I had been scheduled to speak at four churches on Sunday, but found that Sharath really just wanted me to say a few words of encouragement and greeting, and not really preach. Even though I had complied and kept my comments very brief, people wanted me to pray for them. As a result we were way behind schedule and did not arrive at the last of the four churches until about 2:00 PM. I was amazed they were still meeting that late in the day. (I was later told that this service typically starts at noon and goes until about 3 PM. They were singing a very exuberant worship song when I arrived.)
This church is a very special church to me. It was the Weaver community church where Sisar and his wife Esther pastored. I had been involved in the planting of this church in December of 2000. The Weaver community is a very closed community, devout Hindus, and very resistant to the gospel. Sisar and Esther had worked there for almost a year. They had about 20 kids and two adult women in their congregation. The community would not tolerate the word "Church". Sisar and Esther had a baby girl, so they called the group "Friends of Eva," their daughter's name.
One of the two adult women had opened her very humble home (a one room brick home with no plastering on the walls and no toilet or sink) for the church to meet in. They had asked me to pray blessings on this home in 2000 when I was there. Shortly after that God miraculously provided funds and the walls were plastered, making the room lighter and much more pleasant. (God really does answer our blessing prayers.)
The Weavers were totally closed to the gospel, but where very curious about Americans. So in December of 2000 I had been asked to come and speak at this little church. They held the meeting outside under one of those Indian tents that is just a canvas roof on poles.
Many of the Weaver women and some of the men were so curious to hear an American speak in their humble village. So many of them attended the church service. Others refused to attend, but happened to place themselves very near the meeting, such as sitting on a public bench that was about 10 feet away from the front of the "tent," where I was sitting/speaking. One man had ridden his bicycle back and forth in front of the meeting for an hour. As a "good Hindu" he could not attend the service, but he wanted to see "the American" and hear what I was saying, so he spent over an hour riding his bike back and forth on the street in front of our meeting. When I started to pray blessings for people, he put the bike down and came into the meeting to receive prayer. And most of the other people who had not attended the service but who "coincidently" were very near the service during the hour while I spoke all came in the tent to receive blessings from the Christian God as well.
That meeting, in 2000, had been the impetus that allowed Sisir to plant his church. It had begun to grow and thrive, even in this resistant community. I would like to digress and share two of their stories with you, to give you an idea of how God had been moving there. He has been doing some amazing things.
Sisar and Esther had been renting one side of a little duplex because it was the only place that would rent to them. After a while, they were allowed to purchase some property in the village and build their church as a rather large room with a roof and no walls. They built a two room hut behind the church "building" for Sisar and his family to live in. (It was a hut, but it was a very nice hut, complete with electricity.)
One day Sisar passed one of his rather hostile neighbors and greeted him pleasantly with a nod and a smile. The man said, "Why are you talking to me? I am a good Hindu and you are a Christian." Sisar responded, "you are my neighbor and in our religion we are taught to love our neighbors." The man's mouth fell open. He was unsure of what to say. A few days later Sisar saw him and greeted him again. The man returned the greeting in a friendly way. Then Sisar invited him to come to the service. The man said he was a "good Hindu" so he must not set foot into a church service. Sisar said "Ok, but you are welcome if you ever change your mind and decide to attend." The man said that would never happen and Sisar did not pressure him.
A few days after that, the men in the Weaver community met to decide what to do regarding this Church that had been started in their community. They wanted to take the property away from them to force the church to close down. Sisar's neighbor spoke on their behalf and said, "I met him. He is a good man. Leave him alone." The men decided they would force the church to close despite the man's objection. The man spoke out on their behalf again, saying, "He did not pressure me to go to his church. He will not cause problems for us. Leave him alone." But they still decided they would force Sisar to close his church and leave. Then this Hindu neighbor said, "If you force them to close their church, I will be obligated to allow them to have their service in my home. I am a good Hindu and I will not attend their service, but I will allow them to have it in their home."
When the men in the village saw that he was serious, they decided it would be better to permit the church to keep it's property than to have Christian services held in a Hindu home. So they decided to leave the church alone and allow them to keep their church. Now that the decision has been officially made, it can't be reversed. So the church is there to stay. Praise God!
Some months later, one of the other Hindu neighbors became very sick and was brought to the hospital. The man died at the hospital. Sisar, as a neighbor, went to the wife as soon as he heard of the death, which was maybe half an hour after the hospital pronounced the man dead. The hospital had phoned the wife to come and pick up the body for burial. She was too grieved to leave right away to get the body. Sisar came over to see if there was anything he could do for her to assist her. She said, "doesn't your God have something to do with raising the dead?" Sisar said "Yes." She said, "Then what you can do for me is to have your church pray for my husband." So Sisar called an emergency prayer meeting and they all began to cry out to God to spare this man's life (he was already dead). They began to ask God to return him to life. They prayed fervently for a couple of hours.
