Ministries

[Last updated: mar 09]

I have been praying about what my ministries in His Kingdom. I got some words of wisdom, hopefully from Him. It seems for me my ministries start with places where i am put into. I guess the idea is what Jesus said to Peter: "Take care of my sheep"..

-Surprisingly, its only recently, i realized my main ministry is my lab!! Yes people around me are usually non-believers. So its really important how i conduct myself in my lab & treat my labmates, keeping in mind that His will is to bring in His Kingdom into our work-places through believers around!

Now it is becoming more and more clear of the need & importance to invest in becoming good friends with labmates and think&care about them and try to become part of their lives. People around can be very stressed out and do seek for friendly attention.

Also people in any research lab usually have the "publish or perish" pressure, which results in a lot of junk publications! Christians are expected to maintain integrity of character in work and follow 1Kings 9:4: "And if thou wilt walk before me, as David thy father walked, in integrity of heart, and in uprightness, to do according to all that I have commanded thee,..."

-Then i realized my home is my 2nd main ministry: i have 2 room-mates: 1 muslim, 1 hindu. One is very stressed out these days with jobsearch. My other roommate is a devout muslim and such a nice guy, that i am learning a lot from him. I think God prompts me a lot to invest in deep friendships with them...

-And my mom, bother, sister, their family in India.

-While driving to work, there is an opportunity to drop by 8-9am, M-F Bible study with homeless in a church for homeless (http://www.lordofthestreets.org/). There is a lot of opportunities out there: like pray for them during & after the Bible study, etc.

-And yes recently i got words of wisdom about facebook ministries (while praying, yeah!). I am working on: "Pray for the World"
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=70687636352&ref=ts
the idea is to regularly pull out issues around the world and post it there, so that people in facebook can jointly pray about them...i am working on it :-)

Another one is a book review of "celebration of disciplines":
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=66244503768&ref=mf
The idea is to share "favorite quotes" from books that i read with others..

While reading "celebration of disciplines", i am becoming very excited about fasting. It does a really good job in presenting the discipline of fasting. At some point when Great Britain was in danger of being attacked by France, the whole country started praying, and the French invasion seemed to have averted. I think one can use facebook to that that!! -- it should be very easy to call people, through facebook, for joint worldwide fasting if some serious world issue comes up!

Facebook evangelism should work out very nicely for people who spend a lot of time on computers (like myself ;).

-As i interact with Christian here, i am realizing how important it is for Christians to go on regular mission trips. Outside US, there are so many places, which need Jesus so much. Hope He would also bless me with mission trips every year.





-Understanding the science behind faith: I noticed that my faith is still very weak. Usually, i have seen, that when something dosnt happen my way, i get distressed and start questioning my faith. It happened again the other day, and i started reasoning if God is real, from a scientific point of view! This came to my mind:
"If there is someone like God who knows everything that is going to happen in future, then it means everything is predetermined. But Bible says that we do have free will & choices to make. Hence how can someone like God exists who knows the future!". Matt from campus crusade, rice u., told me not to loose faith because of it as this is the classical "Compatibilism" issue. He gave me some links to study:
http://www.monergism.com/directory/link_category/Free-Will/Compatibilism/
http://www.theopedia.com/Libertarian_free_will
http://www.geocities.com/freewilltheology/foreknowledge.html
http://www.amazon.com/reader/0830826521?_encoding=UTF8
ref_=sib_dp_pop_toc&page=9#rea
der

Since I am a scientist, i think its useful for me to study these kind of things, so that i could help people in my workplace better understand God from a scientific point of view.