Culture shock

Most of the time living here I just get on with it. It's not that I don't notice cultural differences - they're hard to miss as they're everywhere, it's more that they have ceased to suprise me. But now and then, events happen which send me into a kind of cultural shock. I suddenly realise that I really am here, living in a completely foreign culture that I have only scratched the surface of. It hit me again last night.

Last week at the youth meeting during a response for salvation a young girl started manifesting. I took her into a private room with a friend and we began to chat with her and pray for her. As she had come forward to be saved she had felt like her hands and feet were tied. The Holy Spirit prompted me to delve a little into her church background and we discovered that the only other 'church' she had attended had performed live animal sacrifices and rituals during the meetings. I explained to her that her feelings of captivity were not from Jesus - that He died so that we might have life and freedom. We prayed for her and as we serve a God who is infinitely more powerful than the princes of darkness she was delivered.

Then last night I was walking home from church with a friend. He's a wonderful young Christian guy who is sadly an orphan. He was orphaned sometime ago but last night he told me that his extended family are putting pressure on him to shave his head in response to his fathers death in order to please the ancestors. He was asking my advice on the situation. And what a complex situation it is - especially for me, the english girl, to understand. His number one priority is live for God and to bring glory to Him, but he also realises that sometimes it's ok to compromise on these things in order to preserve relationships with family members who are not yet saved.

It's after dealing with situations like these that I suddenly realise afresh what a foreign culture I'm living in. I know that every culture has good and bad within it and we should always be asking what God's heart on an issue is. We are members of His Kingdom first and foremost. We must be prepared to lay our own cultural expectations down if they hinder our journey in becoming more like Christ.