I am not a writer, so I’ve partnered with David Mark Brown to bring you my story in a manner that will hopefully connect much more than if I had written it myself. But I want to take a moment to let you know why the story has been written in the first place, and where I believe God is leading me from here.
This book is based on both my journey and my dream. Yes, I still feel God has set it in my heart to bring freedom to third world countries through the implementation of reproducible, self-sustaining economic practices. I never imagined my journey toward realizing that dream would go through Idaho.
Growing up amidst the spirits of poverty and fear, I have witnessed more than my fair share of discrimination and hate from loan sharks, militants, and armies. I’ve witnessed injustices too numerous to list—everything from the killing of family members to the harassment of helpless widows.
Even as a child, I thought to myself, when I grow up, I am going to bring justice and freedom to the jungle. I determined to rid our small tribes of fear, power mongers and poverty. My whole life has been dedicated to that singular passion. Although, as my story reveals, I’ve not always known the best way to achieve it.
Then came a series of trials of a different sort.
Starting in 2010, I found myself spiritually burdened and financially broke beyond anything I had previously imagined. To do something good for cast out and hurting children, I started a small martial arts gym.
Sarah and I used our savings, including my retirement from working for the Idaho Prisons. We used the money hoping to prosper and bloom beyond Idaho and eventually facilitate my dream of self-sustaining villages throughout the jungles of Asia.
The opposite happened, and we didn’t prosper financially. Broken and humbled, I cried out to God. The word that came into my heart was the same word my Dad had spoken to me right before he passed away in 2002—“Seek God deeper.”
That was when my approach toward life radically changed. I finally realized I didn’t have to change the whole world, but just the world around me—one step at a time. I needed to nurture the people around me and start the Empty Hand Revolution one person at a time, just like my father, and mentors like Mark, did with me. In the long run, the multiplicative ripple effect from those individuals will be larger than any splash I make on my own.
Along those lines, I am mentoring youth and young adults in America through my gym and ministry, Empty Hand Combat. A partner foundation, Empty Hand Warrior, provides scholarship money for children who cannot afford instruction. At the same time, Sarah and I are raising warriors in the jungles of Asia by funding their education and supporting orphanages.
My embracing of the Empty Hand Revolution has only strengthened my resolve to create a reproducible model of economic self-sustainability for rural villages across the third world. This effort has birthed The Morung Project.
Two hundred years ago, every Naga village huddled around a Morung. The Morung was where elders trained young men to become warriors. They left their homes and temporarily lived in the Morung. They studied, they hunted, they trained for combat.
In modern times, the Morung has become a concept among the Naga. It binds Nagas together and represents the positive aspects of our culture. The Morung Project shares similar aims. It is my fervent prayer, that by dispelling poverty and fear, The Morung Project can restore freedom and justice to shattered rural villages not just in my Nagalim, but throughout the third world.
With empty hands, I am finally starting this work with one of the smallest tribes in India,—the Tarao. I’ve chosen this most humble tribe for three reasons:
1.) I have no strings attached to Tarao tribe—no blood relatives, and no friends.
2.) Tarao tribe is the poorest tribe in all of India.
3.) Tarao tribe is one of the smallest tribes in Southeast Asia.
I have chosen the smallest and poorest tribe to launch The Morung Project, because that is how God’s Kingdom works. The last shall be first. The Good News of Jesus the Christ is always accepted first among the least, the lost and the losers.
The new revolution and the regeneration that the Naga seek (and that most human beings seek) will rise only through God and his grace. In the mind-boggling words of Jesus, “The meek shall inherit the earth.”
Since all Nagas are part of this small and meek tribe, all Nagas will be able to bear testimony to the world that God has generated new life from the Tarao. And all the world will see that glorious life can sprout from the lowliest of places. Beyond the Tarao tribe, I hope the world will see all Nagas sincerely seeking God deeper and testifying of his glory in our daily walk of life.
From northeast India, I hope the The Morung Project will spread.
The plight of Tarao tribe is a common one known around the world. After The Morung Project generates success stories of economic, cultural and spiritual regeneration among the Naga, I hope the model will be reproduced. I hope others will do even more than this as they constantly seek God deeper.
To find out more, visit: http://www.morungproject.com.
Sarah and I, and those partnering with us, don’t intend to recruit the world to join our personal ministry or mission. Instead, we want others to replicate our ideas (steal them and claim them as your own!) so the concept of the Empty Hand Revolution can multiply.
We want to hold everything loosely and own nothing, in the same manner my father reflected through his life. A story is told of my father about how he longed to no longer bear the label of ordained pastor within the Baptist denomination. He had tired so thoroughly that when church leaders approached him about his uncomfortable (and charismatic) tendencies to heal the sick, he happily resigned.
To his displeasure, God confronted him about the resignation and convicted him to reenlist. The denomination took him back without their previous restrictions. In this same way, I have built precautions within the ministry goals of The Morung Project against controlling and grasping hands. The work is nothing about me and my success. It is about always seeking God deeper.
Through the revolution in my own life, I have learned that much good and bad can be done in Jesus’ name for The Ministry’s* sake, God does not need The Ministry* for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. He chooses to need nothing more than empty hands—hands willing to receive from no one and nothing but him.
This is the Empty Hand Revolution. It starts and ends with every single person who has, is, or will walk the earth. It turns out, God’s Kingdom cannot be taken or given, only received with empty hands.
To find out more, visit: http://www.emptyhandrevolution.com.
*The capital “M” ministry can be defined as the work we so benevolently do for God in contrast to the infinitely more important work God does for us.
YOU ARE READING
Empty Hand Revolution
Non-FictionBorn into a tribal war with India, violence his earliest memory, Comso Zimik trained as a black belt and street fighter from the age of nine. His vow: never show weakness. Tortured and left for dead in the jungle at the age of seventeen, Cosmo birth...
