Editor’s Note: First person written by South Carolina personnel living in South Asia.
What seemed to be a never-ending quest for a language school turned out to be a divine path in a young man’s search for the one true God.
My wife and I arrived at language school thinking it was for us to learn our country’s language. On our third day, the leader of the school, who was our teacher, was late and there were about 12-15 other students present for English classes who wanted to talk with us. They had many questions about America, and then they said that we were very nice. We used the opportunity to say, “Anything ‘good’ you see in us is not us, but rather it is the one we serve, Jesus, who lives within us.” They then asked questions about this, and we spent the next 30 minutes sharing with them the plan of salvation and our testimonies. We ended the conversation by telling them if any of them wanted to know more to let us know.
The next week, we were in our regular class session. My wife and I are the only students our teacher has in that period. He was using an example of their worship to explain a particular sound in their language and how it is to appease their gods. I asked him what he meant by appease, and he said it was to prevent one of their gods from punishing them. I explained to him how the God we serve – the One True Most High God – loves us and we love him and worship him not to appease him, but because he desires a relationship with us.
This opened a discussion that lasted two hours and even went into the next day. He began to share with us how he knew his whole life there had to be more and something besides his Hindu religion. He talked of how he had searched trying to find peace and nothing worked. He had even spent a month under a “holy man” seeking answers and peace from Hinduism. Little did we know that one of the students from the week before had shared with him about the things we had shared with them. He shared how he and his wife had talked about the things we had shared with the students. He even said how the fact we had been married for 30 years showed something of a faith in something. With every piece of truth we shared about Jesus, his eyes widened and he got more excited. After sharing with him, we told him to go home and think and tomorrow after school we would talk more.
The next day as we talked, I said that in order for him to say yes to Jesus he must be willing to say no to all others. He wanted to know what that meant. I explained how it meant that he must not worship them. After explaining what it meant, I asked him if he wanted to say yes to Jesus. His response was, “Sir, I made that decision yesterday and I now want to invite Jesus to come into my heart.” I led him in a prayer to give his heart to Jesus. He then asked my wife and me a question. He said, “Sir, if this news is for the whole world, then why don’t they know about it?” We then took him to Romans 10:13-14 and had him read it aloud. After he finished, he said, “The answer is right there, they have not heard.” I then said now that you know about Jesus and have given your heart to him, you must tell others so they will know.
He then came to our house group the following week and got so excited at the praise songs we sang. As I told the story that day, he repeated every word I said and then was able to repeat the entire story when we finished the day. He has shared with us how he is telling some of his other students about this One True, Most High God who came to us in Jesus. God is working in this young man’s life in ways that are truly amazing to us.
What a challenge to think of his closing words: “Why don’t they know?” There are so many who do not know and want to know and are hungry to know, but they don’t know because they have not heard.