Month: November 2010

The work of brokenness is a beautiful thing. It causes our lives to become the sweet fragrance before God that it was intended to be. But we can also delay the work of brokenness by not realizing that God is the One working behind the difficult scenes of our lives.

When God brings pressure from circumstances, people or whatever else, many live in total darkness, not recognizing that God is at work. We blame our circumstances, people, our past and everything around us.  We are blind to the fact that God is allowing these things.

This was the case with Jonah. He was a clever individual. He ran from God, refusing to preach to the people who were killing his countrymen. Yet when the storm came that tossed him into the belly of the fish, he began to realize God’s hand in his circumstances. Sitting in the belly of the fish, Jonah acknowledged that God was playing a major role in his situation—“For You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me; all Your billows and Your waves passed over me” (Jonah 2:3, emphasis added).

What about you and the struggles and problems you face? I think it would be good to stop blaming circumstances and people and say, “Lord, You are allowing this for a purpose.” All things work together for our good so we may become like Jesus (see Romans 8:28–29). When we truly believe this we can rest, knowing that God is the One orchestrating the events of our lives. It is His plan, and we learn to bend our neck and receive His yoke.

This causes us to become less frustrated with circumstances and people and everything else. When we look up and recognize that He is behind it all, His grace and peace enter our lives.

This entry was written by K.P. Yohannan, the president and founder of Gospel for Asia, with the intention of encouraging and edifying the Body of Christ. To learn more about Gospel for Asia or to receive additional free resources, visit Gospel for Asia’s website.

I corresponded with Gisela. She had, in the meantime, returned to Germany. I decided I would take two years off from the work to study and make some life choices about my ministry and possible marriage.

I began writing letters abroad and became interested in the possibility of attending a Bible school in England. I also had invitations to speak in churches in Germany. In December I bought an air ticket out of India planning to be in Europe for Christmas with Gisela’s family.

While there I got the first tremors of what soon would become an earthquake-size case of culture shock. As the snow fell, it was obvious to everyone I soon would have to buy a winter coat and boots—obvious, that is, to everyone except me. One look at the price tags sent me into deep trauma. For the cost of my coat and boots in Germany, I could have lived comfortably for months back in India.

And this concept of living by faith was hard for Gisela’s parents to accept. Here was this penniless street preacher from India, without a single dollar of his own, insisting he was going to school but he didn’t know where and, by now, asking to marry their daughter.

One by one the miracles occurred, though, and God met every need.

First, a letter arrived from E.A. Gresham, a total stranger from Dallas, Texas, who was then regional director of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He had heard about me from a Scottish friend and invited me to come to the United States for two years of study at what was then the Criswell Bible Institute in Dallas. I replied positively and booked myself on a low-cost charter flight to New York with the last money I had.

This flight, it turned out, also was to become a miracle. Not knowing I needed a special student visa, I bought the ticket without the chance for refund. If I missed the flight, I would lose both my seat and the ticket.

Praying with my last ounce of faith, I asked God to intervene and somehow get the paperwork for the visa. As I prayed, a friend in Dallas, Texas, was strangely moved by God to get out of his car, go back to the office, and complete my paperwork and personally take it to the post office. In a continuous series of divinely arranged “coincidences,” the forms arrived within hours of the deadline.

Before leaving for America, Gisela and I became engaged. I would go on to seminary alone, however. We had no idea when we would see each other again.

This entry was written by K.P. Yohannan, the president and founder of Gospel for Asia, with the intention of encouraging and edifying the Body of Christ. To learn more about Gospel for Asia or to receive additional free resources, visit Gospel for Asia’s website.

It began with Creation.

Because God is good and everything He does is good, we can safely assume that all He creates is good. So in the beginning when God created heaven and earth, they were good.

Then something went wrong.

Between Genesis 1:1, when out of His goodness God created the heavens and the earth, and Genesis 1:2, something happened. We are informed that what was created became “formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep” (Genesis 1:2).

The Hebrew word used in verse 1 for created is bara, literally meaning just that—creating something out of nothing. However, in verse 2, the Hebrew word describing the earth being formless, empty and covered in darkness is haya, which means to become, to happen, to occur.

What does this tell us? In the beginning what was made good apparently became bad. How? Numbers of theologians believe this is when the angel Lucifer fell because of his pride (see Isaiah 14:11–15; Ezekiel 28:13–18).

From the beginning of time, however, we see the marvelous, compassionate way that God responds to catastrophes. After realizing that what He created was now covered with darkness, God didn’t decide to just abandon it. No. He refashioned this planet that had lost its original beauty.

When this was done, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Genesis 1:31, emphasis mine). Now if God who is perfect thinks something is very good, it is very good. In fact, His new earth became the home for His Son’s bride. It was definitely not a second best place.

Not long after the introduction of the first man and woman, another great failure occurred. These human beings formed from the clay of the earth by God’s own hands, made in His own image, fell prey to the deceiver, and Paradise was lost.

