Nothing In My Hands I Bring, Simply to the Cross I Cling

"God calls us to make the transition from being those who have been rescued from the world to those through whom God is literally rescuing the world. God is yearning to rescue you from triviality and fear by making you a part of His powerful struggle for justice in the world.”

 -Gary Haugen “Just Courage"

It’s been a dark season.

The winter of discontent has loomed heavy over my heart. The weight of sorrow, mixed with joy has been incredibly difficult to reconcile.

How can such joy abide and yet elsewhere, so much pain? How can I offer peace to students who suffer the horror of abuse? How do I comfort the dozens of friends who have lost their loved ones? How do I console the anxious, the weary, the depressed, when I am often unable to lift up my own eyes? How can I find rest at the feet of Jesus when the confines of my schedule and good things- relationships, ministry, work- seem pitted against me?

And outside my corner of the world, I’ve seen more darkness and hatred than I ever thought possible in the hearts of a people God created, loves, and pursues. We are living at a cataclysmic time. I have no new voice to bring to these matters, but my heart mourns, the way I believe God’s people should mourn and cry out against injustice. I have wept over the plight of our nation and our world, wondering what hope and comfort my empty hands can bring.

Violence. Division. Unspeakable Hatred. Anger. Corruption.

The world has been shaken in the last few months…and the longing of creation for the revelation of Jesus Christ grows louder to my ears day by day. 

Yet though I remain wrapped in the obscurity of small town America and insulated by the comforts of day to day routine- I am more unshakeably certain of the all encompassing sovereignty and the perfectly righteous, beautiful character of God than I was in the 28 years past. 

THAT GOD IS NOT PACING AROUND HIS THRONE ROOM, WONDERING WHAT HE WILL DO ABOUT THESE HORRIBLE THINGS. HE ALONE CHANGES TIMES AND SEASONS, SETS UP KINGS AND REMOVES THEM. HE CAUSES THE RAIN TO FALL ON THE JUST AND THE UNJUST.  All that the enemy means for evil, He turns for our good and for his glory. (Genesis 50:20) His glory is soon going to consume the earth like fire.  I do not fear that day. I long for it. 

This ruined world has ruined me for anything else but Him. I bear burdens too deep for a soul to bear, and I drag them to the foot of the cross and leave them there.

And I’m running back and forth from the cross to the mess, battle sword in hand, singing a song of freedom.

Freedom to the slave of sin.

Light to the one caught in darkness.

Belonging to the lonely and outcast.

Abundance to the hungry.

I will never stop fighting and singing this song of freedom.

I cannot stop, because, Jesus sings it louder over me.

I’m just an echo, A reflection. A simple image bearer.

What is good in me, all that is beautiful in what I say and do and think is simply meant to draw others to His beauty, His majesty, and His worth.

Gone, long dead is the woman who was addicted to her own glory and gain, I want to be a Christ obsessed fool, addicted to His worth and making Him famous forever. (John 3:30)

In these months of sorrow, I have seen Jesus looking out from behind the eyes of my brothers and sisters in Christ. When they serve me, it is Jesus caring for me. When we laugh, we worship the One who created humor. When we share the table, I see the Savior who asked us to remember how He was broken every time we break bread. When I forgive and seek reconciliation, I am reminded of how Jesus went through the most horrific evil to forgive and reconcile me. When I talk with a friend about what we see God doing, how we long for the rumblings of revival and revolution to explode into a roar of kingdom come to earth, I hear Jesus cheering us on. 

My beloved friends, it is my deepest joy to live this life with you, to pursue the freedom and joy that is only found in Jesus alongside you. May we be a people obsessed with the eternal, preoccupied with the joy of life to come, dwelling with secure confidence in the tension of the already- not yet. May we be the loudest voices, echoing the fame and worth of Jesus in these last days, and may we see His kingdom come to earth.

Will you pray with me? Will you fight with me? Will you trust with me?

He is worth every second of the wait.

Living Your Missional Calling (Part 1)

I was seventeen years old when I fell madly in love.

