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Friends, welcome to this little elective here on evangelism to people from the Asian subcontinent. My name is Ben and I'm very glad that you can join me as we look at how we might best preach the Gospel to people from the subcontinent and really I want to go through four things that I hope will be helpful in just

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understanding the context around what it looks like to preach to people from the Asian subcontinent and so I want to start with awareness, things around what the Asian subcontinent is, how diverse it is, what sort of stuff we need to take into account. Then I want to move to building bridges and ways that we might be able to

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connect with people from the Asian subcontinent to be able to preach the Gospel to them in a framework that they can understand and then I want to go to communication and think about communication in all its aspects and finally I want to go to disciple making and the importance of disciple making especially for

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people in the Asian subcontinent. But let me start by praying and then we'll get stuck in with awareness. Our most gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time together when we get to think and reflect and find ways to best and most effectively preach the Gospel to our brothers and sisters from the Asian

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subcontinent. We thank you Father for that migration means that so many are coming to our doorstep and so many are interacting with us and we pray ultimately Father that for the sake of your glory more and more people may know the assurance that they can have in Jesus and that means that they can

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accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior and it means that they can live for Him. And so Father, we pray that we might think through these things that we might discuss with each other and we might be able to put these things into practice ultimately for the sake of your glory and we pray this all in Jesus name. Amen.

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So awareness, there's a lot of things to take into account when we're thinking about people from the Asian subcontinent and just so you know from now on I'm going to refer to them as subbies because it's much easier and quicker. But there are many things we need to think through when it comes to subbies and those

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things actually range from socio-economic status to cultural understanding to the types of people and the situation they're in when they may migrate to Australia or come here for education purposes. It also includes the different religions that are around including the household religions which means there

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are thousands upon thousands of ways that people think about how God interacts with them and how they need to please God. Just a few things to just give you a bit of an idea. First of all the Asian subcontinent covers many many countries India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the list really just goes on and on and on

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and the reality is that amongst all those countries there are also then a whole plethora of languages and so not only are there for example in India a language for each state but actually on average every 20 to 30 kilometers there's a new dialect of that language and people from the Asian subcontinent don't often

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refer to themselves according to the country. So most people who come as first generation migrants don't think of themselves as Indian they will think of themselves as Gujarati because they come from Gujarat or they'll think of themselves as Punjabi because they come from Punjab and so that's important

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to take into account because just saying that oh your Indian is actually not something that people are happy with they take pride in where they come from and there's often rivalry and division amongst each of the states and so apart from really the Indian cricket team there is no nationality like that that

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people really adopt. Another thing to take into account is that the people that are coming into Australia are coming from in various different ways so we have our first generation migrants, our second generation migrants, our 1.5 generation and then we have international students and amongst all of those

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there are a whole bunch of differences but it is important to know that first generation migrants are often coming here and trying to find ways to think about how it was in India and then make sense of how they're to live now in Australia in a completely different culture without losing their heritage.

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Second generation migrants often their parents had that struggle but they then growing up in a Western education system going through primary and high school in Australia it means that they are much more comfortable with an Australian system it's a really good thing but it also means that there is a lot of tension

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between what they might be comfortable with and what they are willing to do for the sake of honoring or dishonoring their parents. Even more awkward is the 1.5 generation of which I am and the 1.5 generation people they basically have their parents come with them migrate to a new country and then go through part of the

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schooling system in Australia but because their parents are first generation what it means is that they grow up with a Western education system but they grow into communities of other like-minded people and so there is a tension that remains between what they do at home and what they do in family life and what

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they do at school and at university and in the workplace. All of these things in one sense don't make that much difference to preaching the gospel but in other sense they really do because what it looks like to preach the gospel to someone for them to adopt and accept it and then to live lives differently it

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actually does matter a lot whether they have ties to their family whether they have ties to particular traditions and cultures whether they have ties to particular ways of living and even financial gains from being part of a community where everybody helps each other and so communal living and communal

