In the coming year or two, Passion Life is going to be making a new and expanded effort in India. We expect to be traveling more to India. We expect to be adding to the current team that we have in India. We expect to see what more can be done in India to equip the church of Jesus Christ to understand the four questions that we teach from the Bible and to equip the church in India to treasure human life, to reject abortion as the shedding of innocent blood, to bring the good news of the gospel to the guilt and the grief of abortion so that people are forgiven and set free and begin to rescue mothers and their babies one at a time in their neighborhood and throughout their community. That’s the mission that we are on around the world, and India continues to be a place of great need that we now believe needs our concentrated effort and resources.

As I think about India, I can’t help but give thanks to God for his use of a man called William Carey. If you are not well read in world missions or have not been a Christian for very long, I commend to you the life and the ministry of William Carey who lived in the 18th century and was one of the pioneers to India. William Carey has had a great influence on my own life, and I’m excited about going back to the country that he gave his life for. He is perhaps most famous for writing Expect Great Things from God and Attempt Great Things for God. What a declaration of faith to expect much from God and attempt much for God. It matches prayer and faith with action and effort, It’s just always a good way to keep action and good faith working together as they should.

One of my favorite biographies about William Carey is called The Legacy of William Carey: A Model for the Transformation of a Culture. You can buy this book online at Amazon. He was an amazing man. William Carey was a missionary. He was a bible translator. He was also a botanist who discovered and named a number of things in India. He was an industrialist. He introduced steam engines to India. He was an economics major and he introduced loans that were not subject to usury. He introduced banking into India in a way that really helped many people. He built medical clinics. He started a university. He was an amazing human being. If I had 1/10th of the skills that this man had, I would be very happy and I certainly want to have the same spirit that he had as he crusaded. He was also an advocate of life. He protested infanticide in India. Babies were commonly thrown into the Ganges River in India to be eaten by alligators. When William Carey found out about this, he began an effort to outlaw infanticide in India. Eventually, that law was passed, and today it’s called Kerry’s Edict.

Here is a man who spent his life really advancing the gospel of life, meaning not only the gospel of Jesus Christ and eternal life, but advancing the cause and the wellbeing of human life from the beginning of conception to the end of life. He is a great witness for us and he commonly called people to prayer. One of the ways that we want to live that out today is what we call the 3:20 Challenge. We want to set our phones for 3:20 in the afternoon, and I encourage you to do that just as a daily alarm. Why do we say 3:20? It comes from Ephesians 3:20 and I think it’s a great way for us to take a moment where we stop what we are doing and pray for the cause of Christ around the world.

Pray for Passion Life as we travel. We have just come back from Honduras. We will be in Bolivia this month. We’ll be in Asia this month. We are planning some fall trips to other places around the world as well. But please pray for us, pray for your local church and pray for the advance of the kingdom of God in this world. Ephesians 3:20 says, “Now to him, who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

Here is a prayer that calls us to say, “Let’s let God be glorified in the church.” Of course, wherever the church is visibly working, that’s where we need to see God at work. So set your alarm for 3:20. Take some time to to look up a little bit about the life of William Carey, and remember to pray for us as we begin a larger and greater initiative in that great country of India in the coming months to raise up the church to stand for life and to bring good news to the guilty and saving power to the innocent.

God bless.