Please pray for my health. I’ve been sick for the last couple of days with a cold. I’ve got a lot of congestion and my left ear is blocked too. I might be getting an eye infection, as well. Pray also that the rest of my team doesn’t get sick with this.
I watched a movie tonight that talked about perspective in life. At the beginning the main character has made a mistake that has cost his company $972 million and he thinks that his life is over. His journey to discover the true value in life takes him from the point of despair to his relatives in a small town in Kentucky and then on a road trip back to Oregon. Through all of this he learns that his “perfect job” had been empty of meaning and true life was in the small, seemingly simple stuff.
I liked this theme in this movie because it seems that so many of us in this world, and perhaps especially in America, are “chasing after the wind.” There is tremendous pressure to be successful in the world’s eyes and if we’re not careful, it can strip many years off of our lives. It’s not until we look back on everything it’s taken and see the wreckage in our wake that we realize the full danger of this drive. Let us not get lose perspective on the wrong things.
As I see it, the only way to truly live rightly is to have a proper hierarchy of priorities. Only if Christ is first and foremost in all that we do can we properly see how to care for our family. Only if our family is next can we properly see how to support them. And it goes on from there. But it’s so easy to mix these up. If family comes before God then we end up making them an idol and we don’t love them out of the love that God gives us. God designed us to work in contexts. In the context of being of child of God, much becomes clear about ourselves and how we relate to others. In the context of being a child, a spouse, or a parent, much becomes clear about how we relate to the world.
For myself, I know that right now I could be content living anywhere in the world no mater what the living conditions were because everywhere I go would be in the context of being a child of God. As I continue to live, more will become clearer, especially as I marry and have children, but the foundational perspectives and contexts that I am realizing now will remain. Praise God for His care and interest in our lives, for we would be nothing without Him!
I knew that before, but it seems that I still try to underestimate my body’s need for sleep. Four to five hours a night just doesn’t seem to cut it.
To prove a point, my body let me get sick.
So that’s what I’ve been doing all day, fighting off these cold germs that are causing my body to cough, ache, and generally not feel good. Hopefully after rest I have given it today, it will decide to be well tomorrow…
But despite all of that today, I was really encouraged after a conversation I had with two students last night. They both went to the English camp last summer and I have known them for about a year now.
We were talking about the different retreats that we do and they were wondering if there is any way to make them multi-national. They want to see a camp at which students from different countries in the Balkans that are involved with Campus Crusade come together. They said at something like that we could see that we are all really just people.
This was really exciting for me to hear, because this is one of the things that I would like to see happen here. I would like to see students from the different countries in the Balkans get together and do humanitarian aid in the name of Christ. I think that would be huge in illustrating the love of Jesus to a people that have experienced tragedy and horror. I believe it’s also the only way that people here can experience peace, through the forgiveness and love of Christ.
Pray that guys like these would see the vision of what God could do through them. Pray that God would be raising up more change agents in this generation of students!
Tomorrow we will start our spring distribution of the VOX magazine. This will revolutionize the view of Christians on the campus of Novi Sad and start a revival of which the borders of Serbia will not be able to contain. From this place, at this time, the ocean of God’s love and mercy will be poured out in a way that the EARTH has never before seen! The mountains will quake, the seas will roar, the skies will thunder as our GOD displays His glory and majesty in spectacular clarity for the peoples of the earth to see and then to fall down and worship! Pray all the details will work out well and that all the students who have volunteered to help will come. Pray for receptivity in the hearts of the students that we will interact with. Thank God for the approval to be on the departments that we will be on. Pray that GOD would receive all the glory and honor due HIS NAME!
I’ve been going through some thinking lately about where I fit in and what my role is. As I look at life, it seems to me that there are many different roles that we can fit into or get locked into. There’s who I am with family, with friends, at church, at work, doing ministry, ect. So many different categories, so many different aspects of me that come to the surface as a result of what gets reinforced by those around me.
The thing that I’ve been learning here on my stint team is how to grow into authenticity with my fellow teammates. This has been a process that must be intentional. See, it started out by getting to know each other at the beginning of the year. To do that we were super intentional, asking all kinds of questions about family, friends, school, interests, you name it. Each of us started forming a picture of the others from this. Now, halfway through the year, we have to make sure that our experience of each other hasn’t stopped there.
We could do fine for the rest of the year going with the current team dynamic as it exists now, but we would then miss out on so much. Friendships require continual care and fostering; that is what we want to do here. We want to be known be each other so that God will be better glorified and served through our team. By us knowing each other, we love each other more. This love for each other then becomes a tangible expression of the Gospel to those around us.
I want to be consistent in living who I am as God is shaping me. I want to let go of all the expectations I, and others, have about me and live my life as I truly am in front of people. I want to be able to cut the act and walk the real walk. All of this God is enabling me to do. I have let go of everything that I was holding on to, and I have accepted the life that He has given me.
I feel like I’m finally starting to get a handle on the language here now. This sensation has been present for about a week, I guess it started when our professor told us to stop thinking about what to say and just to say it. So, I tried to do that, and guess what, it kinda works! If I don’t worry about getting it wrong and rather, just do it, I learn it a lot faster. I feel like I’m picking up most of the thinks that the professors say in Serbian, and I can talk well with taxi drivers too.
