This month has been challenging, though not in a way that would be expected. Imagine being in a tiny village where nobody speaks your language. The nearest city is a 30 minute drive, and you have no car. Your hosts leave you for a week with a list of some household chores to keep you busy, but you finish in a couple days (aside from washing 30 sets of bed sheets, because it rained for two days, and they wouldn’t dry). You know that your teammates in Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia and other parts of Bulgaria are out sharing the gospel with people who have never heard it, preaching every day, handing out Bibles, and building relationships. The people in your village have grown up with a mix of legalistic orthodoxy and anti-Christian communism, and the one church has no priest and only opens when someone dies. Are you discouraged? Defeated?
I have been attacked with many lies and discouragement since the week before training camp in May. It has been hard to distinguish lies from truth, and I have felt lost and abandoned.
A week before my financial deadline, I was short $1400. Yet God provided the money, and I found myself at launch. The morning of my first flight, I had no passport and no money for an emergency second passport. My squad raised enough money (from their own pockets) for the four of us without passports to get them. By the evening, I had an emergency passport in my hands. I can’t deny that God brought me here, but it has been so hard to understand.
The scripture that God has placed on my heart during this time is in Joel 2:12 when the Lord speaks through Joel, “Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.”
When the darkness surrounds, and when it seems like you are so far from God. Kneel before the Lord, whose heart overflows with love. Lay your heart at His feet. Abandon your desires. Give your heart to Him, that you would desire the will of the Father when it doesn’t make sense to you.
Where I feared I was wasting time, God is at work.
Having coffee with an orthodox monk, playing futbol with kids, laughing with the shopkeeper when we don’t understand each other. God can use anything.
