I’ve been encouraged lately by verses like James 4:6, which states two truths— the first of which is not so visible these days: 1) “God opposes to the proud, 2) and gives grace to the humble.” Since I believe I am currently witnessing firsthand God giving grace to the humble, I am encouraged to believe that the proud will not prevail. God’s movement in history to finally raise up the poor is a victory I embrace by faith as I seek to identify and participate in the movement Jesus’ kingdom now.
Grace given to the humble
My Zambian friend Boyd is a humble, soft-spoken man who is full of a quality of grace that seems given by God. Now 54 years old, he and his wife Gloria have five children. A Bishop of a Pentecostal denomination, he oversees some 20 pastors and has personally established 13 churches in impoverished urban neighborhoods and rural villages near the Southern border of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He also teaches with us through The People’s Seminary.
Boyd is not paid to pastor his pastors and parishioners. Like most African faith leaders, Boyd farms for a living. His life is one of hard manual labor and humble pastoral accompaniment of the poor, born of a love that he says came into him when he was adopted by a pastor after he and his siblings became orphaned when he was twelve.
He describes a hard upbringing marked by his parent’s divorce. When his mother moved far away, he was raised by his father who died when he was twelve. Relatives took everything that belonged to their dad, leaving him and his four siblings with nothing. It was then that a humble pastor took them into his home.
“When the family of my dad rejected us, this man, Bishop Sinkala, took me as his own,” recounts Boyd. There were many other children he took– making it twenty who lived in his small home.
“He was always smiling, full of joy. I knew he was passing through struggles. He showed me that love which I didn’t find from my family. I experienced this love from him. He was always talking about Jesus. Sometimes there was no food in the house. He was always joyful. “The Lord will provide for us,” Bishop Sinkala said. “And the Lord always did. This man always gave me food when I was hungry, paid for my clothes, and helped me go back to school, paying for my school fees and transport. That love that I experienced from him led me to want to follow Jesus when I was 13,” Boyd tells me on a WhatsApp call.
By age twenty Boyd felt called to help others come to know and receive the love of God. He was drawn to go from house-to-house, and rode his bicycle to remote villages to gather people to hear the message of Jesus. He started churches in remote areas where he saw the greatest need.
“I know what I have been through and I want to share this love with many,” he tells me. People in rural areas need the word of God, they need Jesus. They have no light. When I bring the projector to show the Jesus film, they come. It brings me joy.”
Now Boyd and his wife still have four children at home: Blessing 19, Promise 15, Shakinah 13 and Melchizedek 7. They have taken in an additional six children- including some neighbors and relatives. They have a room for the boys, a room for the girls, their own room, and two rooms full of 370 chickens!
We first became aware of his home-based chicken farm when he and his wife invited to a meal on our second visit to Zambia. While eating fried chicken in his living room with our team we could hear peeping and smell chicken manure. He gave us a tour of his house, showing us two large bedrooms full of chickens.
He shared how he’s used the money to help some of the neighborhood children and children of his pastors cover their school fees. He used money from the sale of chickens to pay for 1000 cinderblocks to build one of his churches and to help his oldest daughter Catherine go to medical school. Last month 340 of his latest brood of 370 chickens died when floodwaters filled his home, requiring them now to seek new housing on higher ground (see video below). Boyd tells me he’s not worried.
“I am confident that God will provide,” he says with a smile. “These experiences are a school where we learn—like the children of Israel were taught by God in the wilderness.” Boyd is experiencing firsthand Psalm 25:9, “He leads the humble in justice, and he teaches the humble his way.”
He plants corn and other crops to feed his family. He’s won the trust of hundreds of church leaders from many denominations, which was evident when he hosted our first Zambian Certificate in Holistic Liberation that 400 pastors attended. Each evening after full days of teaching, Boyd took us to preach and minister to the churches he started.
These churches are humble structures with walls sometime made of adobe, and other times much simpler frames with plastic bags to keep out the wind. Several of the churches did not yet have roofs—as in Prayer Tower pictured below.
While Boyd and his people are certainly the meek who Jesus speaks about in the Beatitudes, they are not yet visibly inheriting the earth. They are experiencing provision, training and growth in their families and faith communities. They certainly look like they are in line to be beneficiaries of the promise of Psalm 37:11 “But the humble will inherit the land and will delight themselves in abundant prosperity.”
