My son loves the “Dora the Explorer” cartoon.  He doesn’t understand it much at 13 months, but he likes it nonetheless. In the cartoon, Dora has a nemesis, named Swiper the fox.  He “swipes” or tries to swipe from Dora time to time in the story.

We have a “Swiper” here in Cambodia as well.  We saw the effects of him last week when we went to a familiar village to meet and share with people.  Our team has gone there before as we brought the Evangelism Explosion team there to share.  Previously, we had seen some people come to faith there and we were hopeful to bring them together to start a new fellowship group.  We had even a leader trained and ready to teach.

But our Swiper made it there before us.  Suddenly, as we met with these new believers, they didn’t want to study.  They were no longer interested in the Gospel as we had thought before.  Out of five people who were previously interested, none remained.  The Swiper had cleaned us out.  All of them had their excuses and each were different.

It still mystifies me.  How people can respond to the Gospel, even with tears of repentance and proclamations of faith, and yet a few days later, nothing of it remains.  Swiped clean.

This is where perseverance is need on our part.  Those five people’s refusal doesn’t mean we should stop our sharing our message there.  In fact, this afternoon, Sret and I intend to go back and share more.  Who knows what the Lord will bring our way?  Should we not expect resistance in the spiritual work?  This is the “Swipers” den after all.  He has had free reign here for a long time and is not willing to simply roll over.

We are not discouraged.  It is all part of the process.  Sowing seeds, breaking up hard ground and waiting on the Lord to bring the growth.  We just need to be tenacious.