“Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.”
—2 Corinthians 12:9 NLT
“Dear God, why am I so afraid to open my clenched fists? Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to? Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands? Please help me to gradually open my hands and to discover that I am not what I own, but what you want to give me.”
—Henri Nouwen
God has a way of putting us in situations that, at first, we think are all about what we can do for others — the impact we can make, the help we can bring. We come with our high ambitions of “bringing change” and “making a difference”. Then, sometimes (often?) God comes alongside us and reminds us a very important lesson: that we are human. The hard fact that we are dirt creatures and unable to do much at all hits us. Either through failure, weakness, flaws, sin, inability, or the simple fact that we live in a complex world, we are reminded, we are not in control. It would be easy to swing from one error (pride) to the inverse error (self-loathing). But the beauty of the gospel is that two things can be true at the same time. I am infinitely broken, weak and unable … that for God to accept me, Jesus needed to die. That humbles me to the dust. Then, at the same time, I am infinitely loved, so much so that He was willing to die for me. And that lifts me to the skies. If both are true, it has the power to leave us with a humble confidence — neither deluded with our own abilities (who do we think we are?), nor consumed by our own lack (don’t we remember we are His?). If this is true, then there is no other news as beautiful or liberating — when Paul hears Jesus say, “My grace is all you need”, it’s a profound declaration of God’s sufficiency in our inadequacy. He is enough. And while that is easy to say, God has to keep reminding us … usually through challenges and hard things.
This week has been one of those weeks that has had challenges. For instance, on Saturday night, Cornelius suddenly told me, “you’ll be good to preach in a church in my village this Sunday, won’t you?” We had already talked about going to his village, and he had organised to hire a car so I could drive there. But he hadn’t said anything about preaching, so at 10:30PM at night I suddenly found myself having to revise the previous week’s sermon from the last village.
In the end, all worked out … but it was still a challenge. The preaching went well, and it was a small church (basically a large house church, made up of mostly family members, as the rest of the village was largely Muslim). And it was a great experience. A couple of photos, videos etc below:
Village life is of a different pace, and it was cool to spend the day immersed in it — meeting various relatives, including Cornelius’s grandfather who had been a pastor doing ministry for 51 years. The challenge this time was that most of the people in the village can understand Urdu but struggle to speak it — they speak Punjabi more commonly — and my Punjabi is pretty weak (there are many words in common with Urdu so I can pick up bits and pieces when the accent isn’t too strong). But nevertheless, it was a great experience. One of Cornelius’s uncles said to me, “There have been many foreigners who have come and visited over time. However, none of them knew our language, so we couldn’t talk to them. This is the first time we can talk with a foreigner and understand what you say.” Which was cool. I did my best to explain, as best as I could, the difference between religion and the gospel … and I could see this uncle really get it. When I talked about grace as a free gift, and church as a place of service rather than status, you could see him light up. It is often the way that those at the bottom of the social systems best understand grace — because they have already seen that they don’t have anything to offer. The richer or more self sustaining we are, the more we can slip into the delusion that we have things under control. Then, God has to undo our delusion and allow us to see, no … everything is gift. Everything is grace.
There were also other fun parts of the trip — meeting people who had never seen a foreigner, opportunities to share about faith, even my first time driving a Pakistani motorbike 😉. It really is another world, even compared to Lahore.
The next challenge to roll around was health-related. After the visit to the village, Monday and Tuesday I wasn’t doing well, and then on Tuesday night Cornelius took me to go and visit his fiancé’s family. They had cooked an enormous spread for me, and as they continued to force-feed me (and I didn’t have any choice… to reject the food would have been to dishonour the hosts as if I was “above them”), I started to feel more and more unwell. I don’t think there was anything wrong with their food — I suspect it was something I picked up at the village — but by the time I got home on Tuesday night, I was pretty unwell … and I spent all Tuesday night with vomiting and diarrhoea. Fun times. Wednesday was a hospital visit, and even after various injections I still had diarrhoea all day… and this morning I saw a gastroenterologist. Thankfully now (Thursday afternoon) I’m starting to feel a bit better, and things are turning around. But there’s nothing like urgent diarrhoea or vomiting to remind us — you are weak and have nothing without Me. And it’s in those moments that I have to trust — God, I’m going to choose to remember your power works best in weakness.
So, this little detour changed some of my plans — Cornelius had a week of leave from his nursing study, and so he had said to me that he wanted the whole week to be more intensive study with me. On Monday we spent the day going through the Alpha course training material on how to run an alpha course. Cornelius has a real gift of inviting his friends to “come and see”, and he has gone through the videos himself … so I thought that if he is better equipped to use the material himself, he could be very effective. And while we did do some of this training … my getting sick curtailed the plans. As Proverbs says, We make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps. I guess I should have known — it is south Asia after all, you don’t make plans, because they never happen that way 😉
Nevertheless, some other great things happened. Cornelius took some of his relatives around to my room, and we had a wonderful worship session, Punjabi style. The whole street heard and was commenting to my host that they enjoyed listening. I also had an opportunity to share some of the Hindi worship songs that I picked up from India. This is significant, because I think this is an important part of worship that is often missing in Pakistan. Punjabi worship is often made to listen to and clap along to, while modern Hindi worship music is made to be sung along to, like Western worship music. I appreciate the beauty of much of Punjabi music, but there is a real place for the singable and more gospel-centred music from India, and since it is mutually intelligible, it has been cool to share it and see people enjoy it.
There has also been more friends that Cornelius has brought, and we have continued to have good gospel conversations. In fact, one of the friends, Shoaib, who I had previously written about, came back with more questions … and we had a great discussion. Cornelius suggested that I give him a copy of the Injil (Gospel) of John at the end, and the next day, Shoaib messaged to say that he had started reading it… which was so cool to hear. I’m trusting that while my words are often weak and explaining complex things in Urdu can be challenging, God’s word can do the work. Please pray for Shoaib, and for the various other people who came and joined the conversation. There was an opportunity to do some worship with them too, which was very interesting to use that as a tool to connect people to faith in a different way.
There have been other things that happened in this week — a visit to a Christian university, and good conversations with the IT department head about the Christian vision for the city — a dinner with a police inspector (!!) — and a catchup with some of my old students from the last English class. Some of them have led to good conversations and opportunities to share, others have not. Some have been challenging, others have been easier. But when I remember that change is God’s domain, not mine … I can slowly “unclench my fists” as the quote above says, and trust that God is the one that is doing the work. Whether I’m in a hospital bed or behind a pulpit, or helping people with English or directly sharing the Gospel … God is the one who brings the change. We just need open hands to receive whatever comes as grace, and trust the rest to Him. I’m a slow learner at this, and maybe you are too. But it’s a lesson worth learning. His grace really is sufficient … and my prayer is that whatever you’re experiencing — challenges or otherwise — you would know that. His power really does work best in weakness.
On a final note, some prayer points:
— Prayer for full recovery from stomach issues, and wisdom to know when to rest and when to push through.
— Pray for wisdom for the time ahead, in many different spheres.
— Pray for Deepak, who just today has returned to India after not finding a job. Pray that the spiritual journey he has begun would not end there but would actually blossom and be led by Jesus.
Praying that you will be well and strong, Noah. God bless you in all your challenging and exciting ventures for Him. Thank you for your encouraging articles.
In our prayers. May your health be restored completely.