When a good life isn’t good enough anymore

The Lord better keep multiplying my heart if I fall in love in every country.

The objects of my affection in the Czech Republic are four beautiful girls: Veronika (Verca), Adriana (Adia), Pet’ulka (Petra) and Michaela (Micha).  These girls captured my heart and have inspire me to new levels of my walk with God.  

This girl doesn’t know a word of English, but I don’t have to speak Czech to see her compassion and love for children.  17 years old, she helps at a kid’s club for Gypsy children two times a week, and it is with such a gentle spirit and tender heart that she serves there.  Micha always finds that one leftover toddler that had to follow his older siblings that day and just loves on him.  Her patience is incredible, and her sweet murmer in a child’s ear works more obedience than any other method I have ever seen.  I feel like I barely know her, and yet I see God’s love shining in her face and it is beautiful to see.

Childlike faith is Petra’s crowning glory.  Micha’s older sister, she is 18 years old with a simple faith in her loving Savior.  I got to see her as a leader among the younger girls, dancing with energy as they performed to an upbeat Christian children’s song.  I saw her dress up crazy with the rest of us to invite people to our youth outreach concert.  I saw her jump at opportunities to share her faith with her peers, as she talked to and prayed for those who had questions or just needed encouragement.  She has the truth and she knows it…  Now she is looking for those who need it.

My love Adia.  She is 18, and with such a beautiful servant’s heart it blows me away.  Even when I spoke into her and encouraged her in that attitude of serving, she responded with: “But I don’t help people always.  But it would be super.  I want it.”  Her desire to go deeper and to grow more in her walk is such an encouragement to me.  It is difficult because she only speaks a little English, but there is so much that I want to share with her, so much I want to speak life into and to help her grow in.  I pray that my heart can pour into hers beyond the words that she can understand.

Verca is 16 years old and I love her.  The joy of the Lord is her strength and it comes out in waves of energy, enthusiasm, curiousity and love.  She and I can spend hours together doing the silliest of things, asking each other random questions, her teaching me how to say “flying cow” in Czech and me reminding her of the differences between “teaching” and “learning”.  She doesn’t understand how special she is, even as she jokes around in beautiful English and takes the time to patiently teach me how to sing worship songs in Czech.  I love hearing her sing in her native tongue, just listening to her worship and seeing her face light up when I know the same song in English… It is priceless.  Our time together is precious, and our words carry weight.

These girls make me think of the youth I know back in the States; peers in age, but different in something.  Different in that, unlike so many teenagers and young adults I know, or even in myself at that age, they take their relationship with God SERIOUSLY.  These girls cause me to compare what I have seen in the youth groups, and to come back shaking my head.  In America, we can get away with saying we are a “Christian” and not doing anything about it more than going to church or having good values; not so in the Czech Republic.  Here, people are either in or out…. And they actually live their life like it.  

They have changed my life.  Living a good life isn’t good enough anymore.  Our job as children of the King is to constantly share God with our lives.  It seems obvious to me to do that when I am on the mission field… but what about after?  I certainly know I wasn’t living as loudly as I should have before I left on the World Race.  These girls have not even left their hometown and they are living life loud.

When will a good life not be good enough anymore for the youth of the American church?