Leaving India

Leaving our society for the airport.

Wow! God has taught us so much these last 5 months. He truly is faithful when we are obedient to Him. This doesn't mean everything will always turn out exactly how we plan. It doesn't mean our personal wants and desires will always come to fruition. After all, as Paul tells us, "it is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me." God's eternal plan for His glory is always so much greater than our small minds can fathom. Because of Jesus, we can have joy no matter our circumstances. When we are faithful He really will use us. We spend so much time saying, "what does God want me to do? What is His will?" Just Do Something! When we step out in obedience, God will use us. I have to be honest, I questioned this until recently. I had doubts before this year that God really could do what He said He would do. Woe is me! God already demonstrated His own love for us. While we were sinners, Christ died for us!  

Friends in our society. We had a dominos pizza party in India last week.

We have been so fortunate to be able to share this amazing truth in India the past 2 months (especially the past 2 weeks). I get nervous every time I'm going to talk to a new person about Jesus. What if they reject me? What if they get mad? God doesn't ask for our excuses. He asks us to share the good news of Jesus and let the Holy Spirit do a miracle in the person's life. It is so easy to get comfortable and to make excuses.

My good friend, Siddesh.

Here are a couple of other things that can become easy for us to do. We have to be on watch for them so that we don't grow complacent: It is easy to make sharing the gospel a chore. It is easy to treat it as we sometimes wrongly treat prayer and reading the word. Don't get me wrong, doing these things as a chore is still better than doing nothing. Obedience is better than a complete lack of obedience 100% of the time. However, God has shown me recently that this attitude simply will not produce fruit in the same way. It is easy to get complacent with putting all of these "good" things in a box and checking them off saying, "okay I did my Christian duty for the day, now what?" It isn't as easy to come to someone and have sincere compassion for that person you are speaking to, the same compassion Jesus had when He looked out over the crowds. It isn't as easy to care deeply about that person's eternal destiny and genuinely love them the way Paul did. This is how we have to approach sharing the gospel!

Was able to share the Gospel with my friend Dr. Krishna!

On the other side of things, it is easy (for some) to develop personal friendships with people, to love them deeply but never have a meaningful gospel conversation with them out of fear of offending, rejection, or losing the friendship. If your approach is simply to "love someone to Jesus" without ever presenting how much Jesus loved them first, without ever sharing that it is because of our wickedness that He displayed His love through the cross, without ever telling them we are called to repent, turn from our sins, and follow Christ, then are we really loving them? I would argue the opposite in many cases. I am not saying no one will ever come to Christ by focusing on just one of these methods. It is not you or I that convinces someone to believe after all. God works in all kinds of ways through all kinds of people. However, I believe we as a church will be most effective when the church body focuses on personal gospel sharing AND discipleship. I have been guilty of neglecting one in favor of the other lots of times. I have had friends that I tried to "love" the best I knew how while neglecting the gospel message. I have also had people I shared with out of a sense of self righteousness and never followed up to see that the person was being discipled. We have to have both!

My friend Arnov and his mother. We became very close to this family. Arnov's Dad is a loan officer.

I write this now from Mumbai Airport waiting to board a flight for London, England, then to Chicago, then to Knoxville. We are so excited to come home and spend some time with our friends and family in the states. At the same time, we are praying that we don't grow complacent. The comfort of home makes it pretty easy to get caught up in our own bubbles while neglecting people all around us. We will miss our friends in India just like we are currently missing all of our friends in Honduras. We also will really miss our friends we served with. It is really cool when you meet people in different parts of the world that have the same passion for Jesus as you do. You might have nothing else in common, but you do share the one thing that matters most!

Some of my friends brought us gifts our last night in India. Our card is below.

Our friend, Roshan!

I probably will go incognito on here for the next 4 weeks or so. I will catch back up with everyone in the Philippines next month! I hope you enjoy the photos of our friends from India in our society. There are a few more below. I will try to add some more photos on facebook in the coming days. The people in India are so easy to befriend. We developed some great bonds, and we were able to share the gospel with many of them. I hope to stay in contact with a hand full of guys from our society. Please be praying for us as we travel, and thank you as always for following us along this journey. -Clark 

Gifts the last night. 

Being sent off right!

Pravit!

Last but not least, Viraj!