I believe that most people I know would say that they have had some unique challenges in life. Some are born with disabilities. Others have disabilities thrust upon them. Still others have the age-old limitations of poverty or lack of education. I can conjure up some challenges that needed to be overcome along the way in my own life. I cannot, however, in good conscience claim many in the presence of my wife, since I have watched her struggle with tear inducing, immobilizing migraine headaches that limit her ability to see and regularly create a kind of nausea that I only endure when I eat the wrong food in a foreign land every few years.
In all reality, my challenges pale in comparison to the experiences of some I just had the privilege of meeting. We just returned from India. The Free Methodist Church in India is blossoming. There are signs of constant growth. There were nearly 100 new churches planted in our three large conferences (Alpha, Agape and Immanuel) in the past year. Let me list some of the inherent challenges they face in their service of Christ. There is poverty that is so restricting that many of our pastors are only able to eek out below subsistence-level supplies for their families even though they require additional employment from them and their spouses. Then there is the language barrier. Some of our pastors are called to minister to others with the same skin color, but in sometimes foreign (to them) languages that do not bear a slight resemblance to a languages they might know. The caste system provides additional difficulties as the church is attempting to break out of a centuries-old system that keeps people subservient or at least separate on several crippling levels. Added to that, there are limited supplies, facilities and means to equip and train leaders and followers alike to do some basic levels of ministry. Health care, or the absence thereof, could be added to the list of challenges. And, added to all of that, there is the rising religious persecution that is carried out by militant Hindus trying to reclaim the land from the rise of Christianity and Islam from the "foreign invaders." Many of them are now emboldened by a government that is reluctant to prosecute people from the 80% majority.
Regarding persecution, I heard and saw things that are foreign to my many years of traversing the globe. I heard from pastors and interviewed lay members who had their houses torched, Bibles burned, were beaten and forced to eat goats blood mixed with dung, had swords pierce their skin with the threat of imminent death. All of this was in the presence of angry and unpredictable mobs led into their hysteria by rumors without foundation. I met a man whose wife and children fled into the jungle to escape. The children made it safely. The wife did not. One pastor who had been a Hindu priest and was delivered from that life and given hope and grace in Jesus Christ, now serving Christ as a pastor of a small circuit of churches. When he was threatened with certain death if he would not renounce his belief in Jesus Christ, he wept as he replied that he could never, under any circumstance, deny the Lord who had saved him and could save his tormentors if they would accept the offer of salvation. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I listened to the testimonies that came amidst the sobs of sorrow over the losses while the look of calm certainty gleemed through the tears.
I truly witnessed a movement. I witnessed people without political agenda or self-serving motive committed with little hope for conventional support structures to help them in their kingdom efforts. In fact, I heard very little about the challenges that seemed to plague them. I suppose when there are so many, there seem to be none. The desire to worship God with an unrestrained joy and fervor topped the priority list for the gatherings. I don’t believe I was ever before picked up and carried around in a worship dance. There’s always a first. It is a little more meaningful when my dance partner had been threatened with his life for holding unsweringly to Christ and as a superintendent must now deal with the rebuilding of more than a dozen, needlessly ruined churches.
The thing about challenges is their inevitability. Americans have them. Europeans have them. Africans have them. Asians have them. Men and women have them. Children and the aged have them. The poor and the rich have them. However, through the tears, pain and frustration we must conclude with conviction that God is sovereign, that Jesus Christ will always redeem and that the Holy Spirit is a genuine Comforter and Counselor in every circumstance. Perhaps the challenge sharpens that conviction and the faith that emboldens it. I hope we embrace the challenges when they come and seek the wisdom to overcome them with faith, grace and power.