The Healed Will Heal Others Also

“Workman!!!”

I turned around, knowing exactly whose voice and contagious laugh that was.

It was Adam*, my very first believing friend in Central Asia, plaster wall visionary, goofball, and dear brother embattled with mental illness. We gave one another a big laughing bear hug in the middle of all the other arriving campers.

This past week I was on a short setup trip to Central Asia and towards the end of the trip I left my apartment-hunting to join a bunch of the local believers for one night in an ancient valley in between our two cities. This came about because my trip had just happened to coincide with the annual camping trip that one of my former teammates leads for a sports outreach he conducts. A good number of the local believers in our previous city, like Darius*, have also been regularly involved with this sports group from the beginning. It’s been a great opportunity for them to do relational evangelism with the unbelieving participants – as well as a chance to learn about mortifying anger when it gets stirred up by the fierce combat otherwise known as ultimate frisbee.

“A.W., what should I do? The other player I’ve been struggling with said ‘Good job’ to me when I scored. Outwardly, I said, ‘Thanks,’ but in my heart, I said, ‘You father of a dog!’ …Do you think I need to repent?'”

Out of the twenty or so men who ended up coming on this camping trip, I was glad to see it was about half believers and half not. In the midst of a trip focused on logistics, I was hopeful that this night would make for some encouraging conversations. I was not to be disappointed. Most of us were up past 3 am. And the conversations ranged all over the place – apologetics, philosophy, linguistics, as well as just catching up and cutting up. Needless to say, my rusty local language skills got put to work. At one point, I wondered what in the world my jet-lagged self was doing trying to discuss Hegelian philosophy in another language at 2 am with a new believer.

Perhaps the most encouraging conversation of the night was with Adam and his friend, Dr. Troy*. I had heard recently that Adam, my dear friend who for the last couple of years has been on the mend from paranoid schizophrenia, had led one of his friends to faith. This friend was Dr. Troy. And this is how it happened.

Dr. Troy had grown up in a family that taught him the way to get ahead was to appear outwardly unimpressive and foolish, but to secretly work harder than all your peers, resulting in the end in a great upset when you came out ahead of all of them. Needless to say, this approach to life did not win Dr. Troy many friends. He grew up isolated, angry, and hating most others around him.

“I was like this all the time,” he said, pulling up a picture of a hissing cobra which was for some reason wearing a seat belt.

But though he was isolated and angry, he succeeded in getting high marks in school, was accepted to medical college, and eventually became a new doctor. One day, a trip to the bathroom at the hospital where he was doing his residency meant that he missed the person who came by to mark down employee attendance. So, Dr. Troy went down to the first floor to find him. Notice here how eternity can sometimes hinge on such seemingly mundane events.

While downstairs, Dr. Troy was approached by a bearded man in his late 30s who wore a mischievous grin and looked at him with bright eyes that carried a hint of either brilliance or insanity – or perhaps both. This was, of course, Adam. Dr. Troy was somewhat confused and offended that this obviously local man began the conversation in English, rather than in their native tongue. Nevertheless, he heard him out and answered his questions about a friend that he was there to see. When asked about his good English and strange insistence on using it, Adam replied by telling Dr. Troy that he was an English tutor and handing him his business card. If the good doctor was interested in IELTS tutoring, then Adam told him he could contact him.

A little while later, Dr. Troy did just that. For quite some time, Dr. Troy had been struggling with major depression, anxiety, and hopelessness. All of his meds only seemed to be making things worse. He wanted to do something that might boost his self-esteem, and so he thought passing the IELTS English test might be just the thing. In the beginning, their relationship was purely focused on English. But one day something shifted. Dr. Troy broke down and told Adam about his deep despair. He told him that things had gotten so bad that he had even become suicidal.

Adam proceeded to share his own story with Dr. Troy, how he had grown up in a deeply dysfunctional local family, how he had found Jesus as a young man, how he had then wandered from Jesus during his sojourn in Europe, falling into drugs and mental illness. He then described how his friends had helped him get back to Central Asia, how that had failed to bring any improvement, but how one day God had unexpectedly freed him from so much of his mental suffering. In the days since, Adam told him about his steady trajectory of healing that included regular church attendance, serving others, cutting way back on meds and stimulants, and seeking to deal honestly with the costs of his unhealthy upbringing.

Dr. Troy was compelled by the testimony of his quirky English tutor and decided to see if a similar path might help him as well. He decided to trust Adam and follow his advice. And Adam provided Dr. Troy with that ingredient of healing so transformative for the human heart and mind – a loyal Christian friend who will simply stick with you, even in the blackest night.

