the program for formation of Agents of Transformation, bringing to close a year of studies in Biblical Worldview.

Although the Nehemiah Center has already been facilitating workshops for eight years now, the testimonies that come out of the end of each cycle are always surprising.  For example, Julián Garcia, a rancher from the town of Estelí, tells us:

 “I don’t have much education, I wasn’t even able to finish primary school, and maybe that is why I have always had difficulties with relating to other people.  I always thought it would be very hard to become an important person in society, but with these courses I have felt uplifted.  I feel that I have grown so much and have been trained to understand that the Lord has called me to be an Agent of Transformation.

Another thing that has kept me from relating well with other people is the Christian message that I had received, which was a very accusatory and condemning one.  Now, I feel much freer to talk about the Lord because I can share a gospel of peace.  Now I can tell others that He is a God of love, that He wants His people to flourish, and that it is us that He is calling to bring about that flourishing.”

On the part of Zulema Trujillo, a nurse in the hospital of Chinandega, she summarizes her experience with the following:

 “Because of a poor decision I made when I was younger, I distanced myself from the life of the church.  Ever since then it has been very difficult for me to return to a good relationship with the Lord.  Furthermore, because of my job, I don’t allocate time to be involved in any type of ministry.  So really I have felt sad in my life as a Christian; I have felt useless before God.

But through the courses on Biblical Worldview, I have realized that what I am doing in the hospital is a way of serving God, that I can minister, I can serve and be useful to God from my workplace.  And that, for me, has been very beautiful.  Now I feel that I can enjoy my job more.  I feel that I am close to God and that I serve him every time I help another person.  I feel that I have been freed.”

Stories similar to this one are very common at the end of the worldview courses, but we should clarify and recognize that the source of all such changes is the Word of God.  It is the rediscovery of Biblical truth and how we understand the world and ourselves as creations and co-workers of God.

As Julián García expresses, it is these truths that “have helped us expand our radars toward our own family and our community and come to understand that God wants a transformed society and we are His instruments to carry it out.”