Reflections, re-acclimation and renewal

Posted on November 5, 2009 by Carl

I’ve been back from India for just over a week now. My body is finally getting back to normal and the case of Delhi Belly that hit me upon my return home is finally gone. I’m finally sleeping at normal hours and getting back into my normal routine.

As I’ve taken time to reflect on my time in India, there are a few things that stick out:

First of all, God used my absence to bring about some strengthening in those around me.

My first Friday out of the country, Mike and Kim learned that their brother-in-law had been killed in Afghanistan. Mike and Kim were able to be a source of strength to their family, even though they did not have my presence to draw from. Mike and Kim were forced to lean on the Lord in a way they had not had to draw on His strength before. Carol also felt led to join some meetings that I normally attend, and also led out with our monthly overseer’s meeting. This was a large growth step for Carol as well and she now sees her role as my ministry partner much more clearly.

I believe the second primary purpose of this trip was my influence on some key people:

My interactions with Tom and Santhosh, in particular were part of a molding, shaping and directional process that the Lord is taking them through. In the case of both of these men, I watched God take them through some stretching of their comfort zones and standard modes of operation. Additionally, in two of the cities where I led meetings, the pastors came under conviction about their need to work cooperatively towards the purposes of God’s kingdom. In the wake of our meetings, these pastors have committed to working together towards the fulfillment of God’s plan for their individual communities.

The third key issue was the reminder of the completeness of God’s power and strength.

On two particular occasions, I was speaking with almost no physical or mental strength. On both of those occasions, I spoke not with force or vigor, but the power of God was incredibly overwhelming. On the first occasion a demon manifested in a man as I was speaking and threw this man into the adjacent river. He was immediately delivered from the demon and received the life giving touch of Jesus that night. The second time I gave the invitation after making a very simple gospel presentation and I watched as over 30 people came forward to give their lives to Jesus.

It was good to be back home on Sunday. Sunday was the first anniversary of the launch of Simplicity – Corpus Christi and the Simplicity Church Network. We all marveled at how quickly the year has gone, and how much God has molded, shaped and changed us in this first year. We also decided to replace our big orange water cooler outside with some of the sack lunches we have put together. Sunday we set out 6 lunch bags with Vienna Sausage, fruit cups, and crackers. By the time church was over, only one bag was left.

Tuesday was a great day of victories as well. Carol and I were short on making our house rent. Our rent is $1,000/month and we only had $179 to our name. We asked some people who are close to us to pray with us over this need. One of those individuals told Carol, “I’m praying that someone will show up at your doorstep with a check in hand.” Not 10 minutes later this same individual called back and said she would be bringing a check by…she ended up being the answer to her own request.

Tuesday evening we were praying at the church when we heard a knock on the door. A young man entered and said, “I believe God sent me here.” We then told him how he got to us and he agreed…I told him we were praying for him to come, we just didn’t know it was him that we were specifically praying for. This man has been in Corpus for 2 weeks. In the past his life has included many pitfalls, and of course he found himself in the epicenter of those things here in Corpus Christi. He knows he has a call on his life, but his frustration with his circumstances had led him back to some places he swore he would never go again. After speaking into his life we offered to walk with him as he works to rebuild his life. Over the past two days I have had the opportunity to help him find new housing arrangements and to begin looking for work. While I was in India, the Lord spoke to me about someone he was raising up to become the leader of Simplicity – Corpus Christi…something in my spirit, says this man may eventually be the one God was speaking to me about.

Some pictures from India

Posted on October 28, 2009 by Carl

Leader’s conference outside of Delhi

Speaking at leader’s conference outside of Delhi

Pastor Santhosh and his family in their home

Tom speaking at pastor’s meeting in Amellepolly…he had not slept in nearly 3 days at this point

Tom after his all night train ride in the top bunk.

