The day we let a terrorist hold our kids


 Around 10 years ago my wife and I met a man called Stephen Lungu. He came to preach at our church in Brussels. Stephen Lungu had an amazing story. Tragically beaten by his father and then abandoned by his mother aged 7, he grew up on the streets of Zimbabwe where he was involved in drugs, gangs and crime. He had two knives and he used to mark a notch on his knife for each person he had stabbed. He was an angry young man.

One day he and his gang, known as the “Black Shadows” decided to throw petrol bombs into a Christian meeting that had set up a tent in his town. They came into the tent and sat at the back. Just ready to give the signal to cause mayhem, Stephen was held back, first by the sound of a beautiful girl’s voice who was singing a Christian song, and then from a preacher who spoke of how we have all done wrong, but how we can be forgiven by Jesus Christ and his death on the cross.

There and then he called out to Jesus Christ for help, becoming a Christian at the very meeting he was attempting to bomb. You can read his story in the fascinating book, “Out of the Black Shadows” (get in touch if you’d like a free copy) or type “Stephen Lungu My Story” into youtube for a 10min video.

What I wanted to share this morning is that it’s not good people who go to heaven, but forgiven people. The message of these thoughts for the day is not primarily “let’s all be kind, be good, become better neighbours and then God will accept us”. That would have ruled out Stephen Lungu. It’s “receive an undeserved rescue”- that is what Jesus brings. And Stephen Lungu’s life demonstrates that when you do receive the help that Jesus brings, he changes your life around, and that change is so striking and so real, that we felt safe enough to entrust our twins, just a few months old into the hands of a man who had been a terrorist and a gang leader, and I’ll never forget the joy I saw when he came to our home and sat with two baby girls balanced on his knees! Sadly, Stephen Lungu died last year of Covid.

Charlie Newcombe, 26/10/2022