This is an exciting article written only a few weeks ago! If you are needing some encouragement in your Christian life, please read this. There are people still earnestly seeking the King. This article recounts how the Kingdom of God is moving forward in South Asia. Be encouraged, and be bold.
Samantha and the author are currently living in Bangladesh and involved in strengthening the church. Pray that God would prosper our brothers and sisters and the work God is doing in Bangladesh! Six years after the first convert, there are hundreds of Christians in one village alone.
The Proof of the Spirit
“So how do you know that you have the Spirit living within you?” Samantha asks. We are reading from the last verses in John 15. This is the fourth group of women we have studied these verses with and also the fourth time we’ve posed this question. As I look around the circle of women and see the smiles breaking across their faces, I’m pretty sure we will receive the same answer the other three groups have given. I am not disappointed. “That’s easy”, one woman pipes up. “Before we could not do the good things Jesus asks us to do! We were angry and in darkness.” The others chime in, “Now we don’t even want to do bad things. We feel peaceful. When someone wrongs us we don’t want to take revenge. We want to forgive them and we want to be kind. This is how we know. Without the Spirit this would be impossible.” I smile back at them, amazed at how elementary they find this question. It is a question many of us have wrestled with. Perhaps we have given it a complexity it doesn’t deserve. Perhaps it really is just that simple!
This is the first Bible study these women have experienced. They aren’t sure what to expect and it has been challenging to excite a discussion with them. As we are their seniors in the Christian faith, they feel shy to share their opinions and look to us for the answers. But this question? They know the answer. They’ve experienced it for themselves. I can see the same joy and peace that they confess from their hearts shining in their faces and marvel at the mystery of God’s will: to make one new humanity out of the many. “In one body reconciling all of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. For through him we all have access to the Father by one Spirit. Consequently, we are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of his household.” (Ephesians 2:16-19) The Spirit bears witness in my heart that in spite of race, culture, and language these precious women are my sisters. And so for me the answer to Samantha’s question is easy as well. I must have the Spirit. Otherwise how could such a thing be?
Making the decision to come back to Dhaka for a third term of language study was a hard decision for me. Though Bangladesh is home to 164 million people, what language opportunities outside of Bangladesh are there for me? Would I go back to Bangladesh again after another term? Would I ever have enough opportunity using this language to justify the time and energy required for learning it? These are questions I couldn’t answer. But now as I sit with these dear women, reading the Bible in their language, hearing their stories, and feeling the connection we have as sisters in the Lord, I know in my heart that even if it was for this experience alone, the time and energy I expended so far has been worthwhile.
This year we took a break from our normal routine of language study to visit the two villages in the North where I have taught English for the past six years. We spent a week at each village, encouraging and being encouraged by the churches there. Samantha and I held Bible studies with the ladies in each of the different groups. It was a new experience for me and definitely a stretch for our language skills, but the Lord blessed our efforts. I feel truly humbled to have had this opportunity. The Kingdom of God is on the move among these people. It has come silently. Like a small bit of yeast in a lump of dough, doing its work, unseen from within. Now the lump is changing, growing, bubbling up. Pressed down and still it grows, fed by a Power invisible yet indestructible. In witnessing this Power at work in the lives of these brothers and sisters, I feel like I have received much more than I have given.