Tom and I praying with a pastor in Amellepolly

Tom speaking at open air crusade in Madurai

Open air meeting in Madurai

Waiting in line for lunch in the Delhi pastor’s conference

Praying with a church leader in Kerala

Pastor Sabu and his wife ministering together in Kerala

Sharing a meal with pastor Santhosh

India wrap up

Posted on October 26, 2009 by Carl

After an all night train ride to Chennai, we arrived at 6AM yesterday. We went to our dorm room at teh campus of Emmanuel Methodist Church and I tok a 2 hour nap. After a shower, we were off to Church of the Living God in Chennai.

This was my second time to preach in this particular church. There are approximately 2000 people who attend each Sunday. This church was founded by Pastor Paul’s brother Paul Kiraburakan.

The service was very energized with fervent prayer and several pieces of music by a group of children. After I had finished preaching, I spent the next hour praying for several hundred people.

I was also privileged to have Pastor Sam who has a television ministry here in Chennai, come by to seee me. Pastor Sam and I have been communicating by phone and internet for over a year.

In the evening, I returned to Hebron Prayer Incense Church. This church is pastored by David Anand Kumar. The church meets on the top floor of his home, near the local medical university. Since my last visit, his congregation has grown and become somewhat international. He now has people from Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania worshipping in his church. This has forced him to move his services to primarily English. Once I was done speaking, I prayed for about 30 minutes with those in attendance.

Yesterday I also discovered that the power cord to my laptop was no longer working. I think a power surge killed the power box on my cord. Unfortunately, I didn’t discover this until I needed to charge the battery.

Today, I packed my bags to get ready for the airport. After breakfast, Paul took me to a shoe store, because he felt my sandals were in poor condition and I needed better shoes. So I am now breaking in a nice new pair of Indian sandals.

We are having lunch today with Pastor Victor and his family. I led conferences in Pastor Victor’s church last year, but was unable to do that this year. It is good to see old friends again.

After lunch, I will be going to the airport. My first flight leaves at 6PM for Delhi. I will be in Delhi until 2AM when I leave for Frankfurt. Then on to Chicago and Houston. I will arrive in Houston Tuesday at 6PM. I am spending the night in Houston and will catch the 8AM flight to Corpus Christi.

I love India, but I am ready to be home. My mind is exhausted, it has been a great journey.

I will try to post pictures in the next few days…I have plenty, but an unpowered laptop is pretty uselsess.

Saturday update

Posted on October 24, 2009 by Carl

Today we travelled to Dindigul and led a pastor’s conference. I was feeling a bit sluggish this morning as the pace of the past two weeks is starting to catch up to me. To help me compensate, I made the afternoon session a question and answer session. The pastors had great questions and kept mme on my toes.

This evening, I packed my bags will catch a train to Chennai with Paul at 8 PM. Tomorrow I will be preaching in his brother’s church in the morning and his brother in law’s church in the evening. This will be my second opportunity to speak in both churches.

Monday morning I will do one more conference and then I have to be at the airport around 3PM to catch my 6PM flight.

Carol and I are glad my return home is drawing near.

Final day in Madurai

Posted on October 23, 2009 by Carl

I started my day with a visit to a local colony of lepers. I had preached in an adjacent village last year and had encountered of few of the lepers then. This colony houses about 200-300 lepers. Many are missing toes, fingers and various facial features. For many of them they have other serious mental and physical challenges as well.

Benjamin and Elishba have adopted this colony as their ministry focus. Benjamin brings food out weekly and shares songs and Bible stories with them. Many of the lepers believe in Jesus, but they doubt His power to heal them.

For the past two days, I had found myself praying for the miraculous healing of 7 lepers within this community. My understanding is that God is going to do some miraculous healings within this colony as building blocks of belief. There was one woman in particular that caught my attention and I found myself praying over her quite extensively. I believe she will be one of the 7.

After distributing food to the colony we headed back to town and I spent the afternoon resting. I am beginning to feel the physical drain from nearly two weeks of multiple speaking engagements and long hours of ministry.

Tonight I spoke in our final open air meeting in Madurai. I told the crowd that I wasn’t feeling very strong, so I knew it would be a great meeting. I emphasized that in our weakness, God’s strength is revealed.