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understanding actually make a big difference to whether someone is actually able to engage with the gospel and so whether people are interested or not a lot of the time they will push away the idea of Christianity because Christianity means giving up on my family Christianity means giving up on my friends and my

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social networks and even my ability to take care of myself and so these are things that we really do want to take into account when we think through evangelizing two people from the subcontinent. Of course the other thing is that along with all those things we can't really ignore the fact that Western

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understanding, hedonism, materialism are all things that have actually gone through the Asian subcontinent and so there is a lot of people in India who actually don't have any problem thinking through Western ways of doing things because of things like Hollywood and even Bollywood and all of those things

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actually really important for us to take into account because we don't want to get into the mindset that all Indians are people that are super traditional who always are praying and there's incense everywhere and they wear very traditional clothing actually that's not the case at all and so because where

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you come from makes a difference people who are in big cities like Chennai and Mumbai and Bangalore will act very differently to people who are in smaller towns or villages and people who grew up with much more of a socioeconomic status and with money who act very differently to people who grew up in poverty and so

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all of these things actually make a big difference in what it looks like to minister to people from the subcontinent. Now all of this is basically to say that when you're ministering to subbies you want to treat each individual as an individual. The idea of getting to know that person for who they are is actually

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really helpful in then understanding their context and what might be the most appropriate way to preach the gospel to them but in the end the reality is that what we want to do is we want to make sure that these people who really are very religious in the secular sense of the word and really do care about what God

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thinks are able to see that by an interaction with Jesus they are able to have assurance they're able to know as a fact that they can have eternal life even now and so it reminds me very much of John 11 and it's the thing that I would pray for all my interactions with people from the subcontinent as I talk to

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them about Jesus. It was actually that interaction where Jesus and Martha are speaking and Jesus makes this amazing claim. I am the resurrection and the life the one who believes in me even if he dies will live and actually what happens is that in the interaction it's not just Jesus talking about the fact

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that he will raise people up on the last day but actually in the interaction Jesus is helping us to pinpoint something else. He see Martha earlier on says Lord if you had been here my brother would not have died yet even now I know that whatever you ask from God God will give you and Jesus says of course your

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brother will rise again and Martha says I know he will rise again on the last day but Jesus actually goes just a step further and he says no it's not just on the last day actually an interaction with me means that even now you can know for sure that you will have certainty of heaven in the future. Now friends that

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changes everything. I trust that if you're a Christian person watching this that that has made a big difference in your life and it will make a big difference in the lives of people from the subcontinent who are desperately trying to find ways to connect with God to understand how they can attain mockshire. Now we'll

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talk about mockshire in the next session but to understand how they can attain enlightenment be one with God again and the reality is that they are trying and searching and finding all sorts of ways to do that but what they really need is they need to know the gospel. They need to know that Jesus is the one that

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saves and they need to know that an interaction with Jesus means they can be assured even now and that will change everything in their lives. Now just for a little bit of a discussion in your booklets you'll see some questions around awareness and just thinking through what it looks like and perhaps your

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experiences of speaking to someone from the subcontinent so take a few moments to chat with those that are around you about awareness and awareness of service and then in a few moments we'll come back and then we will have a look at building bridges. Well friends welcome back. I hope that discussion was helpful and

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of course please do take those questions and keep discussing it even after you finish with this conference. We've had a look a little bit about awareness and just to let you know that there is much more about the Asian subcontinent that there is to say and we just don't have the time to say it but it is important to

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think through and talk to people individually about these things. However we're going to move on to building bridges and I think building bridges is very important because as we get more and more aware of of contacts and of cultures and of the different subbies that we will come into contact with it's really

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important to think through what it looks like to then build bridges with these people in order to be able to help them to understand the gospel in frameworks that they already get. Now it's really important to think through this deeply and well because just saying something like Jesus is the way that we can meet with

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God doesn't necessarily mean what you might think it means. So for somebody from a Hindu background Jesus is a way to meet with God means yes Jesus is one of the ways just like Shiva and Ganesh and all these other people that you can meet with God and exclusivity in terms of religion is not something that

