The Fragrance of Christ

2 Corinthians 2:14-16 3:4-5
"But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life. And who is adequate for these things?...Such confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.."

The verses in Corinthians about believers being the fragrance of Christ as been so appropriate during our time here so far. Because of not only the language barrier but also cultural and religious ones, we rarely have the opportunity to sit down and share the gospel with someone here. The majority of our witness is our lifestyle, or our fragrance. We live as followers of Christ among those who are perishing and wait for God to give us opportunities to explain ourselves.

For example, one of the people we see most often outside of our team is the girl who lives across the street from us. She is 14 years old, the niece of the pastor of the 7th Day Adventist church here, and has earned the code-name Patience in our team for good reason! Our relationship with her is dependent on our ability to live out our faith and let Christ work through us moment by moment. For a few weeks now, we have been going back and forth trying to figure out what's appropriate to let Patience do, what's just cultural confusion and what's not ok in either culture, how much to give her or let her see of our stuff, and basically where to draw the line in the relationship. Then one morning it occurred to me that I had no idea if she even knew Jesus. She could be like the majority of believers in America who say they believe but don't live it day to day, or maybe she's been holding out to see if this Christianity stuff is really better than Islam or not. We talked as a team and decided to be more deliberate about the time she's with us and in praying for her.

Last night we finally had a solid conversation, partly because the power was out so she wasn't distracted by our electronics, and Melissa and I were able to establish that she has given her life to Christ. Praise God! We went on to talk about a bunch of random topics and share lots of scripture and even gently challenge a few things in her. It was a huge answer to prayer and I hope she will continue visiting looking for deeper friendship and not just to take advantage of our American-ness.

We want our lives to be examples of what it looks like to be in love with God and to totally give ourselves to him. Women here in general don't usually dream about their futures; mostly they expect to marry and have children, which aren't even necessarily joyful or exciting things. It's not that I want to draw them away from marriage and motherhood, but I want them to be free to let God direct their futures. God may or may not be calling Patience to be a wife and mother, but He is definitely calling her to love Him and love those around her as a testimony of His love. Our witness is not in our occupation but our love, and I pray that in our time here Patience will smell the fragrance of our love and be drawn closer to God because of it.