Several testimonies were given during the service including a testimony of a man who was healed from being very sick after I had prayed for him on Wednesday. I used these testimonies to talk about why God heals in the first place. I explained that He wants us to see His power to save and deliver us from sin. The miracles are simply the building blocks of our faith. I told the crowd that ultimately we all must decide who Jesus truly is.

When I was finished approximately 30 people came and gave their lives to Jesus. I was also asked to pray for another 100 or so for healing, family problems, etc…

It was a great ending to another wonderful visit to Madurai.

Tirchy

Posted on October 22, 2009 by Carl

Today I made my second visit to Tirchy. I visited Tirchy in 2006 on my first visit to India. Today, I spoke at a meeting for local pastors. I spent the morning speaking on personal discipleship.

As I was wrapping up, Pastor Paul began to get very weak due to the heat. I prayed for him and decided that I would make the afternoon session a question and answer time. The Q & A session was very good and the pastors had some challenging questions for me.

When the conference was over we went to the home of Pastor K (I can’t spell his last name) for lunch. I had been a guest in Pastor K’s home in 2006 and it was good renew my relationship with his family.

This evening I have the night off. I will be going to the leper colony tomorrow with Benjamin and Elishba.

Just enough

Posted on October 6, 2009 by Carl

I have had my upcoming trip to India planned since last year. The dates were discussed and bantered back and forth…schedules were coordinated. The only thing that was left was to raise money for airfare and incidental expenses. This shouldn’t be hard….should it?

I have been watching the airfare slowly creep up as the date drew closer and closer. Last week I only had $150 towards my airfare and I was at less than 2 weeks until departure. Yesterday evening (1 week to go, I was still over $200 short).

We had some friends over for dinner last night. As they left, they slipped some cash into my hand. $200!!!! Of course I couldn’t get into the bank until this morning. I had been watching a series of flights that left Chicago and routed through Germany. Over the last week those had climbed into the $1,800 range. Another flight through the UAE had been at $979 for a while, but it didn’t arrive until a day after the other flights and over the weekend it had gone to $3,800.

This morning I awoke and ran to the computer, the money was in the bank. I had $1,190 to work with. I jumped on Vayama and boom…the flights through Germany I had been watching, were $1068 round trip. I booked them and they were confirmed within an hour. I next booked my round trip from Corpus Christi to Houston. I had 20,457 frequent flier miles with Continental. The round trip was 20,000 frequent flier miles and $80 in fees. I had just enough.

God is good all the time!!!

That’s too easy

Posted on October 5, 2009 by Carl

This week has been a great time of seeing God work. Every day, I have had at least one person stop by the church to visit with me. Some were looking for prayer, others are just trying to figure out who…or what we are.

Today was joyous, as we were getting ready to begin, I saw a woman pushing a stroller coming across the street towards the church. I recognized this woman as someone we had met at the bus transfer station a few weeks back as we were handing out water. During that first interaction, Mike had spoken with this woman for nearly 20 minutes.

She entered the door with her 3 year old daughter and we began to interact and I learned that her name was Nellie. Nellie has been watching us to see if we were going to stay put. She decided that today was the day she would come to see what we are all about. Nellie is a hodge podge of religious thought. She has been influenced by a Pentecostal grandfather, Jehovah’s Witness friend and a myriad of other voices that have generated a great deal of fogginess in her mind about things pertaining to God. Nellie asked one question that stood out: “Why is Jesus called the Lamb of God?” This allowed me to to talk about the perfect sacrifice that was made for all mankind when Jesus gave up His life on the cross. When I was done explaining this to her, she was so excited, because “she could finally understand.” Before the morning was over, I gave her a Bible. She told me this was the first Bible she had ever owned, with the exception of a small Precious Moments Bible she had once had as a little girl.

As we were finishing up today, a man walked in, burdened by some things that were causing him to question whether he was truly ready when this life is over. This man carries a piece of baggage with him that has weighed him down for 50 years. Mike shared the message of salvation and forgiveness that is found in Jesus. This man declared, “that’s too easy!” Sadly, he could not accept that God would extend grace so freely. We are praying that God will show Him grace in a powerful and unmistakable way.

I am currently about $300 short of having my India airfare with one week to go.

