The Lord is gaining momentum in the church in our locality. Both brothers and sisters are growing in life and in function. Our burden is to perfect all the saints and make them all pillars for the Lord's testimony. So we would grasp every opportunity to learn and be perfected for the Lord's sake. Therefore, we are coordinating with the church in New Delhi for the perfecting training of the brothers.
This year, the Lord has sanctified nine brothers for the five months long perfecting training. I was especially glad for the reasons that many more young brothers are being perfected and I also got the opportunity to learn along with my fellow brothers. Besides, the young brothers are experiencing a drastic change in their lives; I believe the Lord is beginning to answer the prayers we have been offering for all the saints in the church. Things which seemed impossible few months ago are now taking shape. To cite a few of them:
The three brothers who are living with our family are functioning very well. From physical responsibility to spiritual responsibility they are growing up and picking up the burden to practice the God-ordained way of being revived through prayer and the word of God, preaching the gospel, shepherding the new ones, and functioning in the meetings.
Another brother who stayed away from the church life for many years is beginning to experience a drastic change in his life. Once he was not even ready for any kind of fellowship, now he is coming daily for morning prayer and life-study pursuit. To help him, I also gave him some IT lessons to learn.
From the sisters' side too, they paired themselves up as prayer partners, formed sisters' group, prayed and pursued the truths together, and are actively functioning in the church's activities. In fact, in one of our gospel preachings, sisters met a Chinese businessman who was introduced to me, and who later received the Lord and got baptised!
These are still the very beginning. I better not count the chickens before it even hatched. Yet, I am being encouraged to love the Lord more; our labor in the Lord in prayer, in preaching, and in shepherding will never go in vain.
The Lord's burden in Ephesians 4:11-13 must be fulfilled, and this is our burden too. "And He Himself gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as shepherds and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of the ministry, unto the building up of the Body of Christ, until we all arrive at the oneness of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, at a full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ."
Looking to the Lord for more perfecting.