The hospital called the wife back three hours after the initial call and told her, "Your husband is not dead after all. He appears to be all better, though we can't explain it. Please come and get him to bring him home." The story went like this. The dead man had been taken out of his bed and sealed in some sort of plastic bag they place dead bodies in. He was moved to a room with some other dead bodies. He was there for a few hours. When his doctor heard the man had died, the doctor said, "that does not sound right, because he was doing so well. Maybe there was some sort of mix-up." So he sent a nurse to go look at the body to verify it was the right person. She opened the bag to look at him. Then the dead man sat up and asked where he was. God had raised him from the dead in response to the prayers of his people!
As a result, the man and his entire family are now saved and baptized members of the church, and so are several of their friends. I met that man who God raised from the dead at the service on Sunday. Sisar introduced me to him and his wife. What an amazing story of God's power and love! No wonder that church is growing and thriving! There were about 120 people when I arrived at the service.
When I arrived, we were seated in chairs behind a little table that served as the podium, at the front of the room. Most of the people sat cross-legged on mats on the ground. But a few of the older people were sitting in chairs at the back of the room. The people were still singing and worshipping with gusto and enthusiasm. Little Shanti, Sharath's 7 year old son, sat cross-legged on the floor in the front row, on my far right side. His mother sat in one of the chairs in the back.
The song ended and Sisar talked for a few minutes in Telegu. Then he said, in English, "We welcome sister Teresa from the United States. Will you please share the word of the Lord with us?" Sisar handed me one microphone and he kept the other, indicating he would be the one translating. I asked him, "Do you want me to keep it brief, or may I preach a full sermon?" He replied "we hope you will preach a full sermon for us."
I was so glad to hear that because God had given me a full sermon to preach to them. I had preached that sermon once before in Mozambique. It was about faith, from the life of Abraham. God had anointed it tremendously when I was at a refugee camp in Mozambique and it was not clear to me if I would be able to repeat it the same way a second time. The Lord told me, "Oh, it will not come out the same as before, but I will anoint it just as powerfully."
The sermon requires acting out many events in the life of Abraham and making comments on them that help us understand how faith works and how we grow in faith. When I got to the part about Abraham sacrificing Isaac, I had the seven year old Shanti stand up to show them about how old Isaac might have been when this occurred. He sat back down again. Suddenly, when I was acting out Abraham tying Isaac's hands to place him on the altar, I felt prompted to use Shanti to act this out with me. I have never done that before... used someone else to help act out one of the bible stories. But I told Shanti to stand up and put his hands together and hold them out in front of him. I acted out Abraham binding his hands together with invisible cords.
Shanti played his part perfectly .. you would have thought I'd coached him and rehearsed with him. He kept his hands "bound together" until I later untied him and he also had all the right facial expressions for the various parts of the story. Then I told the people how Abraham picked up his little son and placed him on the altar. As I did that, I literally picked Shanti up and carried him across the front and put him down on the little table that served as a podium. There were many gasps from the congregation as we did this. The story was really coming alive to them.
Shanti laid down on the table (his feet hanging off the end because it was not long enough) and he kept his arms held together in front of him like they were still bound. I talked about how Abraham believed God would raise his son from the dead after he sacrificed him, because God had promised to build a great nation from him. And I digressed to talk about how God will sometimes ask us to sacrifice our dreams to Him. Sometimes we receive a promise from God and we wait years and years to receive it from Him. When we finally get our promise and have enjoyed it for only a short while, sometimes God asks us to lay it on the altar and sacrifice it back to Him. Other times God asks us to present to Him the things we treasure, to lay them on the alter before Him and to die to self. Little Shanti lay perfectly still as I explained the explanation, holding my hand above him like the sacrificial knife that Abraham had used. Every eye was on little Shanti as this happened and I could see tears forming in some people's eyes. I knew that the Holy Spirit was speaking to many of them to lay the things they treasured on the altar to Him. And they were complying with the Holy Spirit's leading. And little Shanti was the prophetic acting out of the commitments they were silently making.
Then we got to the part where the angel calls out to Abraham not to complete the sacrifice and tells him about the sacrifice caught in the thicket. I do this little humorous part where Abraham is trying to decide which to do first... untie Isaac or go get the sacrifice before it gets away. They all laughed at this part. Abraham finally decides to untie Isaac first. When I untied Shanti and lifted him off of the altar (e.g., the table) and put him back on the ground, the people broke into applause. They were not applauding our acting, they were applauding God and His provision in response to our faith. Somehow, God touched them very powerfully through little Shanti acting out the part of Isaac.
After service people mobbed me for prayer. I tried to do those quick little 20-30 second blessing prayers, but Sisar came and began translating and I had to spend well over an hour praying for people. Many wanted an impartation and commented how the message had really touched their heart. Many others wanted physical healing. Some wanted intercession for family problems. I ended up ministering to people for well over an hour. And God showed up with anointing as I prayed.
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