Standing Firm

A team of five arrived today in Novi Sad from Colorado. Aaron and Stephanie Shalosky, David Smith, and Steve Kammer from Colorado Springs and Joanna Meyer from Boulder. They will be here during this next week to encourage us and see how the ministry is going. Those from the Springs are part of the Springs Campus team, staff working with Crusade primarily at UCCS and CC. Joanna works in the regional headquarters of Crusade.

It was really exciting to welcome them tonight at the bus station! I know all of them already and have been keeping up with them this year. The Shaloskys led the Summer Project last summer in Belgrade, so they’ve been to Serbia before but the other three haven’t. This will be a great time for them to see first hand what the Stint ministry looks like by visiting the places we go and meeting the students we see.

It will also be a great week of encouragement and motivation for us. They are going to lead us each morning in a devotion and talk to us individually too. I’m really looking forward to talking with them and showing them the reason for the passion that God has given me for this place. I’m especially looking forward to introducing them to our students. We’ll have our weekly meeting on Wednesday night, so they’ll get a chance to meet all lot of them then.

Another big perk of their visit is the stuff they brought us! Most notable I think are the real tortilla chips and Starbucks coffee. Oh, and I can’t forget to mention the Girl Scout cookies! Mmm, Thin Mint goodness… They are also going to make Mexican food for us one of these nights. Ahhh, life is so good!

Not a whole lot ended up happening today. I had thought that I would have trouble fitting everything in, but it didn’t work out that way. I’ve learned to be very flexible with my schedule here.

I was originally planning on going to Boško’s house and meeting his family, then meeting with Nenad to talk about what he’s been learning from the Bible and how his life is going, then we were going to have some guys over to play Nintendo Playstation. But none of that ended up happening. Boško’s family is out of town this weekend, Nenad left to go home for the weekend, and we couldn’t get a hold of the other guys.

So I stayed at home and worked on some finances and emails and cleaned the bathroom. So it was a productive day despite the schedule change.

Tonight we had our team fun night. We try to do something fun together once a week as a team. This gives us a good chance to relax and just enjoy being with each other.

Tonight we went to a really big grocery store on the edge of town. It’s called the Rodić Mega Market and it reminds me of a Sam’s Club. They sell large quantities of stuff at good prices. The reason we went there was to eat dinner at the MB brewery that’s part of the same building. They had good food, but it’s kind of expensive for here. I guess there’s also supposed to be a hotel there somewhere too. So there you go, the all in one megaplex: grocery, resteraunt, brewery, and hotel. What more could you want?!?

After dinner we came back to our apartment and played Cranium and Taboo. It was a good team night. I like my team!

Before Jesus sends His twelve disciples out in Matthew 10, He tells them to “pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” - Matthew 9:38 That is one of the things that we are praying for Serbia; we can see that God is in the process of not only bringing laborers here, but He is also raising them up from among the Serbians. There is a student conference coming up this summer called Campus Mission 2007. I am super excited about this because it will gather about 20,000 students from all over the world who want to learn how to build movements on their campuses that would grow to impact their country and the world. Many students will be challenged to go to other parts of the world at this conference as they see the bigger picture of what it looks like when people “from every nation” gather to worship God!

Dijana has been praying and fasting about going this summer. She is a student here in Novi Sad and we have seen God working in mightily. Her passion to share her faith is steadily growing and God has shown her, through experiences during the past few months, how He can use her in other people’s lives. This has blown her away and increased her faith and vision dramatically. Oh, when I think of what seeing a vast fellowship of international believers who are as equally passionate about following God as she is would mean to her, I tremble. She is one of very few students here that have the vision and passion for her fellow students. I have met no other Serbian student equal to her in this.

Pray for her as she prepares to go this summer. There are still some significant barriers that must be overcome for her to go. The first is what her father will say. She doesn’t know for sure, but she fears that he will be resistant to her going. She is spending this next week with him and will talk to him about it. Please, please pray that God will work in his heart and soften it so that he will let her go. The other barrier is the cost of her transportation. Most of the conference cost is already taken care of, but Dijana is responsible for raising her own money to pay for her flight and application fee. Pray that God would bring in this money for her.

This spring semster is starting to fly by. As I look ahead at what the next few months will be I realize that soon it will be summer already and I better make the most of the time I have or it will get away from me!

