FIERY TRIALS!
1 Peter 1:13 – 16”Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
We prepare for the weekend bash and summer holidays but do we ever prepare ourselves to face fiery trials? Whether you are prepared or not; nevertheless, you got to face them anyway! After resigning my secular job and joining the Lord’s work as full time servant, I had to undergo two major operations, shift several houses, face severe financial crisis, betrayals, and a lot more; yet, through it all we have come through unscathed and victorious! We were able to learn money management, people management and self-management during the process of the journey!
We as a whole family had fasted for one whole week taking just one meal and fasted for an ‘all-night-prayer’; my son was very small during that time and my daughter around 14 and my maid also joined us during such fasting period. After a whole week of preparations, fasting, back-breaking prayers, sermon preparation, informing people, worship practice and what not; the crowd that showed up were ‘SEVEN’ people! I repeat 7! I’m sure anyone would go bonkers! I was no super-woman and as I preached that day about prophet Jeremiah, I wept on the stage like the prophet. I came back home and the weeping continued, asking God for reasons! That was the last fasting prayer that we had at Chennai, after which God relocated our ministry to Hyderabad.
Now, the place where we planted our church and school in Hyderabad are ‘barren lands’ where we have to stand upside down to get people to church. Such hard-hearted and blind people! The students who study in our school are from severe abusive, alcoholic addicts and very poor background, now, I am able to understand the reason why God had taken me through some rough terrains, sufferings and humiliation so that I get prepared for the ‘fiery trials’ in the new territory - Hyderabad. Sometimes, God has to do some ‘painful things’ to shift our course of journey. Are you listening?
Preparing the mind and body is crucial! May 29, 1953, two men stood for the first time on the summit of Mount Everest: Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. Each of them carried loads of 23 kilos up the mountain! Imagine! Great achievements do not happen without pain and struggle! Are you there? Before the big expedition, Tening prepared himself for the tough journey, he got up early in the morning, filled the knapsack with stones and took long walks up and down the nearby hills. He was planning, hoping, thinking all the time of the seventh trip to Everest. Everest possessed him! Finally along with Edmund Hillary they achieved the incredible, marvelous feat and became international stars! Keep your eyes on the goal! Wobbly, unsteady, unstable, weak legs cannot climb the Everest, we got to be prepared and sure-footed for such amazing achievement.