I couldn’t sleep at night. I thought about it all day long. Everything in my life was thrown haphazardly aside and a rose colored lens began to dominate my view. The butterflies in my stomach never settled. Everything in my life suddenly centered on one thing.

Sometime after sunset on a rooftop in Mexico, my heart was totally captured for the cause of Christ in the nations. Somewhere amidst hysterical laughter, a strumming guitar and Disney song serenades, I knew that my life was to be devoted to this very thing. The simplicity of working with my hands and ministering to people desperately poor and in need of Jesus captured me.

I have not since recovered. I began to chase this purpose and bend my life around it. 

I was on a two week mission trip to Northern Mexico. We ate beans, rice, and some Mexican version of Alphabet soup every day. Where grass might have been, mounds of dirt and dust baked in the July sun. We shoveled dirt and took pickaxes to rock for countless hours. We conducted VBS in a church sanctuary without a roof. We slept on a rooftop. My bed was a pool toy. Everything was beautiful in its own desolate way. The borders of my comfortable life were gone.

It was massively romantic at the time. I told my parents I would never come home. I did physically return home, but for ten years since, my heart has been scattered abroad on five continents. Many of you know just what I mean, for you've left your heart behind even as your body return home. 

It's as if you've divided yourself. Your nationality is unchanged, and your daily life may essentially be unaltered, but you see every world event and every life decision in a totally different way. When war breaks out, when a bomb explodes- it’s not a distant people who are impacted, but those you loved and broke bread with. The faces of the victims of violence and war are your brothers and sisters. When you spend money, you wonder how you can spend five dollars on a cup of coffee when people you love have so little to eat. You finally realize that in God’s economy, the least of these are the first invited to His table. 

In six years I traveled on short term mission seven times. Lastly, I lived in South Asia for six months and interned for a group of believers who worked in gospel centered community development- anti-trafficking, health education, agriculture and teacher training. Every time I went, I knew God was narrowing my vision and purpose for the kind of work I must do. This was not an easy thing to break to my parents or an easy vision to explain to my peers. I’ve been argued with, questioned, ignored, dismissed and regarded as an object of fascinated pity by dozens of people. 

In the last four years since I returned from South Asia, I’ve had some incredible conversations with young men and women who feel that international missions is part of their calling. (There is no joy like when God brings me such a conversation!) Where sixteen year old Jade would high five them and say, “Let’s go!" twenty six year old me and has a few more thoughts, cautionary tales, and words of wisdom. 

If you want to become a missionary you are signing up for an absolutely gut wrenching, soul rending career. You will never leave your work at work and then go home. In fact, your work becomes your home. I’m talking about missing births, weddings, and funerals back in the States. And the chances that there’s any kind of a decent local coffee shop within a hundred miles of you are slim to none. You’ll probably become sick. You’ll probably want to quit. You’ll probably get grey hair and wrinkles before your time. For an American who worships at the altar of comfort- WiFi, Netflix, manicured lawns and shopping malls, it’s about losing everything you are. And it’s totally worth it. (Note: I have not in fact been a full time missionary, but I have lived life with many who are and much of what I say is reflective of their experience). 

The Hindu temple down the street from my home in South Asia. 

When you’re overseas, everything you once placed your identity in that’s not Christ is gone. You are not a respected member of a community, a leader, a daughter of a people- you are a foreigner. The questioning stares that follow you into every corner of every city are not for the faint of heart.  

But something funny happened to me in South Asia when those questioning stares were met by my own uncertain gaze, my unsteady voice speaking the local dialect like a toddler.

I fell madly in love with the community and called it home. When I saw families in MY neighborhood making offerings to golden idols, my soul was shattered. When I saw barefoot children running down my street in droves, I was broken for their future and their salvation. When women met me in front of the grocery store begging for money with empty baby bottles and infants in hand, my conscience was seared.  I could no longer deny the reality of what i saw. 

A typical day in my neighborhood in South Asia

Idolatry is real. It rears its ugly head around every corner of the planet every day. The same sinful hearts that dwelt in the Israelites who melted their gold to create a calf to worship dwell in the hearts of every person on earth today. We were created to worship, after all, and billions of people worship demons every day. (1 Corinthians 10).

