When we come to the end of ourself...

It was a very late Saturday evening yesterday; 11:30PM precisely and I had no message for Sunday.  My head was empty.  Some things in life come up so uninvited and so unexpectedly; they throw life out of balance.  As a pastor, I had to come up with a message that would bless those who would come to church with high hopes and expectation of hearing God’s word.  But, how hard I tried, nothing came to mind; there was no response from the Lord either.

My wife was sitting on bed and wondering something; I began to pace the room back and forth with a whisper “Hear my cry O Lord”.  After a few minutes, with empty head, I sat before the empty screen. 

As I was leaning back on my chair, a sound along with a line appeared on the screen saying “Zari (pseudonym) is calling”.  The name Zari has a very special meaning to me and my family.  Almost 24 years ago, we had just begun Hope Church in Kathmandu.  After 2 months of starting the church, our son was born.  In a way, Kathmandu Hope Church and our son grew up together.  From my youthful days, I had always preached and believed that God will provide whatever we need when we walk in his ways and obey his word.  And I have not changed my view even today as I trade in my 50s.  Unhealthy dependency on mission agencies was and is simply the sign of one’s lack of faith in God’s promises and his power to take care of us.

I came to know Christ before I came to know Christians and this has been a tremendous blessing.  I gave my life to serve the Lord Jesus Christ before I knew about the existence of agencies and businesses that would be interested in buying and selling my labor for the Lord.   Life of faith was my way of living and has been since then.

So, as a young family with a small church in a city where Christian merchants were making fortunes from the gospel, our lives struck a very different chord.  My message of faith in God’s promises became a threat for the profiteers.  Our source of survival came from our teaching jobs in two Bible schools.  But the gospel profiteers planned to strangle us to death by lobbying the Bible Schools to deny us any teaching positions.  They wished us to be gone from Nepal so that there would be no one to prick their guilty conscience. 

Little did they know that the God of the Bible does care for his children; he does fulfill his promises.  There were times, my wife and I thought of leaving Nepal and returning to India.  But we simply could not abandon the little fellowship we had started.  So, in order to survive in Kathmandu, we began to teach English to the trekking guides and some students.  Soon after, a miracle happened.  In His divine providence, God ordained a Scandinavian family to come to Nepal as tourists.  During their time in Nepal, they decided to brush up with their English and we happened to be the people who they decided to practice their English with!  What are the odds in this wide world for a Scandinavian couple with three amazing boys to come to Nepal and learn English from a Nepali pastor?  But God often goes against the human standard of normalcy to demonstrate his sovereignty over the affairs of man!

The gospel profiteers were thinking of silencing me.  But God had different plans.  By focusing in one family, I did not have to spend a whole lot of time on many other students.  This family simply took care of us for talking to them, travelling and eating with them.  They provided a much needed companionship to us as we were so new in Kathmandu.  Their young boys gifted my son some of the most beautiful children’s books in English, and when they left Nepal after a few months, they left behind their furniture and other things by which my wife was able to make a home for us.  Whenever I used to read bedtime stories to my little boy, I remembered the Zari's.  But because we lost contact with them right after they returned, and the world of Facebook was a century away, we only kept their memories in our prayers.   

Years later, we heard from a different friend that their family committed themselves to serve God in some restricted nation and the desire to pray for them increased more. 
  

Yesterday, after 24 years, Zari responded my “Hello!” by saying “I am so sorry to bother you with so many phone calls now and then…”; our youthful humor found its proper place in our old age even as we indulged in some nostalgia.

After we ended the call, a message rang through my inner being saying “Cry out to God and he will lead you to the rock that is higher than you” (Ps. 61:1-5).  My Sunday sermon found its proper place!  Those were very dark days for us in Nepal.  Today, even to remember them, we feel some kind of shiver passing through our spine.  How did we make it?  The answer lies in our heart’s cry to the Lord.  When people were chasing him down to destroy his life, David cried out to the Lord to lead him to the rock that was higher than him, and God did that.     

There were days and nights in Kathmandu in those days when my wife and I did not sleep but cried out to the Lord and today, how grateful we are for his amazing grace for a wonderful church and a growing ministry. 

Right now, we are crying out to the Lord from Guwahati, knowing he will deliver us and grant us his grace and good days. 

When our life and mission on earth is completed, and we stand before the Lord to see how we made through in this world, there will be a place where we will see Zari’s family playing a crucial part in helping us to stand on our feet in the very beginning of our ministry.  For us, they were not tourists; they were God sent answer to our prayers.