By Daina Doucet
“If God does not show up, we’re dead,” says Heidi Baker.[1] “We need him 24 hours a day.… He’s our everything. There’s no backup plan…. We have to have miracles to survive.”
Miracles – divine interventions by God in their circumstances – are the very core of Rolland[2] and Heidi Baker’s existence at their Pemba, Mozambique mission base. The question whether miracles can occur in the 21st century, is moot. For the Bakers, they just do.
Originally from California, the Bakers first arrived in Maputo, Mozambique, in 1995 with nothing. They were given a government-run “horribly neglected and dilapidated orphanage with 80 miserable, demon-afflicted orphans in rags,” says Rolland.[3] Within months the children were transformed through their new faith in Jesus. The orphanage grew rapidly, but when it reached 320 children, the government shut them down forbidding prayer and worship on the property. That, says Rolland, was the beginning for them “to taste the power of God,” and the mission moved to Pemba.
Today their missionary achievements can undoubtedly be counted among the greatest of this generation.
“Now we have networks of churches and church-based orphan care in all ten provinces in Mozambique,” explains Rolland. In addition to the 7000-plus children in their care, Iris Ministries has expanded to include well-drilling, evangelism, free health clinics, farming, vocational training, church planting, bush conferences, counseling, child sponsorship, top-ranked primary and secondary schools, cottage industries, and 5000 church-plants in Mozambique with 3000 more in 20 other countries. They also have multiple ‘bases’ with Bible schools, community outreaches and in the future, a university for the poor.
For the past 11 years the Bakers have concentrated on the Makua, a people group of four million in the north listed by missiologists as ‘unreached’ and ‘unreachable.’ They have planted around 2000 churches among these people.
The Bakers see miracles daily, but they do not take them for granted. Miracles, said Heidi, require “poverty of spirit.”
“It’s the place where you say, … I have to have God. I have to have ‘fresh bread’ from heaven. [It’s the] place where you’re so desperate for God, you’re so laid low and you’re so in need of him, you … just press in for him and then [God’s] Kingdom shows up! My desire is to stay poor in spirit as chaos surrounds us – hundreds of thousands of people needing food; [they’re in] desperation and dying. It’s like, God I’ve never felt poorer in my life in spirit! I’ve never needed you more than I do right this second!”
The title of Heidi’s book, Compelled by Love, captures the essence of the Baker’s insatiable passion to minister to the poor. They seek to “prove the love of God.”
“We don’t preach first. We just say, ‘Bring us the deaf.’ All the Muslims … just look! The deaf person hears, and they say, Yes! We want Jesus! It happens week after week after week among the Makua.”
The result? “The deaf hear in the village, and the village hears! Hundreds and hundreds and thousands of Muslims get saved [are converted to faith in Christ] every day.”
Heidi believes God manifests his power in Mozambique because the people are “poor in spirit” as well. “He works there because they’re humble, desperate, dependent. They need God.” For this reason, she says, they have even seen more than 100 people raised from the dead.
“The people that pray for those who are dead are little bush pastors. …They’re little men and women in dirt, in little huts. They just take babies and keep them three days at a time praying. They don’t eat or drink. They just rock them and pray for them. And some of [those babies] get up! It brings a whole village to Jesus.”
Humility, she said, is a powerful thing. The Western world often struggles to see such miracles, but is governed by a different mindset. “Sometimes people would like to be seen. It seems the hidden ones that are laid low before [God] – he wants to pour his power through them.”
Heidi loves to tell stories of miracles and, she adds, there are lots of them. The Bakers have seen multiplication of food, and miracles of provision. Heidi tells “the chicken” story.
It was a Christmas party. “We like to invite the poor, crippled, blind and lame for our parties. The alcoholics come, the drug addicts, the prostitutes. They all come. [This one time] we didn’t have enough chicken… Some Westerner counted…. He said, ‘Mamma Aida, how many people did you invite?’ I said, ‘I invited everybody! I read the book!’ The cook came out and said, ‘Too many people! We’re cooking fish.’ I said, ‘They want chicken.’ So we prayed for chicken and everybody ate chicken. Bags and bags of chicken were taken home by the cooks. And it’s documented, because mercifully, somebody counted. God just made more chicken for us!”
Another example of God’s divine intervention in even the smallest of circumstances is demonstrated in the story of “the beads.”
“That was wild,” she grins.
“I remember studying systematic theology at Kings [London, England], and the theologian said, ‘God’s not Santa Claus.’ I thought, No, he’s not. He’s much better.
“There were over 1000 at this one gathering. We didn’t have enough toys. …[Someone] said, ‘There’s stuffed dogs in the bag.’ I said, ‘I don’t think they want stuffed dogs.’ I [asked] the girls, ‘What is it you want?’ They said, ‘We want beads, Momma.’
“I said to my friend, ‘Look in the bag and pull out what’s there.’
Her friend screamed. “There were beads in the bag! It was just so wild, because God cares about [little] things. You don’t need beads. You don’t have to have chicken. You can just eat rice and kareel, and [have] no beads. You can just take your stuffed dog home and be happy.”
But, according to Heidi, God cares even about the minutest desires of the heart.
When Heidi and Rolland travel the world on speaking engagements, they share the message of God’s love and the fact that the miracles of God flow from intimacy with him.
“Fruit” in life and ministry has to come from the “secret place,” she explained – the place where one spends time alone communing with God. “I spend hours soaking, worshipping, wanting my Jesus more and more, [so] that I [can] have an abundance of his love, of his fresh bread, for any person anywhere.”
Rolland writes, “We value immediate intimacy with Jesus – a life of utterly-needed miracles, concentration on the humble and lowly, willingness to suffer for love’s sake, and the unquenchable joy of the Lord, which is our energy, motivation, weapon and reward.
“Not optional!”
End notes
1. Quotes of Heidi Baker are taken from a 700 Club interview, September 2009.
2. Rolland Baker is the grandson of H.A. Baker, missionary to China and author of the
book “Visions Beyond the Veil.”
3. Iris Ministries website, “About.”
Daina Doucet is senior editor for the Acts News Network (ANN).
Copyright © Acts News Network, Inc.