Journeys Part 2

During his message ‘The Power of a God Encounter’, Brian Houston told the story of Biju Thampy as he was travelling around Mumbai in a tuktuk (3 wheeled taxi).  As it stopped at a junction to give way to other traffic (which I understand is a miracle in itself!), Biju noticed a young street girl aged about 6 begging for food.  This was not one of the children you may have seen in Slum Dog who live in very poor conditions – this was a child on her own with nothing.

Biju had compassion on her and gave her some money for food. As his tuktuk pulled away he looked back in time to see a man step out of the crowd and mug the girl for the money.  In his anger and frustration Biju cried out to God and said, ‘Lord, why do you allow this to happen. Do something’.

He immediately felt the Spirit come upon him and speak into his heart.  He said, ‘You do something’.

Five years later Biju’s ministry, Vision Rescue, is having an impact on the lives of the 300,000 street children in Mumbai.

My own journey with Jesus is nowhere near as dramatic as Biju’s but has some similarity.  I used to work for a local college that decided it could no longer afford to employ a chaplain, leaving the students with no one to turn to for spiritual guidance.  I felt something should bedone by our church but didn’t know what. Should our Chaplain and her team offer to take over the role?  Should our Youth or Discipleship Leaders get their teams involved?  Then God seemed to say ‘You do something’.

So Julie and I sought permission to run the Journeys course which proved so popular that we followed it with a version of Student Alpha.  We now have a core group of nine students who turned up every week wanting to know more about God and His creation.  OK, so it’s only 9 out of 1700 students but each one is precious to Jesus and each of them is on their own journey. 

The work is not something that comes natural to us.  There is a two generation age gap, they live very different lives to us and have different outlooks.  We have had to invest a lot of time, energy and some money into doing it.  It can be uncomfortable and scary stuff but Rich is always inspirational in his teaching (Feel the fear and do it anyway comes to mind).

It has been a real privilege to start this work and we pray that we will continueto have such encounters on our journey with Jesus.

Tony