I am sitting in an apartment in Budapest, Hungary at eight o’clock in the morning, sitting on the red former-Communist carpet and looking out the open fourth story window. Ihave never lived in a city like this before – I’ve only ever lived in the suburbs – and the activity outside the window is crazy to me. It feels like I hear sirens every forty-five seconds. Some woman shouting at her dog in a high-pitched Hungarian voice woke me up a little bit ago.
My team and I have finished our first month of ministry in Romania, and it was a hard month. We felt the weight of spiritual oppression, of a country covered in the darkness of hopelessness and apathy. We struggled to find our purpose for this month, and it was bittersweet to see the things our squadmates were doing in other places, the things that we wanted to be doing. But instead we were doing what our Hungarian hostess Kirsten calls “hidden ministry,” doing the work that no one really sees you doing. And when you are in the boondocks of Romania in a town of two hundred and fifty people, no one sees you do ANYTHING.
But God showed us that our purpose was not to be seen doing ministry – that sometimes is what he wants us to be doing, I believe, for the sake of others seeing what his Kingdom in action is like. Rather, our purpose was to do ministry with little praise or thanks, ministry that had no immediate fruit that was apparent to us. Sometimes I feel like if anyone came back to that camp, they would notice that the cabin was a darker shade of stain than it used to be. They wouldn’t know the hundreds of man-hours of work that went into redoing it.
Many times this month I have been reminded of the Bible passage that we often learn as youngsters in Bible school: “Do your work as if for the Lord and not for men.” It is simple, really, but so difficult to implement. We want affirmation, we want praise, we want some sort of indication that we are doing good beyond the feeling in us that tells us we are, or some cognitive recognition of “good being done.” But I have learned more about working only for the Lord and not for the approval of men in this month than maybe in the entire rest of my life, and that is a beautiful lesson for me to have learned in this, the first month of the race. It may yet define how the rest of my service in his Kingdom goes over the next ten.
A few days ago, I went and visited the ruins of a castle near Lipova, Romania. Like, this was a legit castle. There were giant stone walls, a front gate, a moat-like area, guard towers that I climbed in and out of – it was amazing. The castle itself was probably built six or seven hundred years ago. One of contacts, a pastor from Arad we called Brother Nelo, told us that Lipova used to be three towns very near each other, and that the castle was the center area of one of those.
But for how long it has been in ruins is a mystery to me. There was so little left besides the walls to indicate civilization. There were curious anachronisms: swastikas spray-painted onto the rocks; beer cans from thirsty travelers; the remains of campfires from the previous week’s visitors. But as I climbed rocks and scaled walls and looked out over the town of Lipova from the highest point on the castle, I wondered: where now are the people that built this? Where now are those that marveled or scoffed at its construction? They are dead and gone. How sad it would be if the men who built it had done it only for the approval of their proto-Romanian countrymen and women. They are all gone now, and the wonder of its splendour is lost in the decomposing minds of the ones who had seen it but now lie in the grave.
I hope that those who built it, and that those who build anything tangible or abstract, do it for the Lord rather than for men. This is my prayer for myself and my team. God’s observation is infinite. He does not die. He does not forget. Things do not slip his mind. The work we do is forever in front of him, and he witnesses it and is proud like a father watching his child figuring out how to throw a baseball for the first time, or dancing like a ballerina in her first dress. And the sweetness of that memory never leaves him. That is a much more comforting way to do my work, because man will forget; God cannot.
Please pray for my team and I as we embark upon our next month’s journey in ministry in the country of Moldova. We expect to see great poverty as Moldova is one of the poorest and most economically hurting countries in Europe. We expect that God will give us opportunities to work for him and make him proud; my prayer is that we do our work for him first, and for him only.