It’s all great when a seventeen year old is dreaming, but where the rubber meets the road, who of us will really GO? 

Few. Churches and missionary organizations are struggling to support the cause of Christ in the nations. Hundreds of jobs have been cut back. But that will not hinder the gospel. No obstacle will prevent the truth from going forward.

In fact, if I’ve seen anything in the stories and the testimonies of the nations I’ve heard in the last ten years- persecution and hardship make the gospel EXPLODE. We serve a mighty God. What a wonder that He calls us to be on mission with Him.

That’s what I want to write on. I’ve been a learner, a goer, and a sender for ten years…but I’ve been a terrible mobilizer. I’ve struggled to share my experiences and to encourage others in the passions they express to me.

I know one thing with unshakeable certainty. Every Christian on the planet was CALLED to the nations. We are a global body- and we were not sent only to our own people. When we abandoned our lives to Christ our calling became “every tribe, tongue, and nation.”

My question to you as I write, will not be “should you go?” It will be, “How and when should I go?”

I’m willing to be transparent here for the benefit of anyone whose heart beats like mine does. It hurts to love. It really hurts to love the nations. It hurts to leave your own people for those who “keep on hearing, but do not understand, keep on seeing, but do not perceive.” (Isaiah 6:9). 

My two favorite girls- ask me to tell you their stories. I could write a book about these two.

Yet I believe with all that i am that every ounce of energy we spend contending for the gospel will pay incredible dividends in eternity. Every dollar, resource and moment of our time we give to see the cause of Christ go forward around the globe, is a dollar spent to hasten the coming of kingdom, which will NOT happen until it has reached all the nations (Matthew 24:14) 

My neighborhood and my daily ride to work.

Next time, I’ll discuss some of the obstacles that prevent us from going- in the short term (one week to six months) and long term. And what exactly has prevented me from going long term all these years? That, my friends, is another story for another day. 

Will you journey with me? Will you consider prayerfully how Jesus would have you be involved in missions? Would you reach out today to internationals in  your community who are in the unique position to hear the gospel because they live in your neighborhood and not in a closed, war torn country? 

If I can ever pray for you, point you to resources, or serve you in any way, please let me know. 

Until All Have Heard,

Jade

Enough!

“When I understand that everything happening to me is to make me more Christlike, it resolves a great deal of anxiety.” 

-A.W. Tozer

I came home from work this last week and I fired up the laptop, as I do daily before going to bed.

Why? To get my daily dose of social media, of course.

If you’re like me and you think about it too long, you’re a little embarrassed. 

Ponder with me… 

 I’ve spent hours of my life reading about the lives other people are living. Wouldn’t we have thought this was insane twenty years ago? It’s like reading a never ending novel with no plot, few twists, and characters you can’t follow because they are constantly changing their names due to marriage, remarriage, name shortening, name lengthening, or “creativity."

There is literally no payout here. There is no happy ending. Everyone just changes their name and has more children. 

C’mon people. 

But darn it if those Buzz Feed posts aren’t sometimes hilarious.

And in these quiet moments, these virtual ‘connections’ to hundreds of friends from the last two decades of my life are reforged. We laugh together, converse, cry together, pray for one another- at the touch of a button. A ‘like’ is a vote of confidence, a show of sympathy, an arm of support. A comment a virtual homage to the strength of a real friendship.

Yes. It’s nonsensical. But I’m a millenial and logic simply isn’t my forte.

 I grew up as all of this was beginning to happen, and now, in my mid twenties, my culture is ruled by it. 

But on a quiet Monday, my emotions went a little haywire as I perused my Facebook newsfeed.

Everyone (and I do not exaggerate here) had posted a picture of their wedding, their significant other, their baby, their friend’s baby or their dog. (Can we get a few more Jimmy Fallon clips or well placed quotes from famous theologians, please?) 

I love babies. And weddings. And dogs. And I tend to be able to rejoice with those who rejoice. And I love that Facebook gives me an opportunity to know what’s happening with others and how I can pray for them. But tonight, my flesh stepped in and decided to be an idiot. And my heart began to hurt.