But I was curious as I listened to this tale. Was Dr. Troy really now a believer? It’s one thing to identify with a new group of friends because they’ve shown you kindness in your suffering. It’s another thing to believe in Jesus and apostatize from everything you were taught growing up in an Islamic society.

“Jesus is all about love,” Dr. Troy said to me, “This was remarkable to me. He’s so different from Muhammad.”

Okay, I thought to myself, getting a bit closer…

“The thing is,” Dr. Troy continued, “He’s the only one without our human failures. The only one. Everyone else is so broken, so messed up, does so many wrong things… like me. He’s the only one without… without…”

“Without sin?”

“Yes, that’s the word, without sin. The only one. That’s how it’s so clear that he must be the Son of God. Not like all the other prophets. All of them sin. But not Jesus.”

Dr. Troy shook his head and stared at the tea kettle, now steaming on top of a bed of coals.

“A.W.,” my former teammate said, joining the conversation, “Have you heard the good news? Dr. Troy is going to get dunked soon,” he said with a smile and a cautious look at the other campers milling around.

“Wow, may you be holy!” I said to the good doctor, which is the local language equivalent of ‘congratulations.’ That phrase always feels extra appropriate for occasions such as this. I knew that if things had reached this point, then Dr. Troy must be showing strong signs of the new birth. My former teammates and the mature local brothers are trustworthy soul doctors.

“I don’t know what I would have done had I not randomly met Adam that day,” Dr. Troy said, “I mean, yes, he’s a very strange man, you know how he does the — and the —-”

Here, Dr. Troy, with a clear gift for imitation, made several of the bizarre expressions and body movements that Adam tends to make. This, of course, set Adam laughing like the good sport he is, so I felt free to chuckle as well. The impressions were spot on.

“But my life has changed so much since I’ve been following his advice. I took him to visit my family and my parents and sisters thanked him over and over for all the ways they’ve seen my life change because of his influence.”

Adam beamed awkwardly as Dr. Troy said this latter part. I looked at him and remembered what a hard road he’s had. Back in 2008, he was the most gifted evangelist I had ever seen. But then he had wandered for a very long time. In fact, Dr. Troy was the first person he had led to faith in fifteen years. It seemed that perhaps the gift he had been given as a new believer, the gift of evangelism, was at last being fanned into flame again. What an answer to prayer. I had so long hoped that Adam’s mind would turn away from fixation on the shadowy figures he thought were drugging and tracking him, and turn back to Jesus and to telling others about him. Now I was staring at evidence that it was actually happening.

Later that night Adam and I had more heartfelt conversation together. I told him how proud I was of him, and how thankful I was to see him continuing to gather with believers and now even serving others as well. I reminded him that God has made us to heal in community, that God himself gives us a relationship of complete safety and acceptance through Christ, and thus we can invite others into the community of the church where they can find true healing now – and complete healing in the resurrection.

“Adam, Jesus has granted you a measure of healing in this life. I’m so glad to see it. But don’t forget that this is just a taste. In the coming resurrection, you won’t just have a mind partially restored, but a mind and a whole body perfected and healed, forever.”

“Thank goodness for that!” Adam said, laughing and running a hand over his tired face and through his rapidly graying hair.

Adam went on to humbly ask forgiveness for all the trouble he had put my family through during his darker years. And to ask me to please buy some flowers for my wife on his behalf – since she was the only woman who still showed him kindness and hospitality during that time. He wanted to know what he could do for me, anything at all.

“Adam, you know we will always be brothers and friends, no matter what. Just don’t forget that. But you also know we’ll need to live in another city when we come back in a couple months. So I would ask that you keep on serving this young church that we love so much – and keep on sharing the gospel with others, just like you did with Dr. Troy.”

“You got it, bro,” Adam said, giving me a fist bump. And I knew he meant it.

At that point, Darius snuck up behind me and gave me a big strangling bear hug. And from there, the night continued on with more rich conversations with believers, challenging questions from unbelievers, games, and ultimately a few hours of very uncomfortable sleep.

I have so missed this kind of setting. This past year and a half in the States has been good in so many ways. God has provided rest, refreshment, healing, and help above and beyond what we could have asked for.

But I have to be honest. I can’t wait to be living in Central Asia again. And I can’t believe we’ll actually get to do so.

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*Names changed for security

Photos are from Unsplash.com