1/09/11
Today we went to our first church service in India. I didn’t understand much, but I feel like it was a very good experience. I really felt the presence of God in the room and it was amazing to see people from clear across the world worshiping the same God as me.
As you can imagine, the majority of the service wasn’t in English, but the pastor did say a few things in English. He actually said enough for me to understand what he was preaching on, and that was being thankful. He was telling a congregation that is too poor to eat meat more than once a week to be grateful. He didn’t just tell them to be grateful, he tried to remind them of how much God has blessed them with. Wow. How humbling. I could probably withdraw more out of the ATM right now than most of them have ever seen at one time, and their being called to be grateful. This was probably the most humbling sermon I’ve ever heard.
So then the pastor ends his sermon and we took communion and prayed for a while until Timothy started his sermon. Yah, after we had worship, we heard our first sermon about being grateful and then had communion, and then started our second sermon. Just to make sure everyone understands, that is two sermons in the same service.
(I want to tell you about Timothy, but I don’t have the time here. Look for a blog named Timothy, to find out more about him.)
So Timothy started to preach in English, and his sermon was about being disciples, not believers. He was calling the congregation to not just know about God, but to truly know him. He was calling the congregation to go out and do something with their faith. There are not very many sermons that I can really focus on after being in church for an hour and a half before the sermon even begins, but I was hanging on his every word. It was a very good sermon.
It’s weird that I got so much out of a service that I didn’t even understand 75% percent of, but God can work however he wants. I don’t know if we will have our own service the next few Sundays, or if we will go back to this church, but either way I look forward to it.
