Day 3 Wed, March 10
Today is the
first of our two day pastor’s conference, and also the first of our two big crusades in Rajahmundry. They are being held in a rented field. The organizing churches have built a stage, a tented area for the seminars, and set up rows of lights for the evening crusades. Kumar has all of our meetings so very far away. Even though I am riding in the front seat, I am still getting motion sickness by the time we arrive at our destination. I’m thinking this is partially due to the bizarre driving habits here. I don’t know how many near head-on collisions we have narrowly escaped.
At the pastor’s conference, Trevor and Rick both got into their messages. Trevor’s study for the two days was a verse by verse examination of the book of Habakkuk. He
tied in the struggles Habakkuk was facing with the struggles the Indian church is going through, and encouraged them to stand their ground no matter what the circumstances.
Rick did a teaching on how to outline a Bible passage. According to Kumar, this was very good for the pastors because very few of them have any education. They know how to preach the gospel and encourage their members, but doing an in depth study on a particular passage is not something they have been trained to do. So the pastor’s conferences were very good and encouraging for those who attended. There were something like 200 pastors there.
This was also our first night of big crusades. We held the crusades at the same place as the pastor’s conference. During the worship, there was a hindu man who was getting loud, causing a disturbance and demanding that we stop the meeting, but the security quickly dealt with him and we moved on.
The first night, with about 2,500 in attendance, I preached a basic message about who God is, what he requires of us, and the gospel. You have to put yourself in the shoes of those you intend to reach. Many of the people I was speaking to knew nothing about the Bible at all, so I was starting form scratch. I began in Psalm 139, showing them that God knows each of them personally and actually created them for a purpose, then moved on to Acts 17, explaining that God put them exactly where they are at this time in history, using all the circumstances of their life to bring them to a place where they might seek him and find him. From here, I used to Scriptures to identify the attributes of God, his holiness, righteousness, majesty, dominion and glory. Then I moved on to bring out the fact that God has placed a conscience within each of us, so that we would know the difference between right and wrong without having to be told, and used the law to bring the knowledge of sin to them. Then we read form Revelation 20, about the great white throne judgment, to bring understanding that there is a day that God has set aside to judge every man woman and child, and if left to our sins, we would have to answer for them to Him. This sets up the message of the cross perfectly. The fact that God loves us enough that he would be willing to become one of us in order to pay the penalty for the sins we committed against him is overwhelming to those who know nothing of a personal God. They were eager to embrace Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins and the gift of eternal life. I asked anyone who wanted to receive Christ to stand and pray with me, and almost the entire place got out of their seats. When you read about the day of Pentecost, sometimes you can wonder how the gospel can make such a huge impact in one setting, and then you come to a place where the gospel is being heard for the first time and you see men and women ready to surrender completely to Him, and suddenly those passages that seemed so incredible become not only possible, but probable and real.
When you see such large numbers responding to the gospel, automatically there is a tendency to question the sincerity or the motives of what is going on. But another important thing you must keep in mind about the Indian culture is that the cast system still dominates much of society. For any one of these people to come forward in this setting it is almost guaranteed that they will suffer for it in their family, in their workplace, and in their community. When they come forward to receive Christ and begin a new life in Him, they are counting the cost in a way that neither you nor I have ever experienced, and for that, I think we have to be humbled and encouraged.
The altar was packed when we had them come forward for prayer. Wow! What a blessing! The crowd was pressing in upon each other, trying to get to the front for prayer. Everyone wants you to lay you hands on them and pray for the blessing of God in their lives. The guys are really jazzed about being able to pray for so many people.
Here is the video from the pastor’s seminar and the crusade http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgTc8zrTQ98
The next day of ministry in Rajahmundry is coming soon….
See you on the streets!!