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generally speaking subbies are very comfortable with. And so when we think through bridges and what it looks like we really do want to think through how we can help people from the subcontinent to see that the things that they are thinking and the ways that they are interacting with people and the ways that they are

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thinking about religion are actually things that are good and right if they are understood through a Jesus shaped lens. And so that's something that we want to help them think through. So for example here are three examples of this the first one is this idea of birth and rebirth. Now of course again this is generic and

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not everyone will believe this but just as a general rule the idea of karma is something that is very important to people from India. And the reason why karma is so important is because karma is actually about the fact that you have an eternal life before and an eternal life after and depending on the good and

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bad things that are done you continually are reborn. And as you are reborn the the purpose, the idea, the hope is that you do enough good things and you are doing things that are pleasing to God that every time you are reborn you are reborn to something that is better and better. Until eventually all the

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comic weight, all the debt that's there in your life is removed and you attain something that is known as Moksha which is basically enlightenment connecting with God once again. Now the problem of course with something like karma is you're never good enough. The problem with something like karma is it is so

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much guilt and so much burden and there is a reality that you can never get rid of that guilt that's there. However using something like rebirth and then changing the foundations of what that looks like and then explaining it from a Jesus lens is actually really helpful because it helps people to see that

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yes there is rebirth not multiple times but just once. So we go again to John's gospel and we go to John chapter 3 and we see that Jesus has an interaction with a man named Nicodemus and as Nicodemus continues to talk with Jesus what becomes very very important and clear is that Jesus says the statement unless

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someone is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. Now Nicodemus I think very rightly asked the question can someone enter into a mother's womb a second time and be born again and Jesus says no actually I assure you unless someone is born of water and the spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God. It's

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really important now of course we know by going back to the Old Testament and to Ezekiel 36 that being born of water and the spirit being being born of water being washed clean and being born of the spirit in that Jesus in that God comes into your life and changes your heart to incline it towards him these sorts

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of things are absolutely needed and are absolutely something that you yourself cannot do. Now in Jesus talks about these things in his interaction with Nicodemus he's saying actually you do need to be born again but only once you are born again in Jesus and that means you can have eternal life that means you can

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attain Moksha. You are once again connected with your life source you're connected with God the Father because of the work that Jesus has done and because of the work that Jesus is continuing to do and these are the types of things that help to build bridges because they understand the idea of what it

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looks like to continually be reborn they know that there is a burden to that and saying no not reborn many times reborn once in Jesus and therefore having eternal life is a way to build a bridge. Another example of this might be something like doing your duty. Doing your duty is something that is really

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really important to people from the subcontinent and especially the more traditional households and things like doing your duty are things that often they don't they don't really factor in when people from the subcontinent think about Christianity through Western lens. Christianity is not about doing

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your duty everyone just says Christianity is about trusting in Jesus but what about living? What does it look like? And so then you go for example to some way like Luke 18 and the interaction that Jesus has with the rich, rich young ruler and the reality is that people from the subcontinent will say no we need

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to do many things it's necessary to live a good life and in one sense as Christians of course we agree with that it is good to live a good life but it looks different from a Jesus shaped lens and so in his interaction with the rich young ruler he says good teacher what must I do to inherit eternal life and

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Jesus says why do you call me good? No one is good but God and then he says do not commit adultery do not murder do not steal do not bear false witness to honor your mother and father and and the ruler says I've done all of these things and Jesus says you still lack one thing sell all that you have and distribute it to the

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poor and you will have treasure in heaven then come and follow me and the rich young ruler actually goes away extremely sad because he was very rich now the idea behind using a passage like this is to say that you know what duty is really important the problem though is that as we try and do our duty towards

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God the reality is that the Bible is teaching us that we all fall short we don't do things perfectly we don't treat God as we should and the reality is that if we don't do this and we don't do it perfectly then that is actually not that helpful we are not doing our duty well but actually through the Jesus shaped

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lens we see that what God is teaching us and what God is telling us is yes we are meant to be doing these things but we don't it's very obvious we don't and so thank God that he sent his son to die for us and that means that he is done all the work and it means that because he has done all the work and his spirit

