Does HQ Know What Going on Down Here?

Will someone please tell God?
I’m sitting once more in morning chapel, absorbing the quiet reverence the community here observes, wondering what the Lord will say through the next student preacher. I muse on how the disciples took Jesus aside once to give him some practical advice. I must confess I have been tempted to the same foolishness now and again. After all, does he really know what he's doing? Especially in areas where we think he might tweak his strategy a bit to the left or right? I cannot remember the specifics off the top of my head, but my impression was that Jesus did not take kindly to their counsel. Was that when he told Peter to stop being Satan’s mouthpiece?
Anyway, the preacher and translator take their places at the pulpit to call us to prayer and preparation for the Word. Yikes! They are both women! How can this be in a society where only high caste women count for much? She is dark-skinned—low caste.
Will someone please inform Headquarters? Women are supposed to be silent in church. And a preaching role for females is definitely contrary to proper theological grasp of the New Testament.
And look at the text she takes! It’s Hebrews 10:26-31. This is one of the most challenging passages for those of us who believe in the sovereignty of God in regard to salvation. People who truly know Christ are not supposed to fall away into divine retribution.
She probably has a weak grasp of the text, right?
Wrong! She is rattling off Hebrew and Greek terms in a way that indicates she has done her homework. She refers back to Hebrews 6—another troubling text for Calvinists like me. It tells of how those who are enlightened and have tasted the gift of salvation and the powers of the age to come cannot be brought back to repentance because they are crucifying the Lord all over again.
The text in Hebrews 10 only makes it worse. Those who make a conscious choice to keep on sinning (about salvation by Christ alone) put themselves under God’s judgment. It is well deserved because they trample the precious blood flowing from the cross. They bring upon themselves a “fearful expectation of judgment and the raging fire that will consume God’s enemies.”
She bids us to examine our hearts to see if we are just going on autopilot or are truly repentant for our sins and mistakes. God knows the heart. He is ready with mercy. But we must be sincere in our repentance.
She asks us to stand for the benediction and grasp our neighbor’s hand as we stand in the presence of the God who searches hearts.
Why does God pour out his power through such a humble and, some would say, unqualified vessel as T.G Pushpam?
Uncle tells me later that her dark skin tone signals her origin. She is a low caste—one of the many untouchable jatis in India. But God has gifted her. She will serve with Wycliffe translating the Bible into a language in the remote northern hills. India has over 400 languages!
One thing that brings tears to my eyes (as a far possible for a guy) is to see the interactions here. People are fellowshipping warmly together from groups that Indian society says should not be talking together, nor sitting together, nor eating together, nor worshiping together. The caste system is a pernicious curse. But here the curse has been broken. We are all the same before our God, who created of one blood all the ethnicities of the earth. If you want to see a miracle, this miracle of grace is huge. We are “one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord.”
On second thought, do not alert HQ. Jesus knows what he is doing.
As I think about this college I shake my head in amazement. It is only twenty years old. But God has raised it up in a forbidding environment here in North India. Thirty full time faculty give second to none education in Bible, theology, music, missions, and culture.
Uncle George, the founder, stands amazed that a kid from a poor family in Kerala could be used for such a ministry. He gave his life to Lord at age 19 and was called from political ambition to ministry. Attending Fuller Theological Seminary in California, he became an officer in Ted Engstrom’s “World Vision” program, designed to help the orphans in Korea after the war there. World Vision has become one of the premier Christian relief ministries in the world.
But George Kuruvilla Chavanikamanil felt a call to return to India—to north India. He resigned his position and shared his call with some friends who soon formed a board to see what could be done.
As he traveled about looking for a place to start a training school, he and his nephew came to the Dehradun area. Land here—as in most of India—is very costly. India, as you know has about one billion souls on land about the size of a third of the USA.
As a fundraising tool one of the board members suggested making a model of the college they were dreaming of. He needed a sense of the “lay of the land.” We have no land as yet.
So he said he would pray that the Lord would help him think of something appropriate. This is where God shows up!
This man had never been to India. But he produced a model of a future campus. He placed it in a flat area with a small hill to the right of the proposed buildings. The hill had a series of terrace-like “steps” that made a height of land.
As George and his nephew Babu explored leads, his wife Leela was praying with church folk back in California that they would find five or more acres of land at half the going price, $25,000 the limit. But land here is more than that for a single acre. Nevertheless, they prayed.
The searchers at last came to Dehradun but nothing materialized. They were about to go elsewhere. They prayed, “Lord, you have to show us the way—we are out of options.”
That day they were told of a local man who had heard of their search for real estate. He sent word that he had a mango orchard off the Kulhan Road that he was willing to sell—the trees were dying and he could get no profit from that land. So George and Babu went out to look. It was nearly dark. They couldn’t really see anything. Unpromising. They went back to the hotel. Babu joked: Did you see any hill, Uncle?”
In the morning the two sensed that the Lord wanted them to go back and look one more time. As they came through the brush to the edge of the dry riverbed they could not believe their eyes. There was a terraced hill across the riverbed. George and Babu raced ahead of the others to stand on this hill and claim it as an answer to prayer. It was exactly as the architect 10,000 miles away had sculpted it on the model!
Price? “It is no good to me--$25,000 and its yours.”
This was the first of many unusual answers to prayer, resulting in a large campus training several hundred young people for evangelism and missions in a very hostile region of India. More of that another time.
I sense that I am living for these weeks on holy ground, the gift of a God who answers prayer in astounding ways.
And by the way—the mango trees all began to thrive once the deed was registered.
I think Headquarters knows what it is doing.