“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work, one
finishes nothing. The Prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.”-
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The day when you get satisfied in your mission activities
you are done with your mission. Don’t get satisfies but be curious, emphatic,
enthusiastic, passionate for the mission of God.
After the death of my son I came to the conclusion that we
all are selfish, I mean in a positive way. Why do we follow Christ? The answer is
simple that we want to be in heaven. Our desire is to be in heaven. When our
son went to be with the Lord, we had one desire added to it that to be meet him
too. So everybody has a desire in their heart to be secure, safe, have peace.
But they don’t know where to find it.
I want to have small thought on opportunity what the bible says
about it. Many times, we get opportunities but many times we don’t. What can be
done at that time? If we ask Paul about it, he would say create it. Let’s look
in Acts 17: 16: “his spirit provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of
idols.” - There was a provoking in him, some inspiration from inside.
Then in ‘vs 23, he speaks about the unknown god’- He
is creating opportunities in to make them know about Christ, we can see him
speaking in synagogues and marketplaces. He created an opportunity to speak to
the common men making their unknown god concept without diluting the theology
or the doctrine of Christ.
In 1st
century, Paul; did it, then we in this advanced technology we can do many
things. In the 1st century or today, our focus to share the Gospel and
remaining work is done by the spirit. 2nd century onwards we can see
opportunities for the mission were always less but God worked in the least expected
situations and places.
Our ultimate goal is to share the Gospel not to convert anybody in any form. That
the part of the Holy Spirit.
I
strongly believe opportunities are very rare that we get but we need to create
opportunities to share the Gospel. I
think we should learn a few things from businessmen, many times we don’t need a
product but they make the opportunity to buy that particular product.
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Many times we may get opportunities but at the
same time, God expects us to create opportunities.
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Mission these days is not easy but at the same
time, it is not impossible too.
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We have vast opportunities for doing missions
these days as technology has grown up like anything.
So how to create opportunities; hence we first need to know
the society very well. Let’s see how is our society. In my finding, I found out there are 4 types of
people.
- People of God
- Receptive people
- Resistant people
- None of these groups.
Children of God
are considered believers, i.e. the church-going people or people who are
trying to live in Christlikeness. These people need to be developed
spiritually; we need a direct word of God through sermons, counseling, etc. The ministries towards them are; Sunday
worships, Sunday schools, youth, women, men gatherings, Bible studies and
Weekly prayer groups etc.
2. Receptive people
They are the non-
believing body but are very religious or can be good people in society and
also in family. What they lack is salvation. They are receptive to listen to
the gospel and will respond to it positively. The ministries towards them are;
making good relationships, Praying with them, Film shows, etc. For example: when we
were in Bihar, one of our missionaries went to the book, he met a person, he
asked him and he said what he is doing and all. That person told I want to meet
your pastor, he referred to Rev. Jerish Varghese, he met Achen, after a couple
of questions he said I want to be a believer. Rev. Jerish told to come to church
as possible to him. He used to live far. He was always there whenever possible.
He was a medical representative. He got married in a Hindu way, after his
marriage he bought his wife to Rev. Jerish and told him achenji (Reverend) whatever you
told me, tell her also so that she can also be a believer. He even started giving
tithe and helped in other needs of Patna mission-field.
3.
Resistant people
They are also non
believing body, resistant to the Gospel and its activities. They are basically
anti- Christian elements of society. It is tough to share the Gospel to them.
They can hurt us or abuse us. At the same time, we cannot run from the responsibility
of sharing the Gospel to them. To reach them, we need to have schools,
Hospitals, tailoring training centers, etc. There are many examples in history where ministry was done by our compassion projects and other social development projects.
4.
None of the above
They are might be
believers, or might be non believers. They have a peculiarity that, they are
very much passive to Gospel. They don’t have any response to the Gospel and
also are tough people to reach. For them what can be done, they obey us. Get
them involved in mission work and give them leadership in some or other things
in the mission field. I found these kinds of people in Gujarat. What we did is
that, we organized missionaries and told them to take few selected people
according to their maturity level for mission work and give them leadership in the prayer meetings and other things like ladies' meetings, elders meetings,
etc. as believers are concerned. About
non- believers we can try many times as possible to reach them. In Gujarat, the
main reason why we organize so many meetings is that just making it sure that
we share the gospel as many times as possible until they receive it. This is applicable in Gujarat, I don’t know
about other places.
We have many
opportunities in which we can do mission in possible ways; we just need to be
alert and see possible ways to share the gospel. As I said earlier, we just to
have that passion, zeal above all Ambition to do it for the faith we have in
Christ. We just need to take the risk, we will have a result of risk for the Lord.
Note: This is the seminar that I took at Jubilee Memorial Bible College.
