After many hours and various segments of railway travel, we arrived in Draganesti, Romania to work with The Hope Church and with Romania’s national church-planting organization. We are staying in The Hope Church’s missions home with one other World Race team for this month. Draganesti (pronounced dragon-esht) is considerably more rural than Uzice—horse-drawn carriages are commonplace and some of the communities just outside the center of the town lack running water. Draganesti, like Uzice, is dominated by the influence of the Orthodox Church. Only 0.2% of the population here is thought to be born-again.
When our pastor, Raul, told us of missionary activity in the area (he has been in Draganesti since 2003), I was amazed to hear of the progress that he and his team had made. When they initially came to Draganesti, the local Orthodox Church compiled a petition of signatures asking for them to depart immediately. They remained, of course, and now lead a thriving congregation of people that looked to be about 100 strong, with a morning service, an evening service, and a full children’s ministry.
So far, in our time here, we have gotten to speak at both services, lead worship, meet local pastors, and
dophysical labor (hoeing land and cleaning the churches). Doing the work that each pastor needs done the most has become an increasingly joyful task. When I first started the World Race, I was admittedly prideful about some of the things we were assigned to do—manual labor, especially. “If we are only here for a month.” I selfishly thought, “Why are we doing this?” Besides for the obvious answer that we are doing it because it is God’s will, I now see, more and more often, that we are doing “this” precisely because we are only here for one month. What better way is there to further the Great Commission and the cause of Christ than to alleviate much of the “dirty work” from the hands of the full-time missionaries—the ones who are already well-adjusted to the cultural and spiritual climate of their respective areas and who can thus minister the most effectively.
I don’t think it’s any coincidence, though, that I am becoming increasingly satisfied and increasingly joyful in accomplishing the tasks the Lord puts before me. I do not believe that these feelings of joy and satisfaction are the products of any sweeping attitude change on my part—because, for the most part, I have consistently failed to change anything major about myself apart from God’s help—but rather that these new feelings of joy and satisfaction are the products of the simple fact that we are hardwired in the womb to receive these feelings (in the lasting sense) from carrying out God’s will. Romans 12:2 describes the perfect will of God as “pleasing.”
The difference between submitting entirely to the will of God and merely begging God to assist us with our own endeavors is enormous in principle, but subtle in its discernment. If there is one thing God has been teaching me since I have arrived in Romania, it has been to take the risk of yielding completely to His will.
When Jesus teaches us how to pray in Matthew 6, He says we should ask only that God’s will be done, on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10). Jesus put this idea into practice himself as he nervously prayed in the garden before his execution. “My father, if possible, let this cup pass from me, “ He prayed, “Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39).
The lie we are so often fed is the lie that following God’s will entails stoically denying oneself of all pleasure, creativity, beauty, love, satisfaction, and adventure in exchange for some type of divine, yet boring checklist that we need to spend the rest of the days of our life methodically completing. This couldn’t be further from the truth! Our deepest longings for satisfaction and love and adventure are not sinful—they are placed in us for a reason—namely, that we would satisfy them by doing God’s will! Doing God’s will does not mean sacrificing personal satisfaction—it is the means of finding personal satisfaction—and the only means that leads to lasting satisfaction, at that.
God’s will is the only satisfying will and we should hunt it down until we find it!
