I
love India. For me, while I have a passion for global missions, I don’t have
the bandwidth to know many countries well. Therefore, I have chosen to know one
besides my own well, and that one is India. In the few years I’ve spent
studying and visiting and praying for the country, I’ve seen firsthand many
ministries that seem to be legit but in the end are not. Indians seem, more
than other countries I’ve visited and otherwise been aware of, prone to greed
and various methods that help them obtain western dollars.
So
last week when I saw a blog post on this topic on the Training Leaders
International website, I was eager to read it. The author, who is an Indian
man, writes at length at the issues involved with missions in India. Then he
writes this:
“Let
me share with you another personal story, this time, of a foreign missionary. I
knew a missionary who lived and worked in India for years—well over a decade.
He established a business in a major city and labored slowly and patiently. He
barely had any converts—in fact, he probably had only one. He died in India and
within months of his death, his business was destroyed.
“By
numerical standards and ‘strategic’ considerations for ‘rapid growth,’ he was a
total failure. By the standards of many Western mission agencies, the many
dollars given to support him over the years were a total waste. So was his
ministry a waste?
“I
think not. For I was his one convert. He taught me the Gospel. He proclaimed to
me the excellencies of Christ. He taught me how to read the Bible and how to
discern truth from falsehood. He spent his life in service to his King, and my
eternity is changed as a result.”
Wow.
Faithfulness and fruitfulness are related to one another, however, we cannot,
and should not, prejudge what the fruit is supposed to look like. One labors
for a lifetime in obedience to Jesus and harvests thousands of souls and wields
a wide influence. Another labors for a lifetime in obedience to Jesus and
harvests but a few and wields a narrow influence. But in both cases the glory
belongs to the Lord and Savior who saved and sent and empowered and caused to
endure. In both cases the laborers will hear “well done, good and faithful
servant, enter into your Master’s happiness.”
And
if you’re the one who yields but one, you never know what the Lord will do with
that one. The person who wrote this article is named Aubrey M. Sequeira. He grew
up in Southern India as syncretistic Roman Catholicism. After coming to know
and follow Jesus in India, he moved to the U.S. where is an Adjunct Instructor
for New Testament Interpretation and a Ph.D. candidate in Biblical Theology at
the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY.
The
missionary only won one, but who knows how many this one will influence and
win. The size of our harvest is frankly irrelevant. The size of our desire to
know Jesus and do his will is all that matters.
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