A Sunday stroller would have been hard pressed to imagine the scene inside the walls of the house at 88-40 192nd Street in Hollis, Queens. The large, blonde-brick building - blessed like the others on the sedate block with that rarest of New York City creatures: a lawn – transforms on Sundays into the home of the Indian Christian Assembly, one of several Pentecostal congregations in the area made up of Indian-Americans tracing their roots to the Southern Indian state of Kerala.

The service was already over an hour old when the Rev. Anthony Rocky walked up to the podium at the front of the low-ceilinged room to deliver the second of the day’s sermons. “I believe God’s presence is here today,” Rocky said, “and I believe something’s going to happen today, and I believe he’s going to tell some of you something today.” Murmurs of approval suggested that the worshippers agreed.

Rocky, from Kerala like the rest of the congregation but with a surname from European ancestry, had planned to preach on a biblical passage from Genesis. “But God was talking to me a lot as I was sitting there,” Rocky said afterwards, and God directed him elsewhere. God and a friend’s email.

“I received an email yesterday about a gathering on February 11th, a Hindu rally in Gujarat where they’re going to try and re-convert 500 Christians back to Hinduism.”

Rocky asked the congregation to pray for India and for the people of Gujarat, one of several Indian states with simmering tensions between Hindu and Christian communities. He then turned to the Gospels to illustrate the sort of faith needed in trying situations such as these. He told the story of Matthew 9:1-5; Jesus healing a paralytic because he senses the faith of those that brought the sick man to him.

“He saw that they had a humble faith, and he saw that they had an active faith,” Rocky said, settling into the repetition-with-variations that typify much ecstatic Christian oratory. “We all say ‘I have faith,’ but the question we should be asking is ‘Is Jesus seeing you?’”

Only this, he said, could lead Christians to triumph over adversity. “Unless they trust Jesus they’re never going to cross the Jericho wall.” The congregation rose on the waves of the sermon, with an “Amen!” from among the men seated on the left answered by a “Thank you Jesus!” from the women’s section on the right of the room. Hands began to lift into the air, growing towards the sun of the preacher’s words.

Rocky and the congregants had arrived at the familiar ground outside the city of Jericho. Through the telling of the story of Joshua and the Israelites conquering the city of Jericho, the pastor wove a tale of faith being tested. “They walked around Jericho wall one time and I believe on the first day they said ‘What is this stupid thing we’re doing?’”

The murmuring continued for the first six days they circled the walls, he said. “Then they walked around on the seventh day and what happened on the seventh day? The wall collapsed!”

The room in suburban Queens erupted: “Hail!” “Thank you Jesus!”

“On the seventh day the wall collapsed!” Rocky affirmed.

The Hallelujahs erupting from the congregation convinced Rocky that something had indeed happened here today. “Jesus is here to touch you,” he said and, with his head bowed and his voice lowered from the exertion, “Praise God.”