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changes our lives we incline ourselves to want to do his will more and more because you see of course if you keep reading down this really important thing that happens is that in verse 27 Jesus replies what is impossible with men is possible with God we cannot do our duty perfectly but God can change things for

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us and so again we use something that people in the subcontinent know about well and we make sure that they are able to really think through what it looks like from a Jesus shaped lens now very quickly there are a whole bunch of things we could do and there are a whole bunch of things that you will discuss in a few

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moments but if we just quickly jump to Hebrews chapter 10 and starting at verse 11 we see another important thing is acceptable sacrifices because in Hinduism and in Islam and in all sorts of other religions especially for people in the subcontinent sacrifice is extremely important sacrifice to the

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gods to appease them to make sure they're not angry to make sure that everything is okay so that I will get good crop so that I will live a good life so that my children won't get sick is something that is of great importance and so again using a Jesus shaped lens and saying well actually all your sacrifices the

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sacrifices that come over and over again they actually don't please God as much as they should in fact in some senses they don't please God at all but what does please God is the fact that his son was the ultimate sacrifice he was perfect he could be the ultimate sacrifice he did that sacrifice and then he sat down no

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more sacrifice needed and that's really important to help people from the Asian subcontinent think through because it's not about the burden of continuing to sacrifice and trying to make things happen it's actually about how beautiful it is that Jesus was the ones for all sacrifice and if we trust in him then

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actually our lives become a way to continue to sacrifice to God in a way that is pleasing to him in a response to what he's already done for us we're not achieving anything by our sacrifices we're thanking him instead and so just a few examples of what it looks like to build bridges using a Jesus shaped lens

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now in your groups if you want to take a few moments again and just have a think through other scenarios other Bible passages you could use other stories of interactions between Jesus and people have a think about how you've used those stories in the past and how you might use them in the future to speak to

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friends from a sub-e background then we'll come back and we'll have a look at communication welcome back again I hope that it's been fruitful thinking through how you can help build bridges between things that people from the subcontinent understand and looking at it from a Jesus shaped lens one important

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thing that we now need to look at is communication now these things all sort of intermingle with each other and so awareness and building bridges is very much part of communication however communication when it comes to people from the subcontinent is really important not just about the words we say but everything

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else around that so for example the credibility of the person communicating with gospel is extremely important the length of relationship you have with someone from the subcontinent will help them to see and will help them to feel confident that you're not just trying to proselytize there is like I mentioned we're in the

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awareness section that there is a bit of an understanding that people who are Christians are people who want to convert people to the West and that's not something we want to promote and it's actually not something that's true but that is what it would be like unless and until there are there is a relationship

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built up and you can see the genuineness of the person who's communicating the gospel now this is something that is important for us to think through because the length of relationship then also affects the lifestyle of the person communicating the gospel the reality is that the lifestyle of the person

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communicating the gospel them putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to them really believing and trusting and their whole of their life being changed because of Jesus will help the subbefriend to see the reality that it is true that Jesus actually changes everything now that's really

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important but I do want to make a small caveat here this does not mean that the only way that you can ever do evangelism is through in-depth relationship it is still possible and very important that we do things like walk up evangelism and we do things where we actually take the opportunity when we have the

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platform to preach the gospel to someone we may never see again because God is wonderful and great and can do anything and everything but it is very important for us to know that relationship and credibility is very helpful in communication now the reason of course for that is that as a general rule subbees

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are very communal in their living knowing that somebody is a credible person means that they will get a platform knowing that somebody is a credible person is a trustworthy person means that they can be listened to and they can be understood without thinking through all the other things that might break their

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worldview on top of that of course is the context of the communication now this is really important because we want to put together awareness and cultural things with the idea of communicating in particular contexts if you go into a place where all subbees are located and one of them is thinking a little bit

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about Christianity and the rest of them are Hindus because of cultural understanding and because of not putting everyone else in the room out even if that person is interested they are not going to respond they're not going to respond because it's not helpful for everyone else in the room to either be put