"Well.” said my flesh. “You’ve got none of those. Better get off Facebook if you don’t want to spend more time thinking about how insignificant your life is in comparison to every other human on the planet.” (My flesh-self is a sarcastic jerk, by the way). 

And here’s what the Lord said to my Flesh.

Who are YOU to say that the life I have graciously given you is not enough? I have uniquely designed this time in your life, your circumstances, your relationships and your work for your holiness. I know what you need, daughter. And I do not wish you to have every thing you’d like at the moment you want it. Your life is mine, and you dedicated yourself to My purposes when you followed Me. I know how to give good gifts to my children, and my timing is perfect. Won’t you trust me? 

It was a Holy Ghost kick in the gut, and I needed it. 

The moment you allow comparison to others to seep into your soul is the moment you begin to lose the battle for joy. The enemy wants to steal our rest and satisfaction in Christ with lies that what we have is not enough.

It’s the same lie the Enemy told Eve in the garden. “God just doesn’t want you to have this fruit…He’s holding out on you.”

Oh how that lie has run rampant to the core of every human since. 

“If I only had…then I’d be…” 

And every Christian must fight against it. 

 The good news is- the lie has a clear truth that counters it.

HE IS ENOUGH. And He’s never held out on us. 

 The grace that he should have withheld, the mercy He should never have shown, the extravagance of inviting us into His kingdom to be called His own children and share in the inheritance of Christ

It’s unfathomable that I should ever want another thing. 

I have so many fruitless hours (on Facebook and in life) chasing the things- the relationships, the education, the jobs, the experiences. I’m done chasing. I’m ready to sit at the Father’s feet and wait with expectation for what he HAS for me. Today and every day there are opportunities abounding to be faithful with all that He’s given us. 

No way does the enemy get to think he has an inch ground in the battlefield of this life…because it’s already drenched in Christ’s blood. He won it two millennia ago. And we look forward to a kingdom where we will forever praise God for His enoughness…we’ll never want or thirst for another thing again. 

And the sin of comparison will be a thing of a time gone by. 

Take that, Facebook. 

Life After the Island...

It's been two months since I graduated from the Kanakuk Institute. My eight month journey living in community and studying God's word cover to cover has to come to an end. I'm so much more in love with Jesus and with serving His people than I was a year ago. I didn't know it was possible to love such a diverse group of people so much, knowing their faults, hangups, and habits (and they knowing mine). Together we walked through the refining fire of God's truth (and oh, does that fire burn when the truth scrapes away your comfortable preconceived notions and sinful habits!). Now we're armed and equipped to take that to a desperate world who asks, "What is truth?" (John 18:38).

To say my soul was sanctified, my purpose was narrowed, and my vision was sharpened is an understatement.

But launching into the ocean of life after the island is no dreamboat. 

It's hard work.
It's a litany of endlessly same days. Bills to be paid. The rigor of routine and far earlier bedtimes. Things I had the luxury of forgetting for one sweet season.

Instead of waking in the morning to study God's word for four hours with my dear friends. I roll out of bed (groaning, breakfast in hand or not at all) and head to work. Instead of eating dinner accompanied by music, laughter, and conversation, I eat alone. Instead of returning home to participate in whatever was certainly happening while I was gone, I turn on the TV or open a book.
And, most painful of all.

Community isn't handed to me. I have to chase it. And I have, seemingly down every byway and back alley of Branson. 

Everything in my world is a little bit more grey without those colorful folk to brighten every moment.  The cast of incredible characters who populated my life with their chatter, their wisdom, their love and their encouragement have been scattered. They aren't gone...but our next reunion will probably be in heaven.

It was always meant to be that way. These seasons are flashes of the joy of the kingdom to come, not the real thing. 

I now work full time at a bank. The cut and dried numbers and sales goals are not food to my soul. They often seems to be means to an end... the end of another long day, another bill paid, and the safety of a productive and quiet life.

