To know You and make You known.

We often find that when we are most of our comfort zones and trusting in God to provide that we get to see scripture come alive like never before. This past trip to India I saw this happen in a conversation at our hotel where I was asked why I was there by two english-speaking Indian engineers who were staying at the same hotel as us. I responded that we were tourists and they assumed that since we were there as tourists that we were planning on seeing “The Temple”.  I asked them what temple and they were referring to and one of them answered the temple for Shibaba (as if I should have known).

 

My teammate asked who Shibaba was? What he was known for? What some of his attributes were?

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These two gentlemen just looked at each other without an answer as 10 seconds or so went by as they had no response.

 

Our eyes were ready to pop out of our heads as one of them muttered someone about him being an incarnation of another god and that he had made the 10 hour trip from Mumbai before to come to the temple and worship him.

 

My heart broke.

 

The complete lostness of these people who not only have no hope within Hinduism, so many on them know nothing about the gods that they worship.

 

While I can hardly blame them knowing just a handful of the thousands of gods that they worship, I am afraid of the response that many professing Christians might give here in America if asked who their God is? What He is known for? What His attributes are?

 

Paul had a similar experience in Acts 17 when the Athenians asked him to speak in midst of the Areopagus. In this passage Paul notes the many idols that they worship in Athens including one alter with the inscription, “To the unknown god”.  

 

Read what Paul then proclaims to them about the God that they worship as unknown from Acts 17: 24-31.

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,27that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28for

“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;

as even some of your own poets have said,

“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

29Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. 30The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

I never got the opportunity to share the gospel with those two guys, but I will never forget them for the arrow they were into the lostness that I was in the midst of and am still in the midst of while at home in St. Louis.

Let us be thankful that the Creator God is not a gold of silver image formed by the imagination of man, nor does He dwell in temples made by man, but rather gives breath and everything to every human life.

In Him we  live and having our being. It is because of this that we give our lives to know Him and make Him known among those who claim to worship no God or worship a god they do not know.

Join us in this journey and ask God to reveal to you the lostness around you that you make identify the opportunities around you to help others know Christ more.