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out or for them to be shocked that somebody is breaking all of their family traditions and breaking all of their cultural traditions to think about something that's new and different and so it is important that when we think about communication we also think about where we communicate the gospel to subcontinental

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people it is important to help them to come into your circle of friends come into your groups invite them over to a time when you're praying together or to a Bible study or even just to hang out for a board games night and actually then preach the gospel to them in a place where they don't need to feel like they

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need to defend other people from a different religious background help people to see that it is comfortable and right and good to want to follow Jesus that it's not about becoming Western it's about knowing the assurance you can have and therefore living all of your life praising Jesus these sorts of things are

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actually really important as principles of communication and it is something that as we think more and more about culture and sub-culture we come to understand that there's a whole bunch of things where what they actually value and what they have as a world view is very different from what we see on the

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outside this is often known as the cultural onion and the cultural onion actually has values in the middle and then we have another layer which is rituals and another layer which is heroes and symbols and the idea here is that for example some people from the subcontinent they have no problem with the idea of

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lying it's not because in the inherent values they think that God is things lying is acceptable but it's because one of the ways that they show honor to the people around them and especially to gurus or teachers or people that are of importance is that they never say anything that that makes it seem

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like they are wrong or dishonest them and so for example what will happen is that everyone in a classroom may very well cheat because what they are trying to do is make sure that the teacher doesn't feel dishonored because they did a bad job of teaching and everyone is failing now this might seem ridiculous to

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other people but for them the dishonor for the teacher is too much to bear and so what they really want to do is they want to honor the teacher and so lying is a way and cheating is a way of honoring the teacher by making sure that the teacher feels valued because they did the important thing of teaching the

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students and so you see it's very important to peel back the layers of this onion so to speak in order to think through what is actually at the core of why subcontinental people do what they do another classic one is I don't know if you've had this experience but if you haven't and you deal more with subbies

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you will you invite a couple or a person to your house and you say great come along seven o'clock for a barbecue they either rock up at 10.30 because they are late or they don't come at all and then the next day you go and chat to them and they don't even bring it up because as far as they were concerned it would be

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dishonorable to reject and invite but they actually had no intention of coming but they didn't want to dishonor you in front of your friends or in front of the other people in the room and so they said yeah sure we'll come no problem now it's about honoring the person not about the fact that they didn't live up to

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their commitment and so these sorts of things are really important when it comes to communicating both in terms of understanding the way that subbies might relate to you and the way that you ask questions to subbies it is something that takes a bit of time and takes a bit of practice it can admittedly be a

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bit frustrating but once you get past that initial cultural barrier what you see is that communication actually thrives when you're in the right context and when you've built a relationship and when you can then speak freely and openly and discuss things together and in terms of this sort of discussion another

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thing that's really important is making sure that you invite people to your home invite people to the places where you spend most of your life and we'll talk about this a little bit in the next section on discipleship and disciple making but it is actually really important that they see how it is that you

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act and you live and you interact and the fact that it is super helpful that you do know Jesus because that changes everything in life not just the way that they speak to you and so it is really important as we think about communication to just remember some of the things that we see in the

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scriptures in terms of communication and in terms of I guess building a bridge but also thinking through how to react and act to people who are different to you things through for example what it looks like in Acts 17 when the Apostle Paul speaks to those people in the Ariopolis and the fact that he

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doesn't start with something that is going to just push everyone offside but he actually starts with actually I was passing through and observing the objects of your worship I even found an altar on which was inscribed to an unknown God and before that he says many of Athens I see that you are extremely

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religious in every respect. An idea here is that he's willing to interact and to ask questions and to make sure that he's actually dealing with people where they are at and that's really important in terms of inviting people over to your house having a meal together the reality is that people want to break

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down those walls in order to be able to hear what you have to say and not think that you're just trying to convert them or trying to make them somebody Western. Now in one sense of course what we are trying to do is we're trying to show them Jesus so that they will be converted that they will turn

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from darkness to light but we need to do that in a way that's genuine and in a way that communicates what we want not just Western ideologies. So take a few moments now and have a look at the questions around communication have a look at the particular things that might have happened to you as you've dealt

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with Subbys maybe you've had the situation where you've invited them and they just have never shown up or where they've said that they're interested but actually have shown that they're not that interested at all. And think through what might be one or two possibilities in terms of ways that you can

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invite somebody to come and get to know you better and you to get to know them better and ask the right questions in order to build credibility so that communication might be more effective. And we'll come back and talk about discipleship making in a few moments.