The months of January and February consisted of a lot of traveling for us. The students are studying for and taking exams during these months, so it was a good time for us to be gone. One week in January we were in Nerja, Spain for our mid-year conference, to which STINTers from all over Europe, Russia, and central Asia came. It was a great time to be refreshed; we heard solid teaching, experienced great praise and worship, and caught up with old friends and made new ones.

For a few days in February we went to Budapest, Hungary to have training for an outreach strategy called Story of the Soul. This is designed to create discussion about what the greatest needs of the human soul are in a coffee house environment. It incorporates a Gospel presentation as the answer to man’s greatest need. We hope to put this on sometime this spring here in Novi Sad.

It’s great to be getting back into meetings with students. Pray for me as I meet with guys to disciple them and share the Gospel with them. Pray that God would be moving in their hearts and open their eyes to see the truth.

This past weekend marked an annual youth conference in Serbia. It was held in Novi Sad, so we attended two of the big group meetings on Sunday.

While we couldn’t understand much of the content, it was incredibly encouraging to see about 250 young Serbians who were committed to following God and seeing His Gospel preached to their countrymen. The title of the conference this year was Break Through and was in part focused on students gaining motivation for sharing the Gospel with others back in their towns throughout Serbia.

Praise God for raising up a people excited about sharing His love with their people. Pray that God would greatly encourage them and strengthen them in a land that is hard to live an authentic Christian life.

Deception has become a persistent reality here. Pray that I would hold to the truth and that the lies that have been rooted in my spirit would be flushed out and exposed.

Tonight as a team we had a intensive time of reflecting on what we’ve been feeling the past few days. There have been a range of feelings, but a thread of continuity was the lies that some of us have been hearing and believing. Lies like, what we are up against is insurmountable, who are we to be here engaging in what we’re doing, we are from a totally different culture and we can’t relate to the people that we are supposed to be ministering to, the hearts of students are beyond repentance, no one wants to change, we should expect this year to be more about our personal growth than effecting change in anyone else…

All of these are lies that are contrary to the truth of God. We were able to identify these and bring them collectively before God tonight. It is amazing that when we expose lies to light, they quickly shrivel up. When we discuss these things in the community of our team we gain perspective. It is sometimes very hard to bring these things before each other, the sharing of our thoughts and feelings is revealing parts of ourselves that most people don’t see. It’s the part of us that isn’t put together. It’s unanalyzed, unprepared to share before an audience, it’s raw. But when we share with each other in vulnerability and openness, God shows us some pretty interesting things. We gain perspective. We realize that all of us might be thinking the same thing and we find encouragement in the community of emotions. We can rejoice with each other and weep with each other. God uses our insights and things that he has been showing each of us to bring encouragement to us as a whole.

One thing that is becoming more real to me is the nature of Satan that is talked about in John 8:44. Jesus describes him as a liar and the father of lies. We should then expect to hear some of these lies as we do battle against him. I think that in part, our emotions serve as a gauge of spiritual attack. One of our first alerts to oppression is the emotion that we feel. By talking about our emotions collectively, God shows things we might now have picked up on if we had just kept them to ourselves.

An exercise in which I imagined that I was in the story of Luke 9:10-17. I focus on the first two verses of this passage.
Walk into this story. What do I feel? What do I taste? What do I say? What is said to me?

Who exactly in this Jesus? I’ve heard some incredible stories about him. I heard that he is in Bethsaida today. That’s only a forty-five minute walk! I’ll go right now. I’ve got to see who this Jesus is.

As I near Bethsaida, I’m amazed by the number of people that are walking with me. There are hundreds! Apparently I’m not the only one who heard that he was here. I had worried whether I would be able to find him. I needn’t have, I just follow the crowds and they lead me there. As I approach the massive crowd that is there, I start looking for Jesus. “Have you seen him?” “Where is he?” As I am inquiring, a man starts speaking from a nearby rooftop. Oh good, he must be about to introduce Jesus. But where is he? I don’t see anyone that looks that distinguished. He must be inside, getting ready to make his entrance. Surely someone this popular is well protected, he would certainly need to be if he’s really talking about establishing a kingdom here. The Romans can’t be happy about that, can they?!

