Growing up in a Baptist church, I remember having many Bible studies over the years. They all seemed to be great; but it often seemed to me that we would go from Bible study to Bible study without seeing any long-term effect. Maybe there were changes in people; but I personally did not notice any. I do not know why, but there was one Bible study that has really influenced me throughout the last 25 years in ministry. It made so much sense then and it still does today. I have adopted the seven realities of the study:
1. God is at work.
2. God wants to be in a relationship with us.
3. When God shows us something, that is an invitation to join God.
4. God speaks to us.
5. We have a crisis of belief.
6. We allow God to make the adjustments in our lives.
7. We will experience God.
Whenever I get stuck or do not know what to do, I stop and run through these spiritual truths and wait, pray and look for a hint from God.
I had my plan on how we were going to do ministry in India. I was convinced that it was a great plan. Once we arrived, we were overwhelmed with so many things hitting us at the same time. The number of people, the extreme poverty, the not knowing the language or being unable to understand the English accents and our being way out of our comfort zones. It all had us wanting to pack our bags and return home. Maybe God had made a mistake; or better yet, we had made the mistake of thinking we could do this. We literally wanted to go home.
After our pity party, we began to pray for guidance. It was then that we remembered, “God is at work.” God had been at work in India way before we arrived there. We were only there for the ride. As soon as we realized that, a big load was removed from our shoulders. It reminded me of when Peter started walking on the water and suddenly started drowning when he took his eyes off Jesus. We had done the exact same thing.
We began by doing prayer walks, asking God to open our eyes to what God was doing. As soon as we would start being overwhelmed, we would remind ourselves that first principle: God is at work, not us. Once God showed us something, we took it as, “the invitation for us to join God.” We really learned to depend on the prayers of others and on ours. As soon as we start depending on our abilities, we are overwhelmed. We have a crisis of belief and things seem impossible. Once we adjust and again remember that for God nothing is impossible, we can experience God doing God’s thing and our faith is strengthened.
Before going to India, we would ask people to give to missions or to come do missions with us. And if nothing else, they could pray for missions. The first time we returned to the States, the first thing I did was apologize to those I had told these lies to. We came to realize that prayer was the only thing that kept us going. We also learned that if people pray for missions, they will want to do missions, and they will want to give to missions. Every time we would start sinking, someone would send us a card or an email saying that they were praying for us. It was like a booster shot. I could imagine being like Popeye eating spinach and regaining his strength. Knowing we were not alone in this, gave us strength to keep going.