This entry was written by K.P. Yohannan, the president and founder of Gospel for Asia, with the intention of encouraging and edifying the Body of Christ. To learn more about Gospel for Asia or to receive additional free resources, visit Gospel for Asia’s website.

Was it the devil who introduced that reduced-to-second-best concept? I know this may be hard for some people to believe right now, but I write the truth—God is in the business of making miserable failures into beautiful demonstrations of His mercy and grace.

His ways are above ours. Far above! His original purposes for us are not lost.

The next time it seems the locust and cankerworm have eaten the fruitful life you once knew, look up (see Joel 1:4, KJV). Even if you doubt who you are and how you acted, please don’t doubt who He is and how He acts!

When you wake up to the scattered remains of your once-beautiful world looking for strength to carry on, know that this is not the end.

When unexpected storms of severe criticism, slander or even being blacklisted bruise the reed—I tell you the truth, hope still remains.

The next time you fail and wonder whether God is still able to make something—something even better than before—out of your life, you need to know that the answer is 1,000 times, YES! Confident in His skills, God is still totally capable of making everything better.

Never doubt the ability of the divine Master Potter to beautifully refashion flawed pieces. He’s been doing it since the beginning of time.

This entry was written by K.P. Yohannan, the president and founder of Gospel for Asia, with the intention of encouraging and edifying the Body of Christ. To learn more about Gospel for Asia or to receive additional free resources, visit Gospel for Asia’s website.

Romantic love, for most Indians, is something you read about only in storybooks. Daring cinema films, while they frequently deal with the concept, are careful to end the film in a proper Indian manner. So I was faced with the big problem of communicating my forbidden and impossible love. I said nothing to Gisela, of course. But something in her eyes told me we both understood. Could God be bringing us together?

In a few hours we would be separated again, and I reminded myself I had other things to do. Besides, I thought, at the end of the summer she’ll be flying to Germany, and I’ll probably never see her again. Throughout the summer, surprisingly, our paths did cross again. Each time I felt my love grow stronger. Then I tentatively took a chance at expressing my love with a letter.

Meanwhile, the Punjab survey broke my heart. In village after village, our literature and preaching appeared to have had little lasting impact. The fruit had not remained. Most of the villages we visited appeared just as illiterate and lost as ever. The people still were locked in disease, poverty and suffering. The Gospel, it seemed to me, hadn’t taken root.

In one town I felt such deep despair I literally sat down on a curb and sobbed. I wept the bitter tears that only a child can cry.

“Your work is for nothing,” taunted a demon in my ear. “Your words are rolling off these people like water off a duck’s back!”

Without realizing I was burning out—or what was happening to me spiritually—I fell into listlessness. Like Jonah and Elijah, I was too tired to go on. I could see only one thing. The fruit of my work wasn’t remaining. More than ever before, I needed time to reassess my ministry.

This entry was written by K.P. Yohannan, the president and founder of Gospel for Asia, with the intention of encouraging and edifying the Body of Christ. To learn more about Gospel for Asia or to receive additional free resources, visit Gospel for Asia’s website.

“All things are possible to him who believes” (Mark 9:23). I don’t understand how it works, but God said as we pray we must keep believing that He has answered our prayer. The believing comes from Him. He is the author and finisher of our faith (see Hebrews 12:2). Faith is not something we can work up in ourselves. We can’t convince ourselves to believe. We have to ask Him for believing faith. The father of the afflicted son did that. He said to Jesus, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).

Pray in the Holy Spirit. Sometimes we don’t know how to pray when God lays a burden upon our hearts. But the Holy Spirit can pray through us. It can be in a language that nobody understands. It can be in groan­ings and cryings too deep for words. Please don’t try to figure this out. God is so won­derful that when we don’t know how to pray, the Holy Spirit intercedes through us. When our ability to pray comes to an end, God takes over (see Romans 8:26).

Our God is eager to hear our prayers. Let us then come before Him in the morn­ing, in the evening, while we are waiting in line, driving to work or washing the dishes. Prayer need not be an activity we engage in for only an hour each morning. Rather, let us live in the atmosphere of prayer, our hearts continually being lifted up in prayer to Him. In doing so, we will come to experi­ence the wonder of being colaborers with God as He works through our prayers (see 1 Corinthians 3:9).

This entry was written by K.P. Yohannan, the president and founder of Gospel for Asia, with the intention of encouraging and edifying the Body of Christ. To learn more about Gospel for Asia or to receive additional free resources, visit Gospel for Asia’s website.

How can anyone wrestle with God and win? It reminds me of when my son, Daniel, was a little boy. I used to wrestle with him, and he would win every match.

This seems to be how God does it with us. He lets us win, but not the way we want to win. After wrestling with God, Jacob was not the same. He became a cripple; from then on he walked with a limp. But he won that night because he admitted who he was—Jacob, meaning schemer and deceiver—and finally let God break him.

