I used to think that heaven had to be so big to hold all of the people that lived on earth. Think about how many generations have lived since the earth was created. It’s mind blowing. What’s even more mind blowing, is coming to the realization that heaven doesn’t have to be nearly as big as I thought it did. Once I really began to explore my faith several years ago, I obviously hit a point in my exploration where I realized that not everyone who lives gets in to heaven. I remember that moment, and I remember thinking about how sad it was that those people were not going to spend an eternity with Jesus in Heaven. Their salvation though, their eternal address, that wasn’t in my hands. That was a decision that they had to make for themselves and there would be someone else in their lives who would bring them to a place of salvation. It didn’t have to be me.
It wasn’t until I came on the race that I realized how right I was about heaven not needing to be big. I think that living in Asia for 5 months was a daily reminder of how many unsaved people we are surrounded by each day. In Asia, the practiced religion is Buddhism, and it is everywhere. Spirit houses are in front of every home and you can’t go out in public without seeing monks walking through the streets. These people spend so much of their lives praying to these spirits of their ancestors who supposedly live in these houses, THESE PEOPLE WORSHIP A GOD THAT DOESN’T EXIST. And unless they accept Jesus before they die, these people are not getting in to Heaven. How sad is that? To think that millions of people walking the earth right now are not going to have the chance to live eternally in Heaven because they do not know Jesus. The amount of space in Heaven shrinks quite a bit just with that thought, huh?
What would the world look like if every Christian’s mission in life was to take at least one other person to Heaven with them. Heaven would be so much bigger. The death and destruction that is going to take over this earth when Jesus returns wouldn’t have to take that big of a toll on humanity, and instead, he would take more of us to heaven with him. When I came on this trip, it was more about ministry for me, more about my relationship with God and about helping people. I an even remember telling people before I left ‘yeah it’s kind of like a mission trip.’ It’s not KIND OF like a mission trip, it IS a mission trip, and the only missions we have on this trip are to love Jesus even more than we do now and to help other people to love Jesus so that they can make it into heaven also. I don’t know if I just didn’t process all the way through it, or if I thought that some people in my life would think I was crazy to give up a whole year of my life to tell people about Jesus, but either way, I was wrong. During this trip, I have seen so many people come to know Jesus. I have talked to people through hand motions trying to explain to them the concept of Jesus, and I have seen entire families saved.
In Vietnam, we helped teach English classes at a local coffee shop a few times a week. They were amazing classes, all of which were based off of a bible story or a Christian concept, and each time we had amazing discussions about many different We also attended prayer meetings each Monday. At one specific prayer meeting, we were introduced to a man who was not a believer. The introduction went something like ‘This is my cousin, he’s not a believer. Make him believe.’ Actually, it didn’t go something like that, that is exactly how it went. I’ll never forget that moment. I mean, how to you forget a moment where someone’s eternity rests in your hands. You just don’t. Kat and I took the next 45 minutes or so and walked through Genesis and the Gospel with him. Why the world was created the man who came to save us and everything else in between all crammed into 45 minutes. By the time we were done, he was more than a bit overwhelmed with all of the information that we had thrown at him, but over the next few weeks, he asked more and more questions, came to more and more of our meetings, and eventually, was getting to a place were he was close to accepting Jesus as his savior. Then one day at one of our prayer meeting, he was pressured by others in the meeting to pray the prayer to accept Jesus. He wasn’t ready, and after that moment had a lot of immediate guilt about saying the prayer when he wasn’t ready. Our whole team was pretty down for a while after that. This man’s salvation rested in our hands, we did everything we could, told him so much of what we knew, and we had gotten him to a place where within the next few weeks he would have been happy to pray that prayer. But that right of comfortability was stolen from him. We were sure that he would backtrack from here, and we were feeling completely defeated. We told him about the English classes that we were helping to teach at the cafe, and prayed and prayed like crazy that he would choose to show up. And guess what? HE DID. I know that you as readers could probably see the end of that story coming from a mile a way, but we honestly didn’t. We were convinced that he was going to turn away from all that we had taught him, that we had lost that fight, but we were wrong. He came to that class, presents in hand for each of us thanking us for all that we had done for him. He chose to come to a class knowing that in that class, he was not only going to learn more about English, but also a lot more about Jesus.
In Thailand, we ran cell groups a few times a week at different homes in the community. They were almost always held at a Christian family’s home, and we poured in to these new believers lives. One week, for whatever reason, we did a cell group at the home of a couple who were not believers. I’m not actually sure that they knew what they were at the point in their lives where we met them. They were technically Buddhist, but they had hit a point in their following of Buddha where they were having doubts. Their daughter had done DTS, was now on staff at YWAM, and had been trying to share the gospel with them. They were interested, but for some reason, as I’ve found it to be with religion, you need to hear things from people outside your family. So input, the Dawn Treaders. We were not fully aware of the extent of their lives when we first got there, but after a few shared testimonies and a message from Eric, the couple began to open up about their lives. The husband was not shy to tell us (in Thai of course) that he was the curator at the local temple, and that although they had been Buddhist their whole lives, they just were not feeling satisfied with things in their lives, and Christianity was looking better and better to them. Somewhere during that translation, the father said that if the became Christian, maybe he could help to start/run a church in the area. Whoa. Hold up. Curator at the temple turned curator at a church that doesn’t even exist yet? THIS is the kind of stuff that we live for on the race. Can you imagine all of the people that could be saved in this community if this one man chooses to turn away from Buddhism and live his life for Jesus? He is so close.
5 ½ months have come and gone. It’s been an uphill battle every step of the way, but some of the best moments of my life have happened in those battles. I look back at these last 5 months in Asia, and I can visibly see a whole slew of different ways that the Lord worked in our lives as V Squad and in the lives of the people that we came in contact with. So many people in Asia now know Jesus because of our presence in their lives. It’s absolutely amazing to look back and remember all the people that we are taking to heaven with us. And to think that was only half of it. It’s so hard to believe that we are half Qway done with our race! Now we are in Africa and it is a completely different world here. We have been here for two weeks or so, hitting the half way point of our race on Valentines day, and some days we still aren’t sure what the deal is in the crazy country. This month is a month filled with a lot more space and rest time than I have personally experienced in all of the last five months combined, but I have no doubt that it is simply God’s way of preparing us for the spiritual warfare that we are going to encounter next month in Swaziland.
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I still need to raise approximately $2,000 in order to complete the last half of the race. I have seen God do crazy amazing things in the first half, and I have total faith that even more amazing things will happen in the second half. If you would like to donate to help keep me on the race, please follow the Support Me link to the left of this blog. Thank you!
