You are invited
I was invited by my good friends Rosie and Hannah to join other young people for this exciting project called ShareHim back in 2015. I had no idea what ShareHim was about but a mission trip to Mexico with the crew sounded quite exciting. I later found out that ShareHim required each participant to hold an evangelistic campaign every night for two weeks at a designated church. At that point in life, I had previously had the chance to preach here and there but preaching every night for two weeks was daunting to say the very least. But I decided to take up the invitation and head to Tuxla Gutierez, Chiapas, Mexico.
The organiser briefed us during our first day there and invited us to first have solid prayer time above anything else, even if it meant taking the time from preparing the presentations for each day. This was a radical idea because I was already nervous presenting the messages which I was not too familiar with and to a local crowd I didn’t know. But I took up the invitation and prioritised prayer and then prepared the messages. The first few nights at the Real del Bosque Church were tough because I had not established any relationship with the church members and those in the community. But despite feeling like I did not deliver the message too well, the Holy Spirit worked in the people’s hearts.
After the first week, I started to ease up and the church family also warmed up to me. I was invited to eat lunch on the Sabbath with them and they prepared some special tamales for me. I was also invited by one generous family to go to the night market after one of the presentations to have the local street food like elote. I thoroughly enjoyed the blessings of friendship, good food, and the blessing of sharing God’s word. By the end of my two weeks, God blessed our time there with many making the decision to be baptised. The trip, overall, was such a humbling and growing experience for me and the crew and I felt so honoured with the series of invitations for and during the trip.
God has many invitations for us in the Bible. He invited us to come and reason (Isaiah 1:18), receive rest (Matthew 11:28), walk in the light (John 8:12), drink the living water (John 7:37-39), and dine together (Revelation 3:20). He invites us because He is a relational God and wants to have a much closer relationship with each of us. It is an absolute honour to know that our Creator wants to even eat together with us (eating is something I love and 95% of the people I know enjoy).
I am glad to be part of the Melbourne City Adventist Church community that also extends God’s invitations to the people of Melbourne. Each time I have brought friends and colleagues to our church family, they have felt very welcomed. I pray that we will continue this beautiful culture.