God opposes the proud
In contrast, God’s opposition to the proud is less visible in these dark times here in the USA and elsewhere. The rich and powerful are amassing riches at an accelerated rate. Powerful political leaders appear to be getting away with levels of deception, corruption, lawlessness, killing, and abuse of power like I’ve never seen.
It seems we are now witnessing firsthand Psalm 73 incarnate at the highest levels of government and business.
“I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For there are no pains in their death, and their body is fat. They are not in trouble as other men, nor are they plagued like mankind. Therefore pride is their necklace; the garment of violence covers them. Their eye bulges from fatness; The imaginations of their heart run riot. They mock and wickedly speak of oppression; They speak from on high. They have set their mouth against the heavens, And their tongue parades through the earth” (Psalm 73:3-9).
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has expressed repeatedly his belief that naked power, lethal force is good and necessary. In his speech before top military officials in September 2025, he boasted:
“We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement…. “Should our enemies choose foolishly to challenge us, they will be crushed by the violence, precision, and ferocity of the War Department.”
Over the past month the Trump Administration has launched drone attacks against fishing boats off the coast of Venezuela that have killed over 100 people and seized oil tankers. This week the US military then attacked Venezuela, taking its President Maduro and his wife by force to face criminal charges in New York. This was followed by declarations that the US will run Venezuela and seize its oil. Shortly after President Trump threatened to attack Columbia and boasted of taking Greenland for the US. This was followed by the brutal killing of a woman by an ICE agent during raids following a massive deployment of federal agents in Minneapolis on Wednesday.
One of President Trump’s tops aides, Stephen Miller responded to Jake Tapper of CNN this Monday regarding events in Venezuela and threats against Greenland with a statement that goes directly against the prophet Zechariah famous words in Zechariah 4:6: “Not by might, nor by power, but my Spirit” says the Lord of hosts.” Said Miller:
“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.”
As a child I memorized Proverbs 16:18, which I still know by heart according the King James Version: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Wouldn’t this verse alone cause anyone claiming to take the Jewish and Christian Scriptures seriously to stop supporting prideful and haughty leaders?! I took to heart the strong warning in this proverb, which reminded me to be vigilant over my heart. Alerted to devastating consequences of pride and a haughty spirit – “destruction” and “a fall,” I found myself noticing it to such an extent that it often kept me from trusting anyone seemed prideful of haughty.
This verse alone serves as a basis for discernment as to whether anyone should pursue making America great again. National pride, racial pride, or any kind of pride and boasting is a set up for destruction and a fall. How could people who claim to follow Jesus of Nazareth ever follow celebrities or politicians who are blatantly prideful and haughty?
Psalm 73 ends with declarations regarding the fate of the powerful that should make anyone aligned with them jump ship, not remain silent and resist by aligning more fully with Jesus now:
Surely you set them in slippery places; You cast them down to destruction. How they are destroyed in a moment! They are utterly swept away by sudden terrors!” (Ps 73:18-19).
The promise of Scripture is that God “scatters those who are proud in the thoughts of their heart, brings down rulers from their thrones and exalts those who are humble (Lk 1:51-52). This has already begun with the exaltation of Jesus, raised from the dead and seated in the heavenly realm. Jesus’ defeat of death on the cross and exaltation is our assurance that the meek and humble of the earth will follow.
I see signs of God’s raising up the humble in the witness of people like Bishop Boyd in Zambia. His plans this year include starting anew his chicken-raising project, increasing his small goat herd of seven to 150 so he can build still more faith communities. He is welcoming us to teach the second module of our Certificate in Holistic Liberation to 200 pastors in NW Zambia at the end of March. He will himself teach courses with us to humble pastors and church leaders in Malawi and Mozambique in April.
Boyd is like many other humble Jesus followers actively advancing King Jesus’ kingdom under the radar of empire. This is a victorious kingdom that cannot be stopped, which will advance until final victory upon Jesus’ return. This is my hope in 2026 and beyond.
If you would like to contribute to helping Bishop Boyd’s chicken-raising project and training of pastors you can make a donation in the following ways:
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Check out Bob’s most recent podcast “Disciple: Word, Spirit, Justice, Witness” below– “What does it look like to live by faith?”