Susie Finney is a full time missionary with Youth With A Mission in Tyler, TX, working with the School of the Bible. When she’s not busy teaching or hanging out with her Bible students, she blogs, reads, and goes to as many Christian concerts as possible. I am thrilled to have her share her story of how God changed her heart and life with us today as part of our release week party for Wrecked: When a Broken World Slams into Your Comfortable Life. You can follow Susie on her blog or on Twitter:
Blog: www.missionsmusings.comTwitter: @missionsgirl
Nepal – Photo by Karna Deshar
It was July 2009, and I was very, very far from home.
They sometimes walked for miles to come to our seminar. Men and women who had experienced the challenges of living in a predominantly Hindu country, where the Christian population was very small. I met men and women in Nepal who had done jail time for the “crime” of being Christians. People who had been beaten and exiled from their village for their faith. And here I was, an American girl in her late twenties, looking and feeling very out of place in Nepal. I’d never experienced persecution beyond maybe someone rolling their eyes at me. I’d certainly never been kicked out of town for my beliefs.
The one statement that has always stuck with me from my Nepal outreach was during the last day of our second Bible seminar, held in the city of Pokhera. They asked some of the seminar participants to share feedback from the week-long seminar. One man stood up and started to speak through an interpreter. “I became a believer five years ago, but always wondered whether or not I was following the true God, and now I know.”
The theme verse of our seminar was John 17:3 “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”, but his statement was significant not only for that, but because he came from a Hindu background and culture of millions of gods and goddesses. Why should someone choose to follow Jesus and Jesus alone? What made him unique and to be worshiped rather than all the other options available at the shrines we saw at virtually every corner?
The thing that cemented this man’s faith was digging in to the scriptures and seeing what they said about what God is like-His nature and character, always trustworthy and true. It wasn’t based on feelings or an arbitrary view of an unstable god who could change on a whim.
Three years have come and gone since my trip to Nepal. I haven’t been out of the U.S. since then, and have spent most of my time at the YWAM base here in Tyler, TX. But I will never forget the people I met during my month in Nepal. My perspective changed after meeting people who had suffered for their faith, and people who came from a very different perspective than my own, yet we were bound together by love of the same Lord.
At the moment I don’t get out and travel much, but I am still a missionary. My time in Nepal was simply another confirmation of the power of God’s Word, and the privilege of getting to teach it and watch as people’s lives change never gets old, whether here in the States or halfway across the world. It is so vital to understand what scripture says about God, about Who He really is. I guess you could say that that trip reoriented my perspective on the world in that way.
How about you? What is one experience you’ve had that has changed the way you view the world around you and what is most important to you?
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