My prayer life and intimacy time with God has been incredible on this trip. God has been so real and so tangible. It is sort of normal that personal issues magnify when you are overseas on a missions trip in a culture that is drastically different than what you are used to. Normally I struggle to some degree with some sort of personal issue every time I go overseas into another culture. But this trip has been different in that aspect.
I think it may be a side-effect of how strongly God met me -- when almost 100% of your attention is focused strongly on Him, that does not leave a lot of room to think about your own issues. Or maybe God put a supernatural protection over me as part of His grace for this trip, to keep me from struggling with my own issues. I don't know which it is. But I do know this, it is extraordinary to be so close to God and so focused on Him. (I wish I could live there all of the time instead of just on this missions trip. I suspect that is possible and I am praying for Him to teach me how to live at that level of intimacy with Him on a regular basis. Now that I have had a taste of this, I want more of it!)
I wrote some notes in my binder just before we left Razole to go to Vizag. Let me share a short portion with you, to give you a sense of what this experience with God is like:
I am experiencing a new depth of intimacy with God. My personal devotions are averaging over five hours a day -- often when I should be sleeping -- but God gives me the strength for the day and I am not usually tired. God sent an angel with me who is protecting me and none of my issues have been surfacing.I have seen this protecting angel a few times on the trip -- such as standing by my bed with it's sword drawn, protecting me while I am having my devotions and intimacy time with God.
This fellowship with God is utterly awesome and I love it! He often falls on me with such a strong presence, sort of like when I used to soak at renewal meetings. I think this intimacy is even effecting my personal motivations and the desires of my heart. I want to live at this spiritual level (or even higher) for the rest of my life. The following have been my daily prayers:
- Lord, I want to be Your servant and to represent You accurately
- Lord, I want You to be happy with my service, so that You are pleased to use me even more. Please show me how to cause Your pleasure as I serve You here.
- Lord, please give me Your anointing for the day's service and show me what You want me to do. I don't want to do things You are not doing and I don't want to accidentally miss anything You want done.
God spoke to me in the wee hours of the morning the day we left for Vizag. He had me read from Exodus 19 and Exodus 24 about how God called Moses up to the mountain, when His glory had descended upon it. I found myself wanting to go up into His glory like that and I sort of begged Him to invite me up to the mountain as well as Moses. I am not sure what I was expecting from Him in response to that prayer -- maybe a vision or a divine visitation or something. But His response was not quite what I expected.
God spoke to me about the climb Moses had to make up the mountain. He reminded me of when I took my dogs to a certain dog park that is a very steep trail, all up-hill. He reminded me of how I was exhausted and out of breath well before I got to the top, how I had to keep forcing one foot in front of the other, or how my muscles would start to ache -- how many times I would give up about 2/3 of the way up the trail and turn around and head back down without reaching the top. Then God began to speak to me about how it was hard going for Moses to get up the mountain, just like it was hard for me to walk up the steep trail with my dogs. It was a difficult and uncomfortable climb for Moses. But he had to make the climb in order to come into God's glory.
Then He told me that the trip from Razole would be sort of like Moses' climb up the mountain. I had always traveled in the second class air conditioned cars when traveling by train in India. But for the trip from Nassipur to Vizag, the train did not have any of these cars. I was forced to travel on the crowded cars that Indians used, with no air conditioning and open air windows. The train ride was a 10-hour ride, and I had been sort of dreading it, knowing it would be a difficult trip. Now God was likening this train ride to Moses' "difficult and uncomfortable" climb up the mountain into God's presence. That did not sound good.
Fortunately, Nassipur was the station the trip originated at, so it was not too bad when we first got on the train. There is no assigned seating, you sit wherever you can find room. There was plenty of room when we started, and Sharath and I selected window seats facing each other. There were no individual seats, just a hard wooden bench. We would normally put 6 people in that sized compartment, but the seats were numbered for 8. We ended up with 12 people crammed in there. (Indian people are used to traveling in these crowded conditions and frequently cram many more people into a compartment.) The people in our compartment put their kids on the luggage rack, where the luggage was supposed to go. My luggage was already up there, but that did not seem to bother the kids, they climbed on it and put their sticky fingers on it, etc. The kids also climbed on me and put their sticky fingers all over my clothes, screaming in my ear.
I thought I had acquired a great love for the Indian people and truly felt the compassion of the Lord for them. But after 10 hours of being crammed in a hot train compartment in these conditions, I did not feel an ounce of compassion or love for the people I was traveling with. All I wanted was to get away from them to some place quieter. To make matters worse, my rear end and the top of my legs started to really hurt from the bumpy train ride on this very hard wooden bench. The last two hours of the trip were sheer torture for me. I was so glad when we finally reached our station.
This day was a travel day, with no meetings scheduled, so I did not have to preach that day -- thank God. We had dinner at the pastor's house and then they drove me 1/2 hour to what was supposed to be a western style hotel. (In other words, the bathroom had a toilet that you sat on instead of the Indian style toilet. But the shower was just a pipe sticking out of the wall between the toilet and the sink, with a knob to control water flow. The bathroom had a small window that was above head height.. no glass on it. It opened into the hall of the hotel. It was swarming with mosquitoes and it smelled really bad. I could barely stand to go in there to use the toilet. Each time I would need to go to the bathroom, I would have to coat myself with mosquito repellent and even then I would still get bitten 5 or 6 times. There was no way I was going to try to take a shower in that room! I was there for three nights, and no shower during that entire time!
The room itself was not unpleasant when the bathroom door was firmly closed, except for one little problem. About dusk it filled up with mosquitoes. I did not expect to have mosquitoes in the air conditioned room, since it had a sealed glass window. I think maybe they were coming from the bathroom, flying under the door, where there was a little space. I thanked God again that He had told me to bring a mosquito tent with me and I quickly set it up on the bed. I climbed into bed about 10:30 PM and there was a knock on the door about 10 minutes after I got myself zipped into my mosquito tent. So I unzipped myself and walked to the door. I was about to open it when God told me, "Don't open the door, it's not safe." So I asked who was there. No one answered. They knocked a few more times but would not answer me when I asked who was there. They finally left and I went back to bed. An hour later, this cycle repeated itself, then again about 2 AM.
I checked with the hotel lobby and they had not sent anyone to my room. I don't know who was knocking on the door, but I had heard stories of people knocking on Westerner's hotel rooms in some parts of India, and when they answer the door, they would rob them. I wondered if that was what was going on in my case, since God told me it was not safe to open the door. But I never did find out who had been at my door or what they wanted.
I did not complain to the Lord about the bathroom and how unpleasant it was. But God mentioned it to me, and reminded me that Vizag was like going up the mountain (a difficult climb) to see His glory. I had originally thought He meant the train ride was the part like going up the mountain -- not the whole stay in Vizag. Perhaps that is why He mentioned it to me again that night. But God also intended to work His glory in Vizag, and I will share some of that in my next write-up.
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