Wait a minute, that guy that’s supposed to be introducing Jesus is still talking. What’s taking him so long? What’s he saying? That’s weird; he’s talking about the kingdom of God. He seems to be taking the main part of Jesus’ speech. Hold on, that can’t be him, can it? There’s nothing spectacular about him. He’s not that tall, really. I wouldn’t even have noticed him if it hadn’t been for all these people here. How can this guy be establishing a kingdom? No one would follow him, would they? But there are all these people here.

All of a sudden, he looks at me.

Right into me.

Time seems to stop.

Those eyes!

The ones that pierce to the depths of my soul and the love,

Oh, what love, that looks at me and sees me, really sees me.

I’ve never experienced anything like that gaze before.

He knows me and loves me, that much is now clear. I don’t know how, but this Jesus whom I’ve never met, knows and loves me more than my closest friend, or even my own mother! How can this be?!? And the other thing is, I now know this all from just His gaze into me. This is wild!

He wants me to follow Him.

I know that too. Well, how can I refuse?

I will.

I will follow this Jesus. This makes sense. It makes more sense than anything I’ve ever known before. I must follow Him, for truly this is what I was made for…

This whole issue of pride in the Christian life is adequately and abruptly answered by I Corinthians 4. Thinking back to what I said yesterday, the complexities of the Christian life seem to become natural responses when the realities of God are seen in their brilliance.

This is how I am to regard myself: as a servant of Christ and a steward of the mysteries of God. There it is. That’s the truth of who God has said that I am. Now, if I can see myself as that, the response should follow. And it’s helped by the guidelines that Paul gives. Next verse: because I am a steward, it is required that I be trustworthy. There’s something powerful in that. I think of the stewardship of money. It’s easy to see why I must be trustworthy. I cannot steal, I must keep careful track of it, I must invest wisely. This is also easy to see with time. I ought not to fritter away my time and I must invest it well.

Now this is the same attitude I should have with the mysteries of God. I have been entrusted with these and I ought not to fritter it away or steal it or the glory of it for myself. I must invest it wisely. I must steward the mysteries of God.

Secondly, I should consider it a small thing to be examined by men, I ought not to care what other people think of me because it is the Lord who examines me! I have been entrusted with these mysteries and I will by held accountable of how I steward them by God Himself! Of course, it becomes a small thing then how other people see me.

My flesh is fueled by people’s admiration and respect, but what is that really? When juxtaposed against the Lord’s examination, this becomes shallow and non-consequential.

What starts to happen when people realize God’s kingdom breaking through?

Transformation happens. The Christian life becomes simple. That’s what happens! When I see God’s glory and understand His authority it puts everything in perspective.

Perspective.

That’s a good word. That’s what “influential” people had. Think of Elisha’s servant who saw the armies of God standing in full array around the city. Elisha had been aware of what was around and it made it easy for him to do what God wanted him to do. Think of the mount of transfiguration, the dying vision of Stephen, the courage of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, the leadership of Moses and so many more. Take Hebrews 11, the hall of faith.

All of these people had one thing in common. They saw clearly who God was in a world that was blind to it. Their clarity of vision allowed for right perspective of what is true and real. They saw the kingdom of God breaking through a false world, and as such it made this world seem dead, dark, and grey, lifeless, decaying, rotting, full of filth. It was a paradigm shift that happened and the world that once offered everything and was arrayed in glory and glamour and proclaimed the fame and greatness and glory of man was shown to be a cheap facade. For in the presence of truth, lies are shown for what they are and the glory that was once so sought after is shown as a rotting, stinking poison.

Lord, I long for a proper perspective of who you are. Show me your kingdom so that everything else would fall into proper place.

Ok, I’m back now. The last couple of months have been kind of crazy. I’m back in the US for a few more weeks. I haven’t had much access to the internet recently, but now I have it again pretty regularly.

A lot has happened in the last few weeks. One notable thing was the Stint briefing in Copper Mountain, Colorado. It lasted for one week: August 14-20. This was the first time that all five of us were together. We had a good time getting to know each other. I’m looking forward to spending this year with these people.

God taught me a lot during the week of briefing. I will spend the next few posts writing out some of my journal entries from last week. I’ll sum up with some thoughts at the end.