6 Lessons I Learned While Serving in Pakistan

While seminary teaching was one of my primary roles during the five years that my wife Earlene and I spent in Karachi, Pakistan, I was often the one doing the learning!

In fact, on our first Sunday back in America when we returned home, I remember a longtime College Park Church member asking me a wonderful question at the end of Sunday service. He asked: “Did you learn anything?”

I replied, “I learned that most of the world’s problems are caused by unhappy people.”  A person doesn’t have to travel eight-thousand miles to learn that, but I did!

It’s not the only lesson I learned, however. Here are a few more lessons learned that I’d like to share:

1. All theory ends when you get off the airplane. From then on, it’s reality.

2. Culture is far deeper than the food you eat, the clothes you wear, and the music you like.

3. Adjustment to a radically different environment comes in increments.

4. In his last sermon in his series on the Gospel of Matthew, Pastor Mark Vroegop said, “I have an idea that if you take a risk for the kingdom of Christ, God has a way of showing up.” He was right!

5. Avoid making big decisions based on what option is the easiest. If my wife and I had done that, we would have missed out on such a great opportunity for ministry.

6. Pray for victory in the unseen world in order to have victory in the seen world. You read of something like this in Daniel 10 and it is still playing out in our twenty-first-century world. We are to “wrestle . . . against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world.”

I pray these lessons would be a help to you as you consider the growth that comes from stepping out in faith, and as you reflect on what God has been teaching you.

Class dismissed!