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How much are you willing to risk to become all that God wants you to be? In the spiritual arena what you risk is what you get. Those who risk little, achieve little. Those who risk the most, gain the most. The greatest heroes of the Bible were also the greatest risk takers for God. That should not surprise us because the life of faith is inherently a life of risk.

I want to introduce you to a risk taking heroine that I have met in India named Celine. She married a Hindu construction worker who was a drunkard. While her husband was drunk and working on the roof of a building he fell down to the ground and died instantaneously. Celine had no skills, no education and no job. She had two children. She moved back home with her parents who forced her to become a prostitute to feed her parents and her children.

God arranged it so that Yesudass (a church planter) met Celine the prostitute at a bus station. She offered him her body for 200 rupees (a little less than $5). He told her “I will give you 200 rupees if you will listen to me for 10 minutes.” Yesudass than told her about the love of Christ and why Jesus came into this world. He told her the story of John 8 about how Jesus treated the woman caught in adultery with grace and forgiveness. After her listening for the ten plus minutes he gave her the 200 rupees and sent her away. She went very happily, but after five minutes she came back with the 200 rupees and asked him to take the money back. Yesudass refused and said, “I promised you 200 rupees for ten minutes and I am keeping my promise to you.” Celine kept insisting that Yesudass take the money back. He asked her why she didn’t want to take the money. Celine began to cry. Through her sobs she told Yesudass that after hearing the story of Jesus she realized she was a sinner. She knew she had lived a very dirty life. Yesudass asked her if she wanted to get relief from her sins. She said yes. After they prayed together he gave her his contact information and they parted their ways. The next day Celine called and asked that Yesudass and his wife come to her house. Upon arriving at the house, Yesudass and Gracey saw a pile of clothes and shoes. Celine approached Yesudass and asked him to set fire to her clothes. He asked, “Why would you want to do that?” She said, “It represents my wealth that I gained from my filthy profession.” She took the match and burned everything she earned through prostitution. She said to Yesudass and Gracey, “I want to invite Jesus into my life.” So they prayed and from that moment she began to live a devoted life to Jesus. Her parents weren’t happy with the change in their daughter and sent her out of the house because now she was no longer earning money. Not only did Celine do that but she called all of the people who had borrowed money from her and she told them that their financial debt was forgiven. That made Celine bankrupt with no visible means of making money.

I met Celine in January of this past year. At that time she was learning to sew with the hopes of making that her new profession. But since that time, through a set of circumstances beyond her control she was not able to pay the rent on her house and was evicted. She is now living on the streets; she has no place to call her home. Yesudass informed me this month that a man has donated a small piece of land for her to build a house on if someone would supply the $1,000 needed to purchase the building materials. If you are able to help then contact Pastor Jesse about helping meet the need of building Celine a structure to live in.

Jesse Liles