In India, we would go to a different village church every night and worship, preach a message, share some testimonies, and then pray with the congregation. At the beginning of the month, when I learned that we would be expected to preach every night, I was intimidated. Other than leading a bible study, I had never really articulated parts of the bible to a group of people before. I doubted my ability to be inspiring, encouraging, or even thought provoking. I worried that my preaching would come across dry, inexperienced, and result in more questions than answers.
However, by the end of the month and almost 10 “sermons” later, I discovered that I loved sharing the word of God to people through preaching. I loved spending my quiet times discovering new parts of the Bible I hadn’t read and being inspired to teach on it or even parts I had read a hundred times but had received a new revelation from God on that I couldn’t wait to share. I loved asking God what the people of India needed to hear from his word and specifically what each congregation needed to hear. I loved seeing understanding on the faces of the crowd and the feeling that no matter how my words came across, no matter how eloquent or well-stated, the words that would come out were truth and life.
After leaving India, I felt like God was saying that the messages I had prepared were not just for the ears of those in the village churches, but also for the eyes of my supporters back home. Over the next few blogs I will be sharing messages I preached to one of the many village churches we visited, that met under the stars in the backyards of their pastors’ homes. To a people group who know persecution, who struggle with addiction, who carry doubts and fears about their faith, who are familiar with pain and poverty, who are desiring to know more and have a deeper dependence on Jesus, who are curious or maybe some even uninterested, but especially to those who are deeply loved by their Father in heaven.
With each blog, imagine beginning the night worshipping alongside tambourines, hand drums and clapping, and songs sung in high-pitched Telugu as the smell of potato curry and chai drifts from the kitchen, and then I step up, dressed in my Kurta and head scarf, with my Bible and journal held in shaking hands, nervous but excited to share the word of God with you.
