God’s plan for us

All of us are created uniquely and our lives are filled with purposes by God. Our primary responsibility is to know our creator and worship Him. In doing this we are tuning ourselves to hear from Him what He wants us to do with our lives. It becomes everything about Him and His purposes and less of us and what we want to do with our lives.

Psalms 139:16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them

Ephesians 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

There are “good works” which God pre-planned for you to accomplish on the earth. There are places that God wants you to go to; people He wants you to touch; lives He wants you to impact; things He wants you to accomplish; cities to transform, nations to shake!

God’s Plan for Us Is Always Good!

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward, says the LORD, thoughts of, thoughts of peace (Heb. peace ‘shalom’) and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

God’s good vs our good

After man ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and bad, he has come to a state where he was able to know good and evil. He knows what is good and what is bad. However, because of sin and man's corrupt mind, today if we look at the world we live, we see that we have reached a point where good is called evil and evil is called good.

Isaiah 5:20 Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness;
Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

When I was not yet saved, I also had a definition of what is good for me and I knew that clearly. I really feared that becoming a Christian will be a miserable life. That is also because most of the Christians I knew were either very careful, boring, or people who I never found interesting.

As an unbeliever my definition of good was making a lot of money, becoming famous, powerful, go abroad and study, party and enjoy life to the fullest. I thought if I give my life to the Lord, I will have to let go of all these plans, wear simple clothes, be poor, go to a remote village and share gospel etc. Now this mind-set really stopped me from going ahead and accepting Jesus as my Lord and Saviour.

The devil is a liar and nothing good comes from him. I was distracted and slowly started developing a victim mentality; I dropped out of engineering, got in to a wrong relationship, and was introduced to smoking, drinking and parties. I was only 21 and was earning good money by working in a call centre, thought this is as good as it can get for me. Now let me just live this life and live life in my terms.

Then I met with a crisis in my life

I grew up with out parents from my age of 5. Lost my mother in an accident and father left us. I was brought up by my maternal grand mother and she was a Godly woman. She passed away when I was 19 and I became very rebellious around this time. When I was 22, one Saturday night, say around 4 am I met with an accident when I was drunk and riding a bike to attend a party. I was in the hospital for a couple of weeks and later movements restricted because of a knee surgery.

During this time when I was confined to the hospital bed, life was very slow and a million thoughts went through my mind

I clearly understood that the path I chose is taking me nowhere and I am already in a snare which is difficult to come out of.

When I was in the hospital, I had a visitor and I was very surprised with it. That was pastor Ashish Raichur. Right after I got out of the hospital, I visited him and then my visits became every week or every two weeks.

I visited APC once before the accident, Dr Ashok Kripalani met me as a first time visitor, he was doing his fellowship in Manipal Orthopedics dept. he saw me as a patient and he informed pastor.

From then, I never missed church, every Sunday was time for me to learn the word of God and soak myself in it. I also continued to meet with Pastor as he was teaching me life skills, Spiritually encouraging me and being someone I can look up to and learn from

The word of God changed my desires and dreams and gave me a new Godly vision

My priorities changed and the number one priority in my life became my walk with Jesus

I really had to set the priorities right since I was planning to go back to my engineering and complete the degree. So I took a personal loan, paid the fees, cleared my back logs and joined back 3^rd year of engineering. Now I was studying engineering in the day time and working in a call center in the night.

See, my vision for my life changed after I became a believer and I saw that when I started taking steps in the new direction, God took a step with me and showed me favour.

I had a manager/ director who went out of his way to show me favour by giving me off days during exams or adjust my shift time.

Since I was working, studying and have friends, I had to set my priorities right and this really helped me

I also set goals against each of the priorities

Now I started desiring Holy Spirit presence and started learning more about the Spiritual gifts. I kept pursuing baptism in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues.

Since I come from a traditional Christian back ground, I really spent time researching on the importance of Water Baptism and I took water baptism here at APC

How serving God in Church helped me grow in the word and Spirit and in His favour

I would make local phone calls to just share the Gospel with strangers

See, once you are a Christian you feel dumb when you hang out with your worldly friends. Then you start looking at Christian fellowship. We start hanging out with likeminded people and soon you begin getting that community feeling. But that is the wrong kind of fellowship since that doesn’t allow you to grow as a Christian

Meaningful fellowship results in true discipleship, transforming us into Christlikeness.

Starting prayer fellowship in offices

Gods blessings at work

Being faithful in smaller responsibilities in Church (announcements in charge)

Serving as a youth pastor

Continued serving the same way without any title

Then I suddenly fell ill and the doctors were not able to diagnose anything. This just made things worse and I was in the ICU on C pap ventilator. My wife understood that things weren’t going in the right direction as I had sepsis since my spleen was not functioning and that she might lose me. She took a bold decision of discharging me against medical advice, sat with me in the ambulance since I needed breathing assistance and took me to the ICU of another hospital. There I recovered but was unwell for quite some time.

Opportunity to serve as an Associate Pastor

What are the dreams and desires the Lord has given to you? What is the legacy that you want to leave before your life ends? What do you want to be known for?

Do you know the Lord who created you personally? Message of salvation