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Welcome back for our last little section this time we're going to have a look at disciple making or discipleship. This is really important and actually again just intermingles a lot with the other three sections taking into account awareness and building bridges and context of communication. We then come to

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discipleship making and this is a really important aspect of evangelism although I think it's not just evangelism with Subbys I think just evangelism in general but especially relating to Subbys discipleship making is so very important because they do actually want to see that what you're telling them about

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Jesus isn't just some kind of compartmentalized ideology. That's my religious box and there's nothing to do with life. Actually the reality is that the way that most Subbys operate in terms of religion is religion is part of life. It doesn't matter how secular they are or how secular they seem or whether they're

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into money and girls and dancing and whatever. Actually they always come back to the fact that they do sacrifice to their gods. They do honor their parents and their ancestors. All of these things are just intertwined with what it's like to be a subcontinental person. And so the reality is that discipleship making is

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so important because it actually humanly speaking is part of the theory of what it looks like to continue to grow as a Christian. The reality is that often discipleship making starts with when we first interact with the gospel we are actually very dependent on others. We learn from others we follow others we

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think through things with others. And only after we've done that for a little while and we see what others do, do we then move to this idea of belonging and acceptance? We don't just follow a group then but we're part of a group and we're part of a group that has particular values and has a particular identity and

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it's only when we interact with the group that we start to dig deeper which finally leads to owning and witnessing for ourselves, witnessing our faith, having a personal identity that is in Christ and being able to grow to be able to then tell others about that. Now of course God can do anything and

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these things change and it's not a perfect system but it is very important to think through what it looks like to follow somebody who's been a Christian for longer. And the reason that's important is because there's a whole bunch of buzzwords that we use that Subbiz have no idea what you're talking about. So for

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example going to a growth team or going to a growth group or any of those sorts of things that doesn't really make sense. The other thing is going to a Bible study doesn't really make sense because for most Subbiz especially more traditional Subbiz it is such an audacious claim to think that you as a normal person and

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non-priest can look at scripture and understand without an interpreter. And so things like that are really important. It takes time for them to see that actually everyone can contribute and the Bible itself, the scriptures itself, tell us that we can actually interact directly with God because of Jesus but that

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takes time and it's something that's learned over time. At the same time doing things like morning devotions or quiet time or family prayer time. All of these things means either something very different or something that Subbiz have never seen before. And so going and following someone who's doing these

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things is actually really helpful. And so we want to help in the disciple making process by taking our Subbiz friends along with us too. Bible studies to church, to having catch-ups where we pray together over coffee in the morning, having inviting them to join your family in a time of prayer and Bible

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reading and interacting with your kids relating to the Bible if you have children. All of these things are things that people learn because they see others doing it. Just like I assume you learnt from your parents or from your teachers or from your scripture teachers or from your pastors. These things are

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learnt over time. And they're actually really important because they also do the thing of ensuring that Subbiz don't fall into the problem of thinking that once you know Jesus it's then about what you can do. When I think about this I think again about John's gospel and I think about John 15 where Jesus talks about the

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vine and the branches. And really the key to John 15 in that section I think is not that we as branches need to produce fruit but that actually we can't produce fruit without Jesus. So in chapter 15 verse five Jesus says I'm the vine you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much

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fruit and this is the kick-up because you can do nothing without me. That's repeated again in verse 16 you did not choose me I chose you. I appointed you that you should go out and produce fruit and that your fruit should remain so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you. This is what I