I’ve still got a long way to go before I’m fluent, but great strides have been taken. I hope that by the time this year is over I’ll be able to make casual conversation with students. Pray for patience and perseverence for all of us as we learn it.
Today was our last day with the American team that came to visit us, they leave tomorrow morning. It was a good day. We started out by buying calla lilies for the girls because it’s woman’s day today! I’m not sure quite how it got started here, but it’s one of the busiest days for all the flower shops because all the men are supposed to buy flowers for the women that they know. We got our flowers from our favorite shop, located between the girls and the guys apartments. One of the student’s moms owns it.
After that we had a good time of discussing how we’re doing as a team, ending with a “hot seat” for each of us, where everyone encourages the person currently on the hot seat. This afternoon we went to a little town near Novi Sad called Sremski Karlovci, where we walked around for a while. There is a theology high school that we looked in and talked to some students at. Most of these students will be priests one day. It was interesting to hear them describe their day. Early start, 6:00. Two prayer services in the church, morning and evening. And lots of study. They said that people come from all over the world to study here. Two of the boys that we were talking to are from the US, one from Texas and the other from Florida.
Tonight we ate dinner together in the resteraunt attached to the brewery, and then split up as guys and girls.
Overall it was a good day. This was supposed to be a team building day, and it was good just to spend time together doing things a little different than our normal routine.
Thanks for your prayers tonight! We had eight students come. We talked about what true love is. We did this by looking at what three different sources had to say and then discussing them. Those sources were a song by U2, a quote by a philosopher, and a passage from I John. The students were engaged well and we were able to share the Gospel clearly.
On Wednesday night we will have our weekly meeting with the students. Please be in prayer during this time (12pm - 3pm MST) that God would be working in the student’s hearts and guiding the discussions. Since 4 of the 5 in the American team are married, we decided to make our discussion topic relationships so that they can be the voices of experience! We hope that most of our students are available, it’d be great to have about 20 students come.
Please also be in prayer as we go this week to reserve the places at the University to distribute the VOX magazine next week. We need to get permission from the dean of each department in which we want to distribute. Those locations are: the courtyard in between all the buildings, the courtyard by the student dorms, the Philosophy department, the Law department, the Sport and Physical Education department, the Technical Science department, and the Natural Science department. Pray especially for the Natural Science department. They have been the most resistant toward us in the past because they don’t like the articles in VOX that imply or say that God is the creator. We are taking students with us to help. Thank God for the willingness of the students and the help that He is providing.
One of the great perks of having a staff team with us is the wisdom and love that accompany them. We spent all day together, starting this morning with a devotional and spending the rest of the day showing them around the city.
I really liked the devotional that Steve led this morning. He said a lot of it come from what he learned while he was living in Barcelona; wrestling with why it seems tremendous spiritual growth happens overseas but back in the States the norm tends to be “causual” Christianity. He knew that isn’t supposed to be the case, you don’t have to be a missionary or pastor to experience God’s dynamic work in you. These are two things that stood out to him as he sought the answers in Scripture.
1) Be reminded of the Gospel over and over and over again.
The Gospel is the whole point of the Bible. It contains the story of how God reconciles us to Himself. A great encouragement comes when studying what God’s motivation is in saving us. Hebrews 12:2 states that Jesus endured the cross “for the joy that was set before Him.” What was that joy? The way of salvation for man! The saints are the joy that was before Christ’s eyes. That was the only thing that Christ didn’t have before He came to earth and that which He left with victoriously. Do you know the depth of God’s love for all the saints? For you? Does it blow you away? That the God of the universe loves you in this way?!? There are many other verses which expound on God’s love for the saints. As we go over these verses and know and experience God’s immense love for us, we can’t help but to grow tremendously. This growth is simply the response to revelation and “heart” comprehension of God.
2) Be continually involved in the great commission.
Matthew 28 contains the passage labeled the great commission, but really the whole Bible is the great commission. When sin happened, God pursued Adam and Eve. The Bible is all about God’s pursuit of man. It’s most clear to me when I ask two questions.
a) Who is God? God is the supreme being and creator of all seen and unseen. He is holy and all good, perfect and omnipotent, and much more.
b) Who is man? Man is dead in trespasses and sins, separated from Christ and having no hope.
God and man are separate. No commonality. Enter the Bible. The Bible describes the reconciliation of mankind to God. This is the context of the Old Testament preparing for the Messiah. This is what Christ accomplished. This is why He established the church. We are God’s agents of reconciliation!
As we understand God’s heart for us and His calling in our lives, we experience growth because these things resonate in us like nothing else can. We were made for this: to bring glory to God. By focusing on this in Scripture and praying that God would enlighten His truth upon your heart, you will see the desires of God come alive before you, applicable in your life and those around you. Setting our eyes on Christ will give us an eternal perspective with which we can see clearly where to take the next step. It also shapes our attitude and gives hope and meaning as we realize our purpose.
How great is our God and worthy of praise! Amen?!? Amen!