Setting off explosions

Posted on September 29, 2009 by Carl

Over the last few months, the Lord has been speaking to us about the importance of praise in bringing down the spiritual walls of the Simplicity – Corpus Christi neighborhood. So when the opportunity to host The Burn 24/7 was extended, it was a “no-brainer.”

This past weekend, people from a variety of denominational backgrounds came together at 805 S. Staples and for 24 hours, they worshiped, prayed, danced, painted, played and glorified God. During this time, we had several people come in off of the streets and were able to minister to them. It was truly a nuclear event in the spiritual environment of this neighborhood. One of my intercessors said it best: “Foundations were shaken.” This weekend was also strategic, because it was exactly 1 year ago that my church voted to release the staff and ministry, so they could afford to keep the church property. It was that set of events that led to the implementation of the Simplicity vision that God had been birthing in me for a number of months.

Sunday was in my mind, the best worship experience we’ve had at Simplicity since we began in November of last year. We shared how God had touched our lives throughout the week and during that time I began to look at the banner that had been given to us by one of the worshipers over the weekend. The Lord prompted me to hand the banner to Brooke and I gave her permission to move throughout the room with that banner to praise Jesus to the best of her 3 year old ability. The Lord then took me to a song that I had not sang since I was a child…His Banner Over Me is Love. We sang that song and then the Lord began to write the verses. Before our time together was done, the Lord had given us 6 or 7 new verses to this song that we sang with great joy. Our service ended up lasting nearly 2 1/2 hours and yet no one seemed to notice or care.

Yesterday, Mike and I attended a pastor’s prayer retreat in Banquete. This retreat has become a highlight of my year each year and this year was no different. The morning speaker came out of the worship time with a word for nearly each one of us. To Mike and I, he said this: “Sit in the saddle.” “All that you are going through is by God’s design, don’t rush the process.” Throughout the day, God reminded me of the need to be a conduit, not just a cup. The day ended with 2 intercessors praying over each of us. The words spoken over me included: “Courage; a willingness to go where no one else will; the opening of multiple harvest fields unto me; the need for me to have wisdom to manage the resources that God is releasing into my hands; and a prayer of thanksgiving for the resources being released that are not only sufficient, but exceedingly abundant.”

I ended my day by speaking via phone with Pastor Santhosh about our upcoming ministry in Delhi and Kerala. Pastor Santhosh has been unable to raise the $2,000 necessary to put on the conference he had intended in Delhi, so I had suggested that we invite a handful of leaders for a few days of private meetings. Santhosh had been praying and fasting over that suggestion and is being led to invite 15 pastors to join us. We talked about my lack of air travel and fiances, but I assured him that God was going to provide. It is now 13 days until I leave and the airfare is beginning to creep up, so I know that we are not far from the provision, but this is an exercise in faith and trust.

If you would like to contribute to the India ministry effort, please visit the donation link

Rain and renewal

Posted on September 23, 2009 by Carl

Yesterday afternoon it was raining pretty heavily. When I am at 805, I always have the front door propped open with a brick, inviting people to come in.

During the rain a man walked in who I have become somewhat familiar with, because I see him walk by almost every day. This man is easily recognized, because he always has a bandanna on.

He said “I need you to pray for me, I’m a crack addict.” He went on to tell me that he had woken up yesterday morning and something was different. He knew he needed to leave the drugs alone and he was asking me to pray for him, because he needed extra strength.

Robert, as I learned his name to be, shared with me his story. He had once been very active in church. He played guitar in worship, served as a deacon and seemed to have it all together until crack cocaine entered his life. Robert has been looking for companionship with the local prostitutes, but he finds it empty and meaningless. He recently became a grandfather and his daughter told him that he would not see the grandbaby as long as crack was a part of his life.

I also learned that Robert wears the bandanna, because it makes him look tougher, so no one will mess with him.

I placed my hands on Robert and began to speak to Jesus about his life. Robert left with a new look of peace on his face. He made me write down our service times and he told me to look for him in the coming days.

God is awakening righteousness in the hearts of the people in this neighborhood. Continue to pray for Robert and so many who are like him.

Journey To Simplicity