“And whatever you do, don’t say the M word.”
This was our only instruction before heading for India.
And just like that I went from missionary to tourist, not realizing how much I have come to value that title over the past six months. But little did I know that not being able to say the M word, would just be the beginning of my challenges as a missionary in a closed country.
Three hundred and fifty million…that’s how many gods are worshipped in India. Three hundred and fifty million! And that’s not including the number of people walking around declaring themselves as god!
With that many gods, I couldn’t help but feel, when it comes to Hindus, the more gods the merrier. Jesus is even a god. They have no problem adding him to their collection. But when you say Jesus is the one and only God, that’s when you have a problem. It’s not illegal to be a Christian in India, but it is illegal to convert someone.
Being the only westerners anywhere we went, we’d often get asked what we were doing in India. And it would be so hard to simply say tourist, feeling as if I was missing out on a huge opportunity to tell that person what I was truly doing in India and the amazing journey Jesus was taking me on. And as we went from house to house, meeting families, drinking chai tea, singing a song, and then praying for them, I couldn’t help but feel it was all so superficial. And while we did meet a lot of amazing Christians, devoutly serving The Lord, we also met a lot of people who claimed to be Christian, despite their shrines to the other three hundred and fifty million gods.
Prayer request after prayer request of good health, financial provision, and a future mate and good exam scores for their children, I couldn’t help but feel there was an elephant in the room that all of us were ignoring. Which in many houses there literally was, with posters of their elephant gods hanging all around the room. Because even if God answered all of those prayer requests, without Him being at the center of their hearts, and with all those other idols in the room, there would always be emptiness, yet no room for God to move.
And on our final night of house visits in the slums, I heard God speak. For months I had been reading in the Old Testament about the prophets and God’s absolute hatred for idols. And now God was having me put into practice what I had learned. And as we stepped into one of the last houses of the night, welcomed by a giant shrine of idols, I couldn’t take it anymore. I was so angry. It was clear that in that moment God was giving me His hatred for idols. And for the first time I was truly experiencing how it broke His heart.
I was so tired of avoiding the elephant in the room. So tired of tiptoeing around all three hundred and fifty million of their gods. So tired of praying and then leaving, without even addressing the major issue…God’s hatred for idols. So tired of pretending that God was going to answer their prayer requests, even when they were praying to hundreds of other statues after we left.
And then I heard God say, “If you don’t tell them, how will they know.”
I was very hesitant at first. Please God, I can’t tell them to take down their idols, I could get in trouble. I don’t want to offend them. And then He reminded me of the prophets, of Ezekiel and Jeremiah. And of the messages they had to deliver. How they had to speak the hard stuff. The stuff that too many were afraid to say.
And so I shared with them the story of my life. Of the idols I had in my life, all the things I placed before God. I shared how God couldn’t move in my life, couldn’t bless me, until I got rid of my idols. I told them that all the other gods in their lives were affecting their relationship with the one true God and how much God hates idols. And then as I closed by praying over them, I broke that one rule…I used the M word. Instead of praying for health or good exam scores, I prayed that one day, when the next missionaries come, that they would be greeted by a cross replacing that shrine of idols that once was.
After we left the house, I was worried that I was going to get feedback for using the M word. I was shocked that I had used it. But then God made it clear to me that I said the M word for a very specific reason, prophecy. That I was speaking out what was to come,much like the prophets I had spent the past months reading about. That one day Missionaries would come and that one day they would take down their idols.
