Coming into this ministry in Nizamabad, India I knew it would be stretching and take me way out of my comfort zone. Going into villages, praying for healing and casting demons out of people, preaching; this wasn’t exactly my ideal ministry and I wasn’t even sure of how I felt about healing or casting out demons. I know it talks about it in the Bible but I was still skeptical in many ways.
I knew I would have to rely on God for strength this month.
The first few days I was very unsettled, anxiety filled my spirit. But I made a promise to my friends and to myself that I would make this my best month yet, that I would pour out my heart and give it everything I had. I was not going to check out, I was going to embrace the discomfort and see what it is like to be fully dependent on The Lord to get through each day.
As the days went on I really came to love the ministry. The first week were tough but the more I leaned on God the better the month became. Every day we would drive an hour or two into a surrounding village. We would do house visits and pray for people as well as preach every night. We took turns preaching, sometimes giving our testimony, sometimes Scripture that The Lord laid on our hearts.
Even though ministry and the month was going awesome I had a few days where I did want to check out completely. The way I knew and understood the Gospel and preaching was very different from how it is in India. People there believed the Bible in a literal sense, so when it says ‘cast out demons’ they fully believe that we have that power from Christ. I was caught off guard when I heard that the people in the villages were expecting us to heal them and they got discouraged when we weren’t. It took me a few days of praying to get my heart right. Initially I was extremely upset. My head was going crazy with thoughts. ‘I’m not Jesus I can’t heal anyone, are these people crazy do they really think I have power the way Jesus did?!?!’ My team did a great job bringing me back down to earth and helping me realize that even though we may read the same Bible we can understand and interpret it differently. Even though realizing this helped me tremendously in knowing how to move forward and do ministry better I was still a bit unsettled in the middle of the month.
Everywhere we went people flocked to us. The majority of the people that came to see us every day were only there because we were American. Everyone wanted to take our picture, touch us, get our autograph etc. The first few days it was fun but very quickly my heart shut off. I was thinking over and over, ‘is this what Jesus felt?! How did He not get so irritated but instead choose to love anyways?! I was over people touching me and having to fake a smile in every picture. I was done with this celebrity status. It was hard to know that people weren’t coming for the right reasons, they weren’t really interested in hearing about Jesus, they just wanted to see some white people they thought could heal them. But once again I was able to see that we still have an opportunity to change their lives. Not by healing them, but simply by making the most of this newfound fame and being able to tell them about how much God loves them and pray that even just one person would hear this and be saved.
Although this was definitely a tough month it was also one of the greatest. Aside from ministry I also had to deal with the anniversary of the death of one of my best friends. And for the first time I can say I ‘survived’ that day. I honored her and sought The Lord and God gave me the strength to preach on the day she died. (see my blog ‘Preaching Through Pain’ for more on what God taught me) Just like I had promised my friends at the beginning of the month I was able to say to them at the end of the month that I followed through with what I said I would. I fought for myself and fought for the people I met. I didn’t just go through the motions praying the same prayer person after person, night after night. I lay it all out on the table that month and it is a month I will never forget. It was one of the toughest but one of the best. I learned so much, God walked me through so much and I have peace in my heart and can say that even though I’m not Jesus and didn’t heal anyone I still poured my heart out and left India with my head held high knowing I gave it everything I had.
