Hindi Janta Hai?

Ok so that is like the worst transliteration, but it is the best I can do being 10 years away from trying to learn a language on my own.

I love that our new group is so international in flavour. Last night a new guy showed up, a guy from India - a hindu! I think at first our host was a bit concerned how this might work - but you know we are a group of believers meeting together to worship and interact with God. I often say we are seeker insensitive - so that was put to the test. We worshipped Jesus and there was a nice presence of the Lord in the room. Our new friend followed along and seemed to enjoy himself. The reading was the parable of the sower from Matthew - so someone volunteered their bible so our guest could follow along. We talked about the seeds and I literally planted some seeds in some soil, watered it and we decided to wait until the end of kinship to see what had grown.

Then we talked about the seeds from Matthew - in chapter 13 there are three seeds: the message of the Kingdom, good people, and faith. So we began sharing what God has been doing in our lives. I had received a healing on Sunday so my choice was easy. But the testimonies were great - God is indeed directing and loving His people. When our guest had his turn he was quite concerned with letting us know he had a different concept of God and then affirming that God does direct us (he called it a supernatural force of nature). It was just part of the God talk for the night, I think he was a bit uncomfortable that we named God in our service. But the fact that no one jumped on him made him comfortable enough to stay and fellowship with just about everyone of us.

So at the end we picked up the container of planted soil. Now this was rich earth. But as you imagine - there was no growth in that short a time. So we talked about surrounding ourselves with the seeds of the Kingdom message (God's story and our story), seeds of positive faithful friends and seeds of faith put into practice. That the fruit often takes time to appear in our lives - but it will come. It will yield a bountiful harvest in our lives.

Just one other note - juring our time of fellowship (we didn't break up to pray just because I didn't want to overwhelm our guest) my friend had been hit in a drive-by egging and had a welt on her arm that hurt to touch. So we prayed, exercised our faith, and she was quite astounded when the pain left. Praise God.

Welcome the strangers in your midst, for by doing so some have found they were entertaining angels.