Once a friend of mine called from overseas, dealing with a situation in which he was trying to work things out with his own planning and scheming, not realizing God was trying to break him. Troubled by a situation in which he was being taken advantage of, my friend, according to the law, could rightfully press charges and bring justice to his situation.

When I heard him leaning toward this route, my response was one of shock. “I am surprised that you would even think those thoughts!” I said. “Your safety is not in any of these things. It is in the Lord. Why must you fight for your rights? The Bible says when the Levites’ rights were taken away, their properties were taken away, their houses were taken away, and their lands were taken away, they gave it up gladly and never went after it. That is the way you should be following.”

This is a modern-day example of how we can delay the Lord’s work of brokenness in our lives by our own planning and scheming. Thank God my friend saw this to be the correct response and used this situation as an opportunity to walk in humility and let the Lord be his defender.

In each of our lives, the Lord brings us Labans and difficult circumstances—either financial setbacks, failures, sickness, and so on—to break us. Through these things, God is continually trying to break us—not to destroy us, but to bless us. Only after the cross comes the resurrection. Only after the cross comes glory.

This entry was written by K.P. Yohannan, the president and founder of Gospel for Asia, with the intention of encouraging and edifying the Body of Christ. To learn more about Gospel for Asia or to receive additional free resources, visit Gospel for Asia’s website.

“Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:4–8).

All disunity begins with a lack of genu­ine, godly love for one another. That’s where it all starts. When Satan gets in and stirs up strife and hurt, love dries up and things go downhill from there. This is also when the work we are doing for God comes to a standstill. As long as disunity abounds, all ministry will be tainted and ineffective. But when our hearts are cleansed and changed, softened and broken, ministry becomes a simple overflow of a heart filled with love from Christ for all men.

Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind. Let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others (Philippians 2:1–4).

The essence of this Scripture is that unity and humility work hand in hand. Unity comes from love, love comes from humility, and humility comes by submitting to one another. When there is no humility, there is no unity. Mother Teresa once said, “Humility is the mother of all virtues. It is in being humble that our love becomes real, devoted and ardent. If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are.”1 She also said, “To love and to be loved, we must know our brothers and sisters. For knowledge always leads to love and love in action is service. Our work is only the expression of the love we have for God.”2 Romans 12:10 pleads with us to “be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another.”

This entry was written by K.P. Yohannan, the president and founder of Gospel for Asia, with the intention of encouraging and edifying the Body of Christ. To learn more about Gospel for Asia or to receive additional free resources, visit Gospel for Asia’s website.

Study the lives of Hannah, Moses, David and Paul. You will find this passion in their prayers as well. In Ephesians, you read about Paul praying for these people. It’s like he is in anguish. He talks about his “tribulations” for them (see Ephesians 3:13). In Galatians he says, “My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19).

How do we get this burden? We simply seek it. We ask God to change our heart. We say, “Lord, what is on Your heart? What is Your concern? Lord, please let me under­stand it.” Then He brings the thoughts and gives us the burden to intercede. We cannot create this burden on our own. God does not care about lip service. He wants us to enter into the reality of what He feels for the suffering humanity all around us. He wants to share with us His burdens and His joy in seeing these prayers answered.

I was in Singapore for a leaders meeting in 1971. There I heard Dr. Bob Pierce, found­er of World Vision, tell of his early years when he visited China. He said that when he saw the multitudes in China, he was bro­ken-hearted. He wept on the streets of that nation. Then he took his Bible and wrote on the leaflet inside, “Let my heart break for the things that break God’s heart.” Let that be our prayer also.

Pray in faith. We must believe. Jesus said, “Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them” (Mark 11:24). Matthew 17:19–20 says, “Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ So Jesus said to them, ‘Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.’ ”

This entry was written by K.P. Yohannan, the president and founder of Gospel for Asia, with the intention of encouraging and edifying the Body of Christ. To learn more about Gospel for Asia or to receive additional free resources, visit Gospel for Asia’s website.

After this incident, things went along so smoothly. Our team life was wonderful. I loved Brother William like my own life. I have wonderful memories of those times. He never changed. He didn’t start washing his trousers or getting us more food. But I changed. We never had disunity or problems after that because God had dealt with the problem—with me. I, the one who “knew” how things should run, had been the cause of the disunity all along.

“Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection” (Colossians 3:12–14).

“Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:4–8).

All disunity begins with a lack of genu­ine, godly love for one another. That’s where it all starts. When Satan gets in and stirs up strife and hurt, love dries up and things go downhill from there. This is also when the work we are doing for God comes to a standstill. As long as disunity abounds, all ministry will be tainted and ineffective. But when our hearts are cleansed and changed, softened and broken, ministry becomes a simple overflow of a heart filled with love from Christ for all men.

This entry was written by K.P. Yohannan, the president and founder of Gospel for Asia, with the intention of encouraging and edifying the Body of Christ. To learn more about Gospel for Asia or to receive additional free resources, visit Gospel for Asia’s website.