The Right Hand

I returned form our LDC to Romania on Wednesday night, last week, full of excitement for the vision that the Lord has given us in Eastern Europe. In our week spent mainly in Timisoara, Surduc and Lugoj, we were so blessed to be able to network with many pastors with great vision for planting Evangelical churches in their areas of ministry. Upon arriving in Timisoara, we were blessed to be able to meet with the leadership at Stanca Baptist Church as well as the main leader for Campus Crusade in the area. Upon leaving our meeting, we knew that the Lord is moving to do incredible things in the English-speaking expats who live in the city, as well as the numerous international groups of students who are so hungry to know Christ. We then proceeded to the mountains of western-most Transylvania to meet with a large group of pastors, teaching them both the "Catalyst" leadership curriculum as well as "First Steps" church-planting material. They all soaked the material up and immediately began to discuss how to better network their own villages and communities and begin fleshing out what they had just been taught. From there, a couple more meetings in Timisoara and we left Romania with the feeling that the NEXT operations there, next summer, are going to be hugely successful in terms of planting churches and seeing people come to know Christ as Lord and entering into fellowship with other Romanian Believers.

On the flight over, I was poring over the Word and catching up on my "daily readings" (although I've not been very good about doing it daily and am currently a couple of days, i.e. about 12 chapters, behind) and came to the verse, in Exodus 15v.6b where the Word says: "...your right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy."

This verse comes from a particular passage that many Bibles subtitle as "The Song of Moses," since it is the song that Moses and the people of Israel sang in reverence and worship to Yahweh. Another verse (15v.3) states, "The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is his name."

We can so often lose sight of the fact that God is such an incredible warrior. Not only does He fight for His glory and renown, but He fights for His people, that they might persevere and, therefore, glorify Him even more in the world in which they live.

I've been meditating and chewing on this particular verse (15v.6b) now for over a week. How awesome is it that our Father, a mighty warrior, fights for His people? Not only does He fight for us and preserve us, but we see that He completely shatters the enemy. I should probably use a capital "E," so, the Enemy. Our God knows the battles and struggles we face, whether in our homes, our personal outlooks on the future, or our spiritual health, and He shatters, utterly destroys, the Enemy. This was vital in reminding me that we, the staff at NEXT, are not the ones who do the saving or have the masterplan for the operations we carry out in foreign fields, or at home, for that matter. It is the Lord!

The Lord carries us with His right hand, the hand of righteousness. With it He also breaks apart evil, both in our lives and in the World. Knowing this, we must see how powerful our God is, and that there is nothing, NOTHING, in this World, of which we need to be terrified or afraid. We know and are loved by a big and mighty God, and there is nothing to worry about in that relationship!

Duty Versus Joy

Today is the day when millions of people will line up and cast their ballot for who they feel should be the next leader of our nation. I know that there are numerous blog posts, today, covering this, but mine is a little different. You might be the voter who knows every in-and-out of your candidate, what they stand for and why you agree with them. You might be the straight-party voter, not giving any thought to anything but your party. You might be one of the people, like on Howard Stern's radio show, that had absolutely no clue what their candidate stood for, you're just voting on a slogan that makes you feel good. Or, you may be like me, and not vote... not because of anything wrong with the American electoral process, but rather because you didn't take the time to renew your voter registration and are no longer living within your precinct. I think that you should have to work for it, if you're going to vote, so I'm certainly not in favor of spoon-feeding people their abilities (like I've heard-tell of some certain people in Ohio with homeless people who are allowed to register and vote the same day). But, do we vote more out of duty (I don't know how many times already, today, I've heard it called "your civil duty") or out of joy?

Civic duty, to me, conjures up images in my head of sitting in crowded rooms full of people thinking of what they could be doing with their time instead of sitting in a white-walled cell. To me, a civic duty is serving on a jury and just going through the process of probably being eliminated as a potential juror. That is a civic duty, something no one really wants to do, but does in order not to feel guilty, be arrested, etc.

It should be our civic joy to be able to cast our ballot and decide the future of the American nation. We Americans are so ridiculously spoiled towards what goes on within our country that it is pathetic. We must bear in mind all the places around the globe where free elections don't take place, if any elections take place at all. Our elections are not rigged (although there would be some who would try to speak out against the last two), we aren't threatened under gunpoint if we don't vote the right way, and we certainly aren't imprisoned for holding particular political ideologies (although some, perhaps, should be). It should be a joy to get to do what so many Americans are doing today.

It is the same for matters of Christianity. Far too many of us do things in our lives out of duty, to God and the Church, rather than out of joy. We grumble about getting up on Sunday morning, "having" to tithe or support people, and being involved in a deeper way than just showing up to fill a seat. We don't want to help on a search committee, or as a deacon, yet we get upset and threaten to "leave the church" if the pastor says one thing that upsets us and our apathetic walk. We are a silly, immature bunch of people. Our joy in our Saviour should overflow out of everything we do and be seen by all who we encounter. We should not carry forth and walk out our faith grudgingly, as if we are going to the courthouse, but rather with overflowing happiness in serving the God who chose us to save; it wasn't the other way around.

Happy voting, and may we continue to trust the LORD more than any one man.