The main reason I had been asked to come to India for this trip was to minister in Vijayawada. It is odd, but this was the least powerful segment of the trip.
I was a house guest for some of Sharath's relatives, and they gave me their master bedroom to sleep in, which was very comfortable and even had a private bathroom with a western style toilet. It was a nice, clean room and very pleasant, a stark contrast from the hotel I'd been staying at in Vizag. The first thing I did was to take a bath and get the three days of grime off of me. Then I had a nap and dinner. Then it was time for the evening meeting.
They started worship, but I remained in the living-room because a very influential Christian lady (who spoke fluent English) wanted to talk with me. It was mostly social in nature, she seemed really drawn to me for some reason. She is a history professor at the most influential college in the city and a very strong and dedicated believer. Technically she should not be allowed to teach at the college after her conversion, many years ago. But she was so influential in the city that the officials "looked the other way." She seemed to be very much of an encourager and one who was very committed to serving and obeying the Lord. I enjoyed talking to her and getting to know her a bit. We visited for about half an hour while worship was going on at the meeting.
They had decided to have the meeting on the roof of the home where I was staying instead of at the church. The church was a very small apartment building, and the roof of this house was much larger. (In India in the cities, they use roofs sort of like front yards or court-yards.) They set up a typical Indian tent for the meeting, e.g., a tent that has a "roof" but no sides. I was still pretty sick from the cold, but had acquired some stronger cold medicine in Vijayawada that better masked the symptoms and enabled me to preach un-encumbered.
The evening meeting was scheduled to start at 7:30 that evening. It was 8:00 when I arrived and only a very small handful of people were there -- maybe ten. The pastor of the Vijayawada church was there, but most most the other attendees were not the church members, they were pastors and leaders from other churches. Sharath seemed very embarrassed that so few people were there. He asked the pastor to telephone the people and remind them to come to the meeting. I told him not to worry about it, I would "have fun" working with a small group of Christian leaders. So I began an impromptu and prophetic teaching on leadership issues for the church.
About 45 minutes later, a whole bunch of people arrived. These ones were mostly newer Christians, recent converts from the Vijayawada church. About 40 of them came. That pretty much filled the roof top meeting to capacity -- it is not set up to hold more than 50 people. So I switched gears and began to preach on faith. I preached without any sort of notes, just letting the Holy Spirit show me what to say. It came out sort of similar to what I did at the women's meeting in Vizag, but it was much more geared to new believers and how to grow in their walk with the Lord.
I guess most of these people had never heard teaching on faith before -- they were spell bound. When I finished preaching, they all wanted me to pray for them. Many of them wanted an impartation of faith. There were also many who wanted physical healing, and God healed about 1/3 of them.
I was a bit disappointed because the Holy Spirit did not come in and take over the meeting. It was a good meeting, and the people loved the humor and acting out of bible stories. They were all quite satisfied with the meeting, but I wasn't. I had become spoiled and was only happy with meetings where God's presence showed up in a tangible way and where the Lord really meets the people there.
The next morning was mostly social for me. Sharath's brother Shravn was conducting some mercy-ministry type of missionaries around Andhre Predesh, and he ended up in Vijayawada at the same time I was there. So Sharath spent the morning with those two missionaries, and I got to chat with Shravn and hear about all God was doing in his life and ministry. It was good for me to have a pleasant and easy morning, as I was pretty wiped out from the bad cold.
My next meeting was scheduled to begin at 1 PM and go for about 2 or three hours. (I noticed that people in Vijayawada tended to take the scheduled start times more literally than in other places.) We were to have lunch at the pastor's house, which was about a two-block walk from where I was staying.
Just as I was slipping on my shoes to go for lunch, the history professor arrived with a young lady in tow. I went back inside to visit briefly with them. The young lady was a spiritual daughter of the history professor, one she had led to the Lord and discipled. Now this young lady wanted to be a missionary to New Zealand (which is an unusual place for Indians to go as missionaries). However, her degree was in an area where New Zealand was looking for people with that expertise. So she had a tentative job offer there and hoped to go as a tent-maker missionary. She wanted to know if that was God's will for her, or just a desire of her heart. God told me that He wanted to speak directly to her and that I was not to prophesy the answer to her. That was when I knew I was to teach on Hearing God's Voice in the afternoon meeting. I wanted to stay and visit longer with them, but the people escorting me to lunch were sort of rushing me. So I had to excuse myself after only a brief chat.
