SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/2/2023 9:22 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-7 “Jesus Loves the Little Children”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
19:13-15
Message of the verses: “13 Then some
children were brought to Him so that He might lay His hands on them and pray;
and the disciples rebuked them. 14 But Jesus said, "Let the children
alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven
belongs to such as these." 15 And after laying His hands on them, He
departed from there.”
Today’s SD will be a quotation from John MacArthur’s
sermon on this section as I mentioned in our last SD that I would do this.
“When
I was in seminary, there was a man in our seminary - he came my last year - by
the name of Paul Pillai, from India. He was with us this week in our staff
meeting; I had some fellowship with him. Paul came from India to go to
seminary. He was a Hindu all his life. His whole family were Hindus; he was
saved. He wanted to go to north India. Most of the Christians, the 2-1/2
percent that are Roman Catholic/Protestant “Christians” in India, are in the
south; in the north, it’s dominantly Hindu and Moslem.
“And
the Moslems there are more vocal, and more narrow-minded, and more wild, then
they are in Iran, if you can imagine that. And he wanted to reach north India,
and he wanted to develop a strategy to do that. So, he went back, and basically
started a Bible college, by the name of Grace College, and they now have about,
I think, ninety or a hundred young men in the college. It’s a four-year
program, and if you want to be in the college, you have to give evidence that
God has called you into the pastorate, that God has called you into the
ministry.
“They
take no students who aren’t going right out into the ministry. And if you can
demonstrate that, and commit your life to that, they’ll take you as a student
for four years free - no tuition, no room, no board, nothing. Just folks,
Christian friends, here and over in India are supporting that school, and
they’re training these men. At the end of that four-year period, they take you
and put you in a village, and you become the pastor in a dominantly Hindu
village. And they help you get started by taking two tents into town.
“They
set up one tent to live in - the team that goes in - and they set up another
tent to have meetings in, and they stay six months. And for six months, they
evangelize the Hindus and the Moslems of those cities. And by the time the six
months is over, they’ve got a little group of Christians gathered together, and
then they take a young man and put him in there, and he becomes the shepherd of
the little flock, and they have planted 98 of those flocks - 98 little villages
and cities - with their men. And it isn’t easy.
“He
shared with tears, got all choked up, how that one night there was a man giving
a testimony. He had been saved out of the Moslem sect, and the Moslems became
so irate at the testimony that they - he was sitting on the platform next to
the man giving the testimony - they stormed the platform, and plunged knives in
him, and killed him, and he died. And he said just before he died, he said,
“You - you may kill me, but you cannot take the life of God from me.” And they
killed him.
“And
he talked about the fact that they threw him on the ground, on another
occasion, and they kicked him and pummeled his body, and he felt that he would
be dead. And all of a sudden, all these people who had attacked him in the
middle of this meeting - the crowd ran when the attack started - and then all
the attackers ran. And he opened his eyes, and no one was there. Later on, one
of those who had attacked him became a Christian, and he asked the man, he
said, “When you were trying to kill us, and we believed you would kill us, why
did you run?”
“Oh,”
he said, “because a group of very strong men from another village came and
drove us away.” And Paul said they went to all the villages surrounding, to
find out who those people were, and they never could find any who did that, and
he believes it was the angels of God who protected him. But that’s how it is
when you try to start a church in a Hindu village. And so, this is his vision,
and he’s sending these men out and he was sharing with me, as we talked about
later, that there was a real problem, because it’s so hard to win the Hindus to
Christ.
“And
there’s so many villages that need to be reached, how are you going to have
enough pastors to send out? And it struck him that the way to do it was to get
them when they’re children, because children are so responsive. So, they built
a children’s home, and they’re now enlarging it to handle 500 of them. Now,
they’ve got 81 of these - little boys, mostly. They pick them up orphans, and
strays, and kids living in the streets. And he said, “Oh yes,” he said, “All 81
have given their lives to Jesus Christ.”
“And
he said, “All 81 are learning the Word of God, and we teach them and love them,
and then we send them to the regular schools, so they’ll learn their culture.
They come right back, and we teach them the Word of God. And you see, when - as
they grow up in our school and our home, you see, they just go right into the
Bible college, and right out into the pastorate.” It’s a great strategy, folks.
It’s a lot easier to get them in, isn’t it? All 81 know the Lord; and wait till
they get 500. You see, children are brought to Jesus, and their hearts seem so
open.”
3/2/2023 9:33 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment