One of the things that we did day and and day out was to go out on prayer walks. While my team and I were in Saigon (the old capitol of the south) we went around a large portion of the city praying and asking God to break through and touch people's hearts and minds. The vast majority of Vietnam is Buddhist, and is covered in pagoda's and temples. In almost every store front there are small altars with offerings of money, fruit, choco-pies, and Coca-Cola, and in most taxis and busses there are pictures or small statues of gods on the dashboards. There's a mentality of religiosity everywhere, most everyone worships something, be it Buda, other house-hold gods, ancestors, money or glamor. And where there are visible churches, they are generally quite tall, lofty, and filled with statues of saints, in almost identical fashion to how Buddhist temples are set up. It was quite heart breaking to see that the truth was available in the south, but it was so controlled that the understanding of relationship with God as a personal, loving father rarely saw the light of day. Christianity is generally just another thing you 'do', just like going to the temple or the pagoda. This is why we prayed so much, asking God to soften the hearts of the Vietnamese to the truth of the Gospel and the Kingdom of God.
On one of our prayer walks, I had the chance to go to a major cathedral in Saigon. It was quite beautiful, but also sad because it was more of a tourist site than the house of the Lord. You could go in, and there were pews, but a lady stood in front of them at a gate so that ordinary site seers wouldn't be able to just go in and mess around. I felt strongly like I was supposed to go into the pews and pray that the revelation of God as a loving father would come to, and spread from this place. I walked up to the lady at the gate, asked if I could go in and pray (not knowing if I would be allowed) and she immediately opened it for me, and I went in to pray and intercede. After about 20 minutes, I felt like I was done and went back to my group. My teammates proceeded to tell me that they had tried to get in to the pews and pray as well, but the lady had stopped them and asked them if they were Catholic. When they said that they weren't, she denied them entrance. It was really cool to see that when you are obedient to what you hear God telling you to do, he opens doors for you to do it.
One day, as a result of a miscommunication, we did a prayer walk at a zoo. I went into thinking "why on earth are we doing a prayer walk HERE?", but felt God was saying, "Just do it, I have something important that I want to show you". Most of the time while I was in the zoo I was just sad. The animals had a very limited amount of space to move around in, nothing close to what they are supposed to have. They were all out of their natural habitat and had filthy living conditions. I didn't understand what God was speaking to me until the next day. We went to a large Open Church that day. It was very regimented, you sat, you stood, you sang, you sat again, you listened, and repeated. This was mostly because to stay an Open Church, there are certain guidelines that you have to abide by. There are certain things you can teach on, and things that you would get in major trouble for saying. And this is where the Zoo comes in. Just like all the animals in their cages, the Church in Vietnam has very little breathing room. They don't have the room to be what they were born to be; wild, crazy, Jesus lovers. Seeing that burdened my heart for them to experience the freedom, that as a westerner, I've come to expect my entire life.
The other side of the picture is where people have caught onto the precious truth that is worth dying for. Some of the people we met had been thrown interrogated, beaten, persecuted, and thrown into prison for the sake of the Gospel. So while persecution is terrible, it can also cause the truth to spread faster and more rapidly when people see how worthy our Lord and Savior is.
No comments:
Post a Comment