But my soul is already yearning for an adventure. It groans within me, reminding me that safety and quiet were never my desire. I sit at my desk and remember the days of freedom to study the Word and live in organic community with joy. I dream of the next part of the journey..the day I lay numbers aside to embrace what the Lord has for me somewhere across the world. And that day will come.

But what about embracing right now? What about embracing the opportunity to live in what is arguably the oddest community in middle America? A beautiful community of 10,000, spread out over breathtaking hill country, which happens to be home to 2.5 million visitors a year and every kitschy tourist attraction the mind could envision (and then some). A place where beneath the veneer of money and malls, storefronts and smiling visitors, lies deep pain- drug abuse, homelessness and a host of problems only God is big enough to handle. A place where the local church struggles to understand and embrace the varying needs of its community. A place where meeting a single twenty something who is unaffiliated with Kanakuk is a little like finding a unicorn. My strange little home.
It could be a matter of weeks, months or years before the Lord calls me away again. I've always been a sort of purposeful wanderer- and years of traveling the world, and moving across states into house after apartment after duplex after condo after hotel room have taught me that everything in my life is temporary. When my heart longs for settling down, for a true home, I am reminded that my home is in heaven, and Jesus has already gone there to prepare it for me.

We're all vagabonds this side of eternity. 

It is my joy to spend every day seeking new and unique ways to bless others with every resource and ounce of spare energy I have. There are semi-homeless camp counselors to be fed on their nights off work. There are dozens of junior high and high school students at my church, who I love as my own siblings. There are kids who haven't  understood the gospel yet. There are women in my workplace, in my fitness classes, in my coffee shop, in the grocery store I shop in each week who desperately need to hear about the love of Jesus. This is why I stayed.

It's my privilege to be obedient in this season. To be joyful and constant in prayer with my eyes on the reason I walk this road. It's not my favorite road, the landscape is a little less varied than I hoped...but it's what God has and I'm going to embrace it. Just because I might be on another mission field in the near future, doesn't mean the mission hasn't already begun here in the most unexpected place.

Friends, would you pray that God would sanctify me and bring me satisfaction in Him during this new season? Pray that He would direct me to the people, the places, and the ministries that He would have me in? Ask that He would give me wisdom and discernment as I pour into the high school and middle school students and families in our church.

As always, I massively appreciate visits, phone calls, and any updates I can get on how to be praying for you. I have an abundance of free time now. (Okay, that's a lie...but my schedule no longer revolves around seventy other people).

Everyone and their mother is always welcome at my dinner table. So if you're reading this, let's share the table or a cup of coffee in the months to come and talk about everything God has been doing.

Grace and Peace,
Jade

"There Are Far Greater Things to Come Than Any We Leave Behind"

What a wonderful week it has been. The new semester at KI is in full swing, and it's hard to believe we've just completed our fourth week. Graduation is a mere 2.5 months away, and the learning process has been intense, to put it mildly. This week we took a long look at the book of Hebrews which is, in my opinion, the most theologically dense book of the New Testament save Romans. I had always been a little confused and a little in awe of this mysterious thirteen chapter letter, written by an unknown author to a varied audience of Jewish peoples. As one theologian famously said, “Only God knows who wrote Hebrews.” Yet the councils on biblical canonicity, the groups that met to decide which books were deemed inspired and thus to be included in the Bible we have today, gave little or no argument as to the validity of the book. Why? Because it's so good. It clearly connects the Old Testament sacrificial system with the New Testament system of Christ's sacrifice once for all people that eliminated the need for these temporary sacrifices for God's people. Here are a couple of new lessons I learned from the text this week, I hope you're encouraged as I was. Go read Hebrews. Do it now.

1. The Old Testament sacrificial system was never intended to be anything other than a shadow of the day God would come and fulfill His plan, not just to cover the sins of mankind, but to remove them entirely. We see the sacrificial system inaugurated in Genesis when God provides temporary coverings of animal skin for Adam and Eve after they attempt to cover themselves in the shame of their sin. Later, after the giving of the Mosaic law, the Jews elected a high priest, who would enter the inner part of the temple (the dwelling place of God), known as the Holy of Holies once a year on the Day of Atonement. He would make a sacrifice his own sins and for the sins of all Israel, in order to preserve the people's covenant relationship with God. Yet God said from the beginning, that what He desired from His people most was their hearts. The outward signs his people gave as signs of obedience- sacrifices, circumcision, etc. were to be merely symbols of an inward change.
   