I had lunch with the two American missionaries from Texas. They were very culture in-sensitive and I found myself embarrassed by them, since they were fellow Americans. They probably did not mean to do this, but they did things that were offensive in Indian culture, and they did not seem to respect Sharath at all. They kept asking me questions about the Indian culture. I kept trying to defer them back to Sharath, explaining I had only been in India three tiems for three weeks at a time, so I was far from being an expert. There is no way a person can learn a culture in that short a period of time. But the two men were more interested in my opinions about Indian culture than about Sharath's. I don't think they realized that the Indians present saw this as being disrespectful to Sharath.
They asked me what I, as a prophet, thought God was saying about India at this time. I answered that the political situation in India is moving towards laws that make it illegal to evangelize. Just the past week four states had elections and a radical Hindu political party had taken over three of them. There were already anti-conversion laws in place in a different state that party ran. If someone converts to Christianity, the pastor of the church is thrown in jail for converting and baptizing them. Elections in Andhre Predesh are only a few months away and the radical political party was expected to win in Andhre Predesh as well. There is already a law passed in Andhre Predesh (even while the secular party was still in control there) that made it illegal to have evangelistic meetings on public grounds. Christians are still permitted to hold worship meetings on privately owned property, but they are not allowed to evangelize on any government owned or public access property such as hotel conference rooms, etc.
If things continue in this way, it is only a matter of time until India closes to foreign missionaries. So God is preparing His church in India to be His witness, as well as preparing them to suffer for His name's sake.
Just like He did with the early Church, God is releasing a strong baptism of power on believers there to be His witness. But in return, He is demanding a covenant of unconditional obedience. He is looking for a people who will be His witness even if they have to go to jail for sharing their faith, or maybe even execution. God's main agenda right now in India (at least in Andhre Predesh) is to prepare His people to be effective and fearless witnesess. And He is releasing a higher level of power anointing on them.
The two missionaries from Texas thought it would be glamerous and a wonderful priviledge for the Indian people to suffer for the Lord. I told him that is was not a glamerous thing -- it may become a necessity to spread the gospel, but it was not a pleasant thing. Suffering for the Lord is very difficult. I have worked with the suffering church in Arab nations a bit, so I have some idea of the hardships involved, of the pain and depression that suffering can cause.
I was starting to get a bit annoyed with these two Texans because of their disrespectful treatment of Sharath and their attitudes towards persecution. I was actually glad when Sharath told me we had to go to leave lunch to the meeting.
We don't normally go to meetings until they have been worshipping at least half an hour. But Sharath wanted to arrive at this one right at the beginning. I believe that is because he was uncomfortable with how the two missionaries from Texas were treating him. Indians are trained to be very gracious, and Sharath would never say anything to them. But the fact that he wanted to leave lunch quickly indicated how uncomfortable he was with the situation. When we left the building to walk back to the meeting, I apologized to Sharath for the situation. He said that they did not understand Indian culture at all, and he was sure they had not meant to be offensive. He also told me that he was glad I understood and respected Indian culture because it made me much more effective in working with the people.
The afternoon meeting went really well. The people were captivated with my teaching on hearing God's voice and they did not want me to stop. I prayed for many of them and God seemed to heal about half of the ones I prayed for that afternoon. It was a good meeting, but I was a bit disappointed that the Holy Spirit had not come in to take over the meeting. The meeting was supposed to end at 4 PM, but it was closer to 5:00 when I finished praying for everyone and finished answering questions -- a lot of people hung around after I was done praying to ask me questions about hearing God's voice. The young lady who the history professor had brought came up in tears. God had already been speaking His confirmation to her about being a missionary to New Zealand, but she had not understood how to recognize it until she heard my teaching.
We left Vijayawada about 5:30 that afternoon to head to Ongole, which was about a three-hour drive or so. That trip turned out to be rather eventful. I will tell you about it in my next report.
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