Words Cannot Express

Written words cannot express the experience that I was blessed with this past week. I could spend time elaborating on the mind-numbing travel that I endured to India and back, both trips including flights over 12 hours long, however that would detract from the message I need to convey. You could look at the one thousand pictures I returned with, but that too wouldn’t do justice to the sights, lessons, and people I encountered. If you’re interested in the photos, go to http://youth.wecoc.org/India. So here is my attempt at communicating the life-changing experience of my mission trip to Aurangabad, India.

[I was in no way prepared for the experience that I had while in India. I've been out of the country before, but only during high school, and I obviously have grown incredibly in my spiritual life since my high school days.]

Very rarely does a person have the opportunity to experience a life-changing trip like the one I experienced. When we landed and walked off the plane and into the Aurangabad Airport, I sensed that something amazing was going to happen over the next 7 days. At first I thought that feeling was due to not sleeping for 36 hours, but later I realized that God was preparing my heart for the people of India. Coming into a culture that is as far apart from American society as anything can be opened my eyes to a side of the world that I knew was there but only in the back of my mind. I knew people suffered for the gospel. I’ve heard stories about families disowning their own children because of Christianity. I knew that poverty in other countries was much more severe than in America. I knew people sacrificed for Christ. I just didn’t know what any of that really meant. Theory is one thing. Reality is something completely different. Reading a story about someone living in poverty for the sake of Christ is a good story. Walking into a home that was smaller than my dorm room in college and seeing that there was only a twin bed for the parents, that the two teenagers slept on the floor, and the family used public bathrooms everyday because they had no running water in their house hits you in a way that transcends words and pictures. Having people treat you as if you were a celebrity and bring out the equivalent of Ritz Crackers to serve you when you come into their home when they live off of less than $100 a month opens your eyes to what generosity really means. Walking away from these experiences and going back to a hotel room with running water, air-conditioning, and room-service makes you think about the kind of life you’re living and whether you’ve ever learned what it means to be “in need.”

Now I must say that this hotel room was about $30 a night; so we weren’t staying in some 5-star hotel. But like I said, the poor make about $3 a day and are above average in their communities. Most of the people, if I were to guess, live off less than $1 a day. Middle class would be someone who makes between $150-200/month, about what a typical American family spends on three or four restaurant meals a month.

The purpose of our trip was to visit and teach at the Aurangabad Bible College during the mornings and spend the afternoon and evenings preaching gospel meetings in local churches and villages. The Bible college is a 2-year program that enrolls 15 students per year. My congregation, the West End Church of Christ, fully supports the work of the school, including the professors’ salaries, rent on the school and dorms for the students, as well as other needs. Don’t start thinking this is like a Holiday Inn for these students, like when you went off to college. The dorm life is not easy for these students. Before West End purchased mattresses for the students, they slept on a piece of fabric on tile floors. I believe the 30 students share 2 bathrooms, which is also where they wash their clothes. If they don’t use the bathroom to wash their clothes, they take them out on the front porch and wash them on the floor. In the dorm, school, and every other house or apartment we visited, no one had air conditioning. Just open the door and turn on the fan. It wasn’t too bad while we were there because the temperature stayed around 75 degrees. But in the hot season or cold season, you’d really miss that central A/C. I spent the week teaching on 1 and 2 Timothy while Russell taught on Congregational Development and other various topics. Despite the conditions these students lived with, they were very dedicated to their studies and had developed an amazing knowledge of the Bible. The Aurangabad Bible College is doing an outstanding job bringing up ministers of God’s Word.

The need is endless in India. We spent our evenings preaching gospel meetings in churches around Aurangabad and in villages outside the city. You wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the condition of the people living inside the city. While they are living in sub-standard conditions in less-than ideal situations, many had transportation (bicycle or motorcycle) and some kind of permanent roof over their head. However, just driving down the street would reveal tent-communities on the sides of the road where the poorest people had settled. It was a sight to behold. Sometimes six or seven people would be living under a tarp held up by some sticks with blankets for walls and a pile of burning trash keeping them warm.

When you go out into the villages, you really experience poverty. Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing in all of America-even the poorest people living under bridges, compares to the lives these people wake up to everyday. The homeless in America have shelters serving hot food and donation centers giving out care packages. They have the Salvation Army and Rescue Missions opening every evening with clean sheets and sanitary showers. Just 15 miles outside of Aurangabad are people living in conditions that resemble the 3rd and 4th centuries. While some people have electricity, many do not and no one has running water. The women walk long distances and draw water from a well or lake or something and carry it in buckets on their heads all the way back home. American wives have it so easy. As we drove to these villages, we would pass countless women carrying sticks for firewood or water on their heads. The homes looked like something you would see in National Geographic. Mud walls with thatch roofs made up many of their dwellings. Some would be lucky enough to have metal roofs and a real door. Needless to say, when three Americans (Russell, Jim, and myself) rolled into town in our Toyota (NOTE: We hired a driver. It is NOT safe to drive in India unless you’re from there.) it was as if George W. Bush was arriving in Knoxville. Shaking hands with hundreds of people at every village and people begging for us to take a picture of them (with our camera–if I remember correctly, only one person in one of the villages had a camera and took our picture) became the routine in every place. Many, if not the majority, of the thousand pictures I took were of the people because they loved having their picture taken. It made them feel so special to have an American pay so much attention to them.