   
2. God is so faithful. He knew the people would need to sacrifice time and time again because they would always violate His law. Hebrews says that “without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness of sins.” Yet God made a promise that one day, a New Covenant would come that would be better than the old- the laws written on stone tablets would be written on the hearts of His people. That day came at the death and resurrection of His son, Jesus Christ.
   Exodus 19:10-11 says, ““For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord:I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”
   
   
    Peace and blessings y'all. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the Institute, what we're learning, or about God's Word. I'd love to help!

God From God, Light From Light

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. ... Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God. For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.”

 A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy  

Happy New Year! We’ve finished our first week back at the Institute. I’m in awe of what God has already done. There’s no way I could be in a better community right now- every single one of my classmates, every staff member, and every person in our community has sharpened me and changed my life irrevocably. We have less than a hundred days left to soak in this time of growth and community. I couldn’t be happier to begin 2015 this way. I turned 26 a few days ago, and had the blessing of having my classmates surprise me with cake and a dance party on our first night back together. It was a wonderful beginning to a time that’s going to pass as if it were a moment. While I walk forward with very little knowledge of what my life will become after April, I have confidence in a never changing God who has a perfect plan, and makes Himself known to me day by day. 

This semester, we’ll focus most of our time on New Testament teaching and theology. We began with a study of the Trinity. Next week we’ll study the book of Romans, and the following week, the life of Christ. We’re in a twelve week inductive study of the book of 1 Peter (what, you haven’t spent twelve weeks reading a five chapter epistle before?) The culmination of our semester will be a project called Belief Statement Panels, in which we defend all the major beliefs of Christian theology, backed up by our knowledge of scripture before a panel of pastors and community leaders. We’ll spend the next two months preparing for these by writing statements that summarize different aspects of theology and discussing them in small groups during class. Anyone exhausted yet? I’ve been experiencing 2015 for all of nine days, and I’m not sure any nine days have ever been so pivotal. The Lord is sometimes slow and gentle with me in His teaching…this month is not to be one of those times. 

This week we learned about the Trinity. Arguably one of the most confusing issues in all of Christian theology, a sticking point for people of other religions who insist that calling God “three persons” means that we worship three Gods. We spent three days with Dr. Glenn Krieder, a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary as we sought to understand this concept better. I took several major things away from our conversation. One thing I was not aware of before is that there is not a single definitive proof text that points definitively to the trinity. This does not disprove the Trinity, for God is referenced as three persons all over the New Testament. I also wasn’t aware that the evidence for Trinity in the Old Testament is not as easy to find either, because the Trinity wasn’t revealed to mankind until Jesus was born. 

So what does the Trinity mean to us today? It means everything. The Trinity- God in three persons- the perfect communion of three equal, yet distinct persons is an essential to orthodoxy. We can’t preach the gospel without the trinity- God created a people in his own image, designed for perfect relationship with Him. But we had to choose to follow Him and we chose our own way, believing the lie that something else was better (idolatry). God was not surprised by this, but instead enacted a plan to send his Son Jesus Christ into the world to live a perfect life, fully human and fully divine, to die a criminal’s death to pay for the sins of all people. When He rose from the dead, he promised His followers a helper, the Holy Spirit of God to live inside of them- comforting them, guiding them and teaching them truth.

While the Trinity is, ultimately, a mystery that is beyond our comprehension, we can rest in the knowledge that we worship a God who created us, loves us and has made Himself known to us progressively through scriptures and through all of history. 

