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!