YWAM base all afternoon long and we needed a change of scenery STAT. The good news is that we’re in India – a
change of scenery is never difficult to come by in this
incredibly
diverse
country.
The bad news is that we had no
idea where to go.
left out of necessity – main roads in India are not very conducive to
pedestrians, what with the motorcycles and the
buses…and the cows…and the rickshaws… We went down the first dirt road we could find and followed its
windy turns all the way to a random field with more cows and palm trees.
We walked around the field for a while, but
the tall grass promised lurking snakes, so walked/ran/tripped to get away from
any impending danger. As we tried to
navigate our way back to a main road, Elizabeth stopped at a crossway. “Want to go this way?� she asked, pointing
right.
needed to go straight to get back to the main road and it was starting to get
dark…but we had some time and the road looked decently safe [ish]. We wandered along, more or less in our own
little world, until we heard something familiar. There we were on a dirt road in India, a
nearly exclusively Hindu culture, and we heard the strains of “Joy to the
World� coming from a building to our right.
Confused and mildly disoriented
by the song, we walked around the gate until we found an open door and we went
in. A man approached us, apparently just
as confused by our presence as we were by the Christian Christmas carol. “Can we go in and stand in the back for a
second?� I asked. “We were just passing
by and wanted to see what was going on.�
us. We repeated ourselves and he nodded
enthusiastically. “Of course!� He said.
“I’ll have some chairs pulled up for you. Are you from YWAM?� We explained a little bit about the World
Race to him, and he nodded. “Ahh, of
course,â€� he said. “You will share a
testimony?�
inside the building, but he spoke again.
“Would you be willing? Just
fifteen minutes each?�
time to think of something to say, I was standing in front of nearly 100 college-aged
Indians who wanted a sermon. As I stood
up there, talking about what God is teaching me about prayer and the power of
speaking with Him, I couldn’t help but wonder when would this ever happen in real life? No church in America would invite foreign
passersby into their meetings and immediately send them up front to deliver a
sermon – that is not how things really operate in the States.
wrong thing real life? What if I’m
experiencing real life for the first time ever this year?
After all, Jesus came so that we may have
life and have it to the full, and God promises that His Spirit will direct the
steps of His children in all things…but when have I ever actually asked Him if I should go right or left? When have I actually followed Him through dusty dirt roads and fields full of
cows towards a church that apparently needed to hear about praying powerful prayers? I know that I’m right in saying that I’ve
never seen that in the States, but I’m beginning to think that I’m wrong in
which one is real life.
know should be tromping into strange places and heading straight to the front
of a crowd, determined to speak about what God is teaching them. But I would say that maybe real life needs a
little bit more Spirit direction. My
real life won’t always mean
cheeks or
with special needs in the middle of India.
some supernatural miracle protein into all of the rice that we consume.
Race has faded –
trash in the street or to rub shoulders with poor, disfigured people begging or
to take three different forms of public transportation to get somewhere that
would have been a ten minute drive in the States.
song prepared in my back pocket and to lay hands on strangers to pray healing
and to see God move through His servants in crazy ways.
No longer do I want the World Race to have a
distinction separate from real life – because like it or not, this is real life now. And it’s going to be real life from now on, whether I’m in India or Uganda or Michigan or Texas.
My “real life” just