Tools for Your Apologetics Tool Box

This week in class, we had the opportunity to hear from Kerby Anderson, a radio talk show host and author of many books on apologetics and world religion. We discussed in detail how to engage people who are from different faith traditions and the core tenets of each of those- Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and Mormonism. We then discussed the ideas of postmodernism or relativism and how those relate to the newer culture of atheism that is prevalent in the Western world today. Finally, we discussed ways to engage the millennial generation (our own- those born from 1980-2000) in the context of media and technology that invade every part of our lives. It was a rich several days, and I’m thankful for what Anderson called the tools to put in our toolbox to engage a lost and broken world.

That summary aside, I want to focus for a moment on what I’m truly passionate about- how to engage people who lack an understanding of absolute truth, particularly those of Hindu and Muslim backgrounds. 

As many of you know, I have a major passion for seeing God’s truth come to people of cultures around the world. It was three years ago nearly to the day that I returned from six months of service in South Asia. The pervasiveness of the Hindu religion is such there that it affects every single aspect of government, city planning, music and media, and family life. To be born in this area of South Asia is to be Hindu. I devoted the majority of my time in college to understanding the religions and cultures of the world and reading thousands of pages of theory about how to engage them with the gospel. Yet  when it comes to actual, practical conversation with those of other religions, I had very few. Then I moved overseas. Talk about a shock to the system. (If you’d like to read more about those days of my life, look further back on this blog to posts from 2011 or let me tell you a story or two!) The HIndu or Muslim framework of understanding not only came across boundaries of language difference, but from an entirely different view about God, the role and value of man, the sacredness of life, and how we should live. I learned that my friends spent all their lives trying to earn the favor of a gods who may or may not choose to save them. Salvation is utterly man centered and based upon obedience to complicated tenets and traditions. Indeed, what I was most bothered by was that most of my friends did not understand their holy scriptures at all, but seemed to blindly follow the traditions of their people for ages past. 

It is important to understand two things about most major world religions, especially those of the east

1. Decisions of faith are NOT made in a linear, logical fashion which is dictated by a neatly outlined set of dogmatic principles. A Hindu might worship all, several, or none of 330 million gods. A Muslim might believe the sanctity of the Qu’ran to his core, but have no idea what it really says. What IS important is the traditions of your people and keeping those in order to preserve the honor and separateness of your family, your people, and your culture. 

According to our teacher, Kerby Anderson, it does not bother a Hindu person in the least to spend their days as a doctor or scientist and then go home to make an offering to the elephant god. Their faith is not based upon logical compatibility, it is based upon tradition that is deeply entrenched in every part of who they are. 

2. Decisions are not made based upon the will of the individual, but on the good of the community. It matters little what the individual believes about how they should practice faith, what career they should have, even whom they should marry. They are always bound to what their parents and the leaders of their community say. This system of accountability filters down to every level of life. When you ask a person of Hindu, Muslim, or Buddhist faith to consider the truth of the gospel of Christ, you are asking them to leave their family and their community. To abandon the traditions of their faith is disloyalty. This is why many of my friends have been disowned permanently by parents, spouses, even their own children when they choose to follow Christ. 

In light of understanding these two major things about the life of a person with an Eastern faith tradition, we must understand how to ask good questions and how to present the gospel clearly. One of the major things I learned in witnessing to Hindus and Muslims is that you can present the gospel in a way that does not immediately attack their faith (which is who they are in many ways). The gospel and God’s love speak loudly enough that it’s good to present the stories of God’s word and his character and ask them questions about what they’ve learned, rather than providing a long sermon on every reason religion x is incorrect. 

Mr. Anderson said there are two main reasons Muslims who followed Christ cited as what drew them to Him- God’s love and eternal security. I feel that these reasons are common to those who leave any religion to follow Christ. Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and Mormons are never able to be certain that they will achieve salvation. They follow rules and traditions that enslave them to fear that they may not be good enough. Not only this, but the gods they worship do not unconditionally love them. These are the key differences between the faith of a Christ follower and that of another religion. It’s important to remember that each of these followers of other religions were created to worship the God who dwells within us, and they long to be known and loved by Him. It’s our responsibility to announce this love and truth to them as we build relationships, ask good questions and walk carefully so that the love of Christ is clearly communicated.