We preached at ten congregations, six were in villages and four in the city, and baptized almost 150 people. Well, we didn’t do the baptizing; the local preacher would baptize them. Sometimes there would be a baptistery, but at one village the people were baptized in a drinking trough for the cows. To see so many people accept Christ after hearing his name and listening to his story for the first time touched my heart and really revealed to me what it means to have a child-like faith. These people were not corrupted by the arguing, fighting, hypocrisy, and name-calling that goes on between churches today. They were not skeptical or suspicious of our motives or message. They didn’t need us to prove to them that we weren’t out to trick them. They just listened to the message of Christ, and when we presented it to them, they accepted it! Praise God! Faith and spirituality in America have become so distorted and polluted that whenever you bring up the name of Christ, people think you want their money and are trying to trick them, or you’re telling them they’re going to hell, saying they’re stupid, wrong, ignorant, evil, or immoral, and if they don’t change and believe exactly like you do, there’s no hope for their soul. Is that the method of Christ? Is that how Christ spread the good news?

Don’t get me wrong here, that’s not how it always happens. Every once and awhile you’ll come across someone who is open to listening. But don’t you wonder why it has become that way? Why are people so afraid of Christians in America and not afraid of us in other countries? Well, it’s because so many people have held a position of faith or called themselves Christians and turned out to be evil, greedy, immoral, a liar, a thief, an adulterer, a child molester, a murderer! Now is this to say that there aren’t hypocrites in other countries? Of course not. Wherever there is faith, there will be hypocrites. In America, however, the media has a tendency to publicly malign the faith whenever they can to accentuate the fact that these people “called themselves Christians.” That type of publicity, seen all over the world, has done terrible things to the cause of Christianity, especially in America.

The other reason the message of the gospel is readily accepted in these situations, as it was at the day of Pentecost, as opposed to in America, is because it didn’t come with any stipulations. We didn’t require them to answer a list of questions testing their knowledge of Acts or asked them to recite the plan of Salvation. We didn’t ask for a written report explaining why they wanted to be baptized. We just presented the truth of Christ’s sacrifice and offered the saving grace of Jesus. The way we went about it while in India was exactly how the apostles taught new converts in the first century. These 150 people who were baptized over the past week knew everything they needed to know to be baptized and receive the gift of eternal life. They knew Jesus was God’s son, that he died for their sins, he rose from the dead, and eternal life comes through Jesus’ blood and baptism. What more is there?

So you’ve heard about the baptisms, the poverty, the living conditions, the Bible College, and the extreme need the people of India have. Now we get to the real problem: What are we supposed to do about it? Our brothers and sisters in Christ are living in need while we have plenty. They suffer while we’re comfortable. We turn on the TV to relax; they don’t even have a soft pillow on which to lay their head. Then we have the audacity to complain when gas prices go up 10 cents! It’s time to stop complaining about our plush American lives and learn to be content with what God has given us. Make this your LIFE-SLOGAN: “But Godliness with Contentment is GREAT GAIN!” (1 Tim 6:6) Paul goes on to write, “For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (6:7-10)

Don’t think you can focus only on the word “contentment.” God doesn’t tell us to “be content and forget about all the hurting people out there.” It said, “GODLINESS with contentment is GREAT GAIN.”

Being “in need” is a concept most Americans have never experienced. It’s hard to be “in need” when you’ve got a Wal-Mart down the street and an emergency credit card for when the car breaks down. Whenever you run out of something in the pantry, you hop in the car and go buy some more. If you come home from work late to find there’s “nothing” in the house to eat, you have dinner delivered to your house in 30 minutes or less. Simply put, we’ve forgotten the difference between “WANT” and “NEED.” When you think of being in need, think about not having food on the table for so long that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to be full. Think about not having more than two shirts to wear all together. Think about feeling insufficient in life because you can’t even provide the basics for your children like shelter and a bed to sleep on.

To be godly, you have to make a personal commitment to helping those in need. You have to come to terms with how much God has blessed your life and how much of that he is calling you to devote to helping people in need. Typically, we help others based on how much is left over in the budget at the end of the month. Christ calls us to rearrange our budgets to make room to help as many people as possible, which should be more than zero, and if that means you can’t go to Chili’s or Olive Garden more than once this month, then you’ll just have to deal with it.

Now take it one step further and learn what it means to rely on God to meet all your needs. (Physically and Spiritually)

But wait, when we don’t have a single “need” in our life, how are we supposed to rely on God to meet our needs? Why are we so fortunate to be born into a country like America while billions of people are born into countries where the majority of households don’t have running water? What are we supposed to do? The answer is this: Learn weakness.

Christians in America, compared to believers all over the world, have advantages in every aspect of life except in one area: spirituality. Why do I say this? Because Christ said this: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul responded by saying, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

Can you delight in weakness? Have you ever been weak? Can you delight in insults? Have you ever been insulted for being a Christian? Can you delight in hardships? How hard is it to be a Christian in America? Can you delight in persecutions? Who has been persecuted in America? Can you delight in difficulty? How difficult is it to live in America? For when you are strong, you don’t know what it means to be weak.

Here’s what I’m saying: Having Christ’s power rest on us as Christians in America is unfamiliar territory. We’ve been trained to rely on ourselves, have faith in ourselves, trust no one besides ourselves, provide for ourselves, work for ourselves. Depending and relying on someone else is as foreign as living in another country. So what can we do? How do we learn to depend on God like the people of India depend on Him for their basic needs? How do we learn to rely on Him in all situations when we have self-help books and radio talk-shows answering all of our questions?

As sure as Christ is my Lord, I am living every moment of my life in pursuit of this answer, striving every day to fully and completely rely on Him instead of myself. May this be your life-goal: TO SURRENDER YOUR INDEPENDENCE AND FULLY RELY ON THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN TRULY MEET ALL YOUR NEEDS: JESUS CHRIST. Yes and Amen.

[If you want to know of some specific ways you can help the Aurangabad Bible College or the Christians in India, please leave a comment or send an email to: davis@wecoc.org]