COUNT... PAY... REAP

It has been a little over a month since our October 06 team arrived back from India. It is safe to say that we are all still processing all that we experienced and yet as the dust settles on that experience I think we can all say that our perspective on life has changed. We all walked away from the experience exhausted yet renewed and strengthened in our faith.

The experience of going to such a different culture vastly depraved of the one true God created some discomfort and challenged us in our faith. To view the sea of people everywhere worshipping and praising idols and false gods at times was overwhelming, even oppressive. The weight of the spiritual darkness was something that you could sense the second you exposed yourself to it. This made our times of fellowship, worship and quiet times even that much more meaningful. They were like an oasis in the desert. God’s word became all the more inviting, the songs we sang come alive and the relationships we had in Christ more precious than ever.

We also found being among people whose faith meant everything to them was purely inspiring. To accept Christ in that culture many times means you lose your family, friends, vocation and many other worldly pleasures, if not all of them. These faithful are lights in a dark world. These faithful often are cast out of a culture and yet they are the ones serving and loving the unlovable back in the same culture they are cast out of. Even if they are not respected for their belief in God, they are respected for their service. They model Christ in ways we had not known before.

Most importantly though, we all learned that we ourselves cannot change the world. Only Christ can. On the other hand, we learned that we can be used by Christ to bring hope to the hopeless. We learned that we can love the “unlovable”, serve the “untouchable” and care for the lost and deceived by bringing them the only hope that matters. That hope is the good news of Jesus Christ and the price He paid for us on the cross. We believe God used each of us in special ways on our trip to do just that and we also believe he can use you if you allow Him.

The need in India is great. The challenge is of Biblical proportions. Yet each of us can make a difference and help change the world if we will all take that next step of faith. We can each be used by God with the gifts He has given us if we let Him. We can also experience God in ways we don’t know exist. The question is, “will you let Him use you this way?” Maybe it can best be summed up by a poster in one of our partner’s home in India. The poster read “Count the Cost, Pay the Price and Reap the Reward”. We hope and pray you will.

::Craig DiGiovanni

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