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command you to love one another. Now the key here is that Jesus is talking about the fact that the only way to produce fruit the only way to do what God commands the only way to love one another as we have seen Jesus show us how to love one another. The only way to do any of that is because we are in a

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relationship with Jesus actually Jesus is the key without Jesus we can do nothing and one of the things that we want to make sure is that as we preach the gospel to our sub-ee friends that we continue to show them what it means to continue to develop that relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ because

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actually without Jesus we can do nothing and that's something that we want to continue to do without fault so that we can keep really helping sub-conrental people to see that everything rests everything lies on the relationship that they have with the Lord Jesus Christ. Now this is really important for us because

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discipleship making then means that as we do this we also help people from the sub-continent as they take on this faith of theirs for themselves as they really understand what it means to be a Jesus person they can then take that and then pass it on to their friends and family and as they do that and pass it

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on to other sub-continentals they then have a model which they can then use to help others to see what's being done and in this way we continue to replicate ministries. So I think it's a really important thing that we want to think through and I really do think it is something that as we continue to evangelize

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to sabbis that we take seriously and continue to try and do in all the different interactions that we can and as we do that we will learn more about sabbiculture and we will learn more about the bridges that can be built and of course we will hopefully and prayerfully and under God continue to bring more

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people from darkness into light and so go on and do the questions now around disciple making and some potential things you could do potential places you could invite your sabbis friends so they can see what it looks like to live as a Jesus person in this world and then we'll come back and have a quick wrap up in a

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few moments. Well I hope that you've had a good time discussing in your groups and a good time just thinking through what it might look like for you to evangelize to sabbis and I hope this session has been helpful to just give you a

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taster in awareness of context in building bridges in communication and effective communication to sabbis and then of course in discipleship making but really I want to end by just really concluding and bringing everything back to the main focus context is really important and very helpful in good

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communication but in the end as I sometimes tell my Bible studies your best friend is Jesus and your second best friend is context and your best friend is Jesus and that's so important because in the end what we want is that people from a subcontinental background will engage with Jesus will come to know Jesus and

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know that they can have assurance of eternal life even now and one of the ways that this really is very challenging from for people from a subcontinental background is in John chapter 14 verse 6 is very very really just unbelievable phrase Jesus says I am the way the truth in the life no one comes to the father

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except through me and this is something that it will be very challenging for sabbis all over the place because their worldviews their understanding of things no matter how religious they are are not about religious exclusivity and the reality is that it takes time as a friend of mine used to say he's now

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pastoring a church in Delhi in India he used to say you can't make a carrenary the reality is you can but it's just not as good the reality to evangelizing the subcontinental is although God can do anything and so we want to do walk up and we want to take every opportunity to tell people about Jesus

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understanding their context being effective in our communication understanding the ways in which subcontinental think and being able to invite them into your houses and into your lives so that they can see the reality of what the gospel looks like in practice is so very helpful in them

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actually trusting for themselves that Jesus is their King and so my prayer is that that is what we will do that we will continue to reach out to this group of people who desperately sorely need the gospel who desperately need to see that Jesus brings life and fulfillment and everything that they are searching

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for without all the guilt and the baggage that they currently have and so please pray with me now as we finish up that more and more people will hear the gospel from the subcontinent and more and more people will turn from darkness to light our gracious Heavenly Father we thank you that you give us this

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gospel that you give us this gospel which is your power for salvation to all people and Father we pray that more and more people from the subcontinent will come into contact with us we pray Father that those people will be receptive to hearing the good news that only Jesus brings and we pray Father that as we

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interact with these people and we learn more about these people and we tell them the good news that Jesus brings that they will move from darkness to light and that your spirit will work powerfully in them in this process and Father we do pray especially that in our interactions with subcontinental people that we

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will also be able to understand more about what it looks like to live as a Jesus person with all of that cultural baggage that subcontinental people do have help us to be able to wade through those things and be able to preach the good news of Jesus to these people so that ultimately they will have

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assurance knowing that they can be in heaven with you forever and we pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.