Hot. Just Darn Hot.

I joined up with Map My Ride+ as they celebrate the Tour de France with their own Tour de Fat.  I committed to ride 100 miles during the days of the Tour de France.  The next break up was 500 and I knew that was a little bit unrealistic given our schedule and that it's JULY.

I rode this morning.  When I left it was 87 and when I returned an hour later, it was 91 and its been going up since then.  But of course, everyone tells me today is a "cool" day.  Everyone who's not riding a bike in it!  It took me a full hour to cool down before getting ready for church.  Fortunately, our church had power this week though.

We had an interesting testimony from a Pastor who serves in India.  He was born there into a Muslim family and rejected any notion of Jesus being the son of God.  But he had a dream one night about the clouds opening up and he saw Jesus with his angels ascending and descending around him.  The dream bothered him for days so in an unconscious state he searched out and opened a Bible that an evangelist had forced on him years before.  He'd just thrown it into a box in his house and ignored it.  He flipped it open, and in front of him was John 1:51:

And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you,^[a] you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.


Once he knew that scripture backed up his dream, he was convinced that Jesus was indeed the son of God and he sought out a Christian church and pastor to help him understand what that meant.  Then, 6 months later he surrendered his life to Jesus.

The consequences were that his very devout Muslim family beat him and threw him out.  To them, he is dead.

Later he believed God was calling him to be a pastor, but because pastors in India don't have very nice lives (financially), he said, "No God, I don't want to do that."  He then became seriously ill, and was even wandering the streets, homeless.  Finally he went back to the pastor who had helped him understand Jesus, and said, "Okay, I give.  What do I do now?"

He was healed immediately of his illness, and God began blessing him with the resources to go to Bible college.

There have been other persecutions, but these were the high points.  He comes to the US every other year so he can ask for support for the mission he has in India to church plant.  He notes that he also has four daughters now and needs to either provide a good education for them, or a good dowry!

Have a great Sunday!