Have you ever felt like your days are booked to the minute? Have you ever taken pride in the accomplished to-do list at the end of each day? Have you ever worked toward more efficiency, feeling like you will be more valuable if you can accomplish more than others? I can give an immediate yes to all of those questions. I often fall victim to feeling like my worth is correlated to my productivity and tangible accomplishments.
This last month in Serbia, God destroyed my former view on self-worth and what “effectiveness” looks like. To give a glimpse of how God has worked in both me and in our ministry, I want to share the story of one specific day this month.
For our ministry in Pozarevac, my team and I were given complete freedom with our schedule. We decided to start our mornings with Monday/ Wednesday worship, Tuesday/Thursday Bible study, Friday prayer, and personal alone time with the Lord each day. We would then go into town to simply try to meet people, hear their stories, and share how our stories have been guided by the Lord.
Our second Thursday morning in Pozarevac, our team began to pray wholeheartedly for the women at the evangelical church we were partnered with for ministry. Every Thursday night the women have a sisters’ meeting of about eight women, spanning a wide range of ages and places in their walks with the Lord. After attending a sisters’ meeting during our first week, we felt God wanted to work through these meetings to reveal so much more about Himself and Christian community to the women. We prayed for:
- A way to respectfully move the chairs into a circle rather than having the women scattered around the room in chairs facing the front
- More discussion amongst the women about God’s word and the message given
- That the women would understand the need to challenge each other on interpretations of scripture so that they can grow in wisdom and stand firm when the enemy brings false teachings. They need each other for encouragement, and they need to hold each other accountable to teaching the gospel with truth and depth of context.
After praying over the women and the sisters’ meeting, we spent some time alone with the Lord. Before we left our apartment to begin an afternoon of evangelism, I was talking with my teammate Patricia about how I felt like we needed to learn more about the Serbian Orthodox Church, since about 85% of the Serbian population are members. Patricia and I spent time researching and learning about Orthodox beliefs, which proved to be much further from the truth of the Bible than we ever expected. We learned about how the Serbian Orthodox church does not believe that everyone can have a personal relationship with God. We learned about how iconography is ingrained in the church culture, and how people pray to icons that they have to get blessed by the head of the church. Foreshadowing of Jesus in the Old Testament is removed from the Serbian Orthodox Bible, diminishing the incredible fulfillment of prophesy that is Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection. We learned that even though the Serbian Orthodox church acknowledges the story of Jesus, He is placed on the same level as saints. Each family has a saint that they celebrate, and people both pray and leave offerings to these saints.
Later that night, the five girls on my team made our way to the sisters’ meeting with anticipation for how God would work in the women. As we entered the church, we saw one of the most joyful, passionate women of the church smiling at us and speaking in Serbian as she was moving the chairs into a circle. We all looked at each other in amazement—God was already answering our first prayer without even asking us to navigate the awkwardness of trying to bring change in a respectful way.
As the meeting began, one woman began to share her testimony about how she had moved away from the Serbian Orthodox church. As our translator was telling us basic things about how this woman had found so much more life and freedom from a relationship with Jesus, Patricia and I could not help exchanging looks of awe with each other, realizing how our research that morning had been God’s way of preparing us for the meeting that night.
During the teaching, our translator expressed to us how she felt like some of the teaching was not right. She was clearly frustrated, and as she explained the teaching to us, we saw the validity of her frustrations. God gave us that moment with her to be able to encourage her to speak up and start a discussion. Together we were able to start a dialogue about what following God truly looks like, and soon after the discussion began, all of the women around the circle were talking and expressing their perspectives. God answered each of our prayers for the meeting, igniting a community of discussion, iron sharpening iron, and shared wisdom.
The Sisters’ Meeting
In reality I did very little that day, according to my personal standards for productivity. I prayed, did a little research, and showed up to a meeting. But God worked through our willingness to show up, be constantly present, and pray with the full belief that He will move in hearts and situations.
One of my old ballet professors used to always say that the number one step to success is showing up, and that has been a key idea running through my head this month as I have had to trust God to show me what He wants me to do every day. Show up and ask God what He has for you. Show up and look around, and then pray ardently for the environment around you. Be present in every conversation, praying for God to allow us to see people and situations as He sees them. Give God the space in your schedule for Him to work, and He will accomplish things through you.
As I see the high value of every person we encounter, seeing them as God’s beloved creation, I am so aware of how our worth comes from being His, rather than the work we do. We work well as a response to His goodness, faithfulness, and mercy, and we don’t need to present a list of our deeds to Him to receive the fullness of His love. Being “effective” for God is just responding to the lavishness of what He has freely given to us, and sharing every testimony of His amazing presence. God gave me a verse this month to remind me of the importance of what I am doing, even on the days when I feel like I did not have an assigned list of tasks to complete:
James 5:16: The prayer of a righteous man is POWERFUL and EFFECTIVE.
This month I have seen prayers answered through a beautiful woman giving her life to Christ, and I have seen God so intentionally place people in our path who needed to hear about His love for them. I have seen God use what I see as inefficient detours as key moments in our ministry. I have seen God move in the space that I never seem to give Him in my life back in the U.S. I have seen how prayer is deeply needed for both the big things and the little things.
I challenge each of you to intentionally set aside space for God. Pray knowing that He is listening, and ask Him to guide your path for the day. Finding the stillness amidst our busy lives can feel like we are wasting time when we could be spending those hours planning events at church, attending meetings for committees, and doing other things that would seem to be generating productivity for the church. But prayer in itself is effective. Make space for God to send you people He wants you to talk to.
Thank you all so much for your prayers this month! I ask that you would continue supporting our team in prayer for the following things:
- Our next ministry in Romania, which we began this week.
- Our unity as a team as we will be living and working with our entire squad of 41 for the next month.
- Funding for my team. Each member of my team needs to have at least $13,000 raised by September 30 to continue on the race. If you feel led to support my team, please visit the blogs of my teammates Catie, Faith, Jon, Morgan, Patricia, and Zach, and donate by clicking the donate button at the top of their homepages. If you donate through my blog, the donation will go to a general Adventures in Missions fund not related to my team.
