Today I have been preparing to be with the pre-teens youngsters in the church. They have asked me to come and tell them about India and what God is doing in that great nation.
I plan to show them many pictures and tell them about some of the wonderful people I have met on my travels in India. I will tell them of a very young man of God called Dinesh. He looked like a teenager, but I guess he actually was in the early twenties! He was very calm, kind of surrounded by divine peace, as he told his story.
After he had finished training in a Bibleschool he went back to his village to share the good news of the Kingdom of God with his own tribe. Faithfully he visited the homes of the villagers, helping them with their work, sharing the gospel and praying for the sick. Gradually a small covenant community developed.
One day a Hindu priest and his wife came to him, carring their dead child, a seven years old boy. The child had been dead for several hours and was about to be put on the bonfire according to the Hindu custom. Then somebody told the priest about this young man of God and what God had been doing through him. Now he approached Dinesh for prayer as his last hope to see his son come back to life.
Dinesh the young man of God prayed for the dead boy but nothing happened. Then he asked the couple to just wait in his home awhile as he wanted to bring another believer to help in in prayer. He ran to his Christian friend and brought this believer back with him and they prayed for the child the second time. When they started to pray the second time for the boy, he started to move a little bit and as they continued to pray the boy was brought back to life! When they finished praying the child immediately asked his mother for milk! He was given milk to dring and food to eat as Dinesh was sharing the gospel with the entire family. No wonder that the whole priestly family came to Christ that day and were baptised to Christ in a nearby lake!
When Dinesh told his story it was like he told something very natural, something ordinary, something normal that happened to him. And indeed it seems to be very natural to a man of God to see miracles like this take place because of prayer.