About three weeks ago something completely amazing happened. Something that allowed us to truly feel the Holy Spirit! It was a crazy experience. I’m posting this now that we are out of the country just for safety reasons. For those of you that I emailed for prayers for safety this will explain what was going on.
So it was a normal day in Vietnam. We had decided to go to the river and have a worship session. So two people brought their guitars and we just started praising and worshipping out in the open. We had no idea what would come of it. We just knew that we love our God.
Soon local people started to gather slowly. And the crowd grew. And it grew some more. Until we probably had about 150 people crowded around us just listening to us worshipping our beautiful God.
At one point I knew I just had to get up. That I couldn’t just sit here. I was getting antsy. So I sprung up, not knowing exactly why. My teammate Hannah told me she knew I had something to share. But I didn’t think I did. So I just kept on worshipping.
Then Hannah prayed over me and BOOM! I knew exactly who I had to talk to and what I needed to talk about. I saw I guy just sitting there listening. I sat down right next to him and just asked him what he thought of the worshipping that was going on. He knew it had something to do with the bible. And then I started to speak. And I mean really speak. I spoke with a confidence that I didn’t know I had. I spoke with clarity, with passion. I was amazed at the words coming out of my mouth.
I was able to tell him that God loves him. That God sent Jesus Christ down to cleanse him. To make him righteous. That his sins and mistakes are forgiven. And I could tell he was soaking it in. He claimed to be a Buddhist. But I know I was able to plant a seed that night. By the end of the conversation I was able to pray for him. I prayed that the Holy Spirit would just overcome him. That he would feel God’s love in that moment. I also was just able to pray for him to find a job. He was very receptive and was very appreciative of the prayer.
The craziness ensued afterwards. The police arrived and began to question what we were doing. Our contact began to handle the situation. But soon they wanted to see all of our passports. They wanted to know where we were staying. We didn’t know what to do. Our contact told us cops can be shady and that they would even try to take away our passports, so we were told to hide them. What a mess! We hurried to the hotel as quickly as possible.
Some people were stressing hard at this point. Would we be deported?! What’s going to happen? I was kind of enjoying it. I knew we had done nothing wrong. We got back to the hotel and they ended up randomly checking some people’s passports. Now however our contact believes we will have covert cops on our tail from time to time. This means our style of worship will need to change. No more drawing big crowds. No more public evangelizing unless someone comes to us specifically asking for it.
Discernment. That is what we took away from this. We must be wise in knowing when is a good time to evangelize and when it is proper to take a step back. Yes we are leaving Vietnam in 20 days’ time, but our contact is here forever. We could put his status in this country in jeopardy. We need to respect that. I in no way regret what I said to that guy. But next time around I just have to be more cautious. A couple of the people that our group talked to were the ones that called the cops. But that’s ok. We are forgiving people. We are called to have grace upon those who do not understand. There is no need to get angry at them.
Much Love,
Raj
