Greetings from Romania!
Once again, I find myself in awe of what God is doing in my life recently.
Let me start with an update of what’s going on in my life recently. As I mentioned in my last blog post, we are currently in Romania. This month, our ministry is centered in a small town in southern Romania called Draganesti-Olt.
My team and 2 other teams are working with a local missionary named Raul, helping him in a variety of different ways. And by variety, I mean it. Ministries include:
preaching, leading kid’s clubs, manual labor, gardening, house cleaning, working with gypsies, leading character development classes at a local school, teaching English, intercessory prayer, cooking, babysitting, street evangelism, soccer, chopping wood, writing emails, translating books, taking phone calls, etc.
One of the cool things about the World Race is that it gives you experience in so many different things – from the profound to the mundane. But all of it is for the Kingdom, so no matter how menial a task seems, God always uses it.
My job/ministry this month is quite interesting. I was chosen to be the point person between Raul and the three teams. Raul has over 10 different missionaries to work with. My job is to divide up the 21 World Racers on our three teams among these various ministries and tasks that I mentioned earlier and make sure that everyone gets to where they need to go. To do this, it means that I work on a schedule for a few hours each day. This is what it looks like:
The reason this takes a few hours is because every day the schedule changes. Some things get added, some get dropped, some events require more people, some require less. The point is, every time this happens, I have to redo the schedule and reshuffle people around so that it looks nice and pretty again and so that no ministry is under/overstaffed as well as making sure that no people are floating around with nothing to do.
This requires patience, attention to detail, planning/schedule experience, and joy to get through the day. Thankfully, I was blessed with being taught planning and scheduling from my father (Thanks Dad!) However, for the patience and the joy, there must be a source I can go to for my renewal. You see, this job that I’m doing takes a lot out of me. It can be stressful sometimes when my meticulous work on the week’s schedule has to be redone because events get added or dropped. I’m also doing manual labor for a few hours a day as well. It would be so easy to get burnt out through overworking or give up because it is too taxing. I need to both find rest and be continually renewed throughout the day.
The question is: where do I turn for my rest? Where do I go to be filled up? If you’ve read my previous blog, you can probably guess at the answer.
Over the past two months, God has been teaching me something crucial. It is the lesson of abiding in Him and drawing my strength and joy from His presence. For most of my life, I’ve gone on my own strength and when I would get tired I would turn to other things to restore me: music, movies, video games, friends, food, etc. They were familiar and easily available for me. However, none of these things were satisfying in the long run. I was always left feeling empty.
This very situation is described in Isaiah 55:1-2
“Come, everyone who thirsts,
Come to the waters;
And he who has no money,
Come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
And your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
And delight yourselves in rich food.”
For years, I was that person who spent my money and labor for “that which does not satisfy.” I turned to everything except God. Even after giving my life fully to Christ, it was still so easy to look for restoration in so many other things.
So, when I began this month of craziness, I had two choices: I could turn back to the things of this world to restore my strength or I could lean completely on Him. This month, I’ve started leaning on the Lord and the results have been incredible. I’m able to get through long and busy days and still have a smile on my face. I can have my phone ring all day with people needing to change the schedule and still have a deep and abiding peace that guards my heart from anxiousness.
Even outside of day to day activities, the Lord’s grace sustains me. For example, I still have no idea what I’m going to do when I get back from the Race. This would be the perfect opportunity to stress out and try to anxiously control everything. But with my trust in the Lord, I can lay my future plans at the Lord’s feet and trust that He will work out His plan in my life in His timing. Instead of it consuming my mind throughout the day, I can focus on the tasks at hand and pour my mental and physical energies into what the Lord has for the day.
I can get through each day because I have a supernatural strength that lifts me up. I can have peace in my mind because the Holy Spirit guards me. I can work hard because the joy of the Lord is my strength and rest well because His peace is my refuge and comfort.
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