“The Doctrine of justification by faithâ€"a biblical truth, and a blessed relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effortâ€"has in our time fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such a manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God. The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Academic ego. Christ may be “received” without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver. This man is “saved,” but he is neither hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact, he is specifically taught to be satisfied and is encouraged to be content with little. God is a person, and in the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feel, loves, desires, and suffers as any other person may. The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the soul of the redeemed man is the throbbing heart of New Testament religion. The relationship between God and the soul is known to us in conscious personal awareness. It is known to the individual and it is conscious: it does not stay below the threshold of consciousness and work there unknown to the soul.’”
We must realize that the mundane Christian lives we lead need no longer be that way. In John 15, Jesus says that He no longer calls us servant, but instead calls us friend. He knows every thought you think and everything about you, but he longs for you to open up to him and share your heart and deepest desires and thoughts with Him. He wants to get to know you as a friend. We are also his bride and He is our Father. I was listening to a song the other day that caused me to examine my relationship with the father:
Does not a son know his father’s heart? Does not a bride, know her husband’s eyes? Don’t best friends tell each other secrets?
The thought of the things I keep from God was very sobering in that moment. I have been seeking intimacy with the Father but have been missing something. I want to be able to love Him better and love Him more. I want to actively respond to His pursuit of my heart.
We have been “rescued by love’s hands. Forged by fire, not cheaply made. This love he has for you cannot be slain!”
The second half of our ministry in Moldova was great. We were able to keep in touch with our contact from the first half of the month and heard of several of our prayer requests being fulfilled by God. God always provides for the work He wants to get done. It was such a blessing to hear of His provision to the church in Leova.
Our ministry the final two weeks was in a village in the southern tip of Moldova. Our village was very smallâ€"around 250 peopleâ€"and it seemed as if we had gone back in time. To get milk, you found a cow. If you needed a certain type of vegetable, you bought it from the neighbor that grew it or traded it for whatever you grew.
We spent a lot of our time just getting to know the people and most of that time was over meals in their homes. They were extremely precious people and would barely let us work to serve them. We had a chance to help them work on their church building that is still very much in process of being built and some days we picked peaches in the fields with the rest of the villagers.
The villagers that hosted us were members of the small church that we lived in. The married women in the village always covered their heads in church and none of them wore make-up or earrings and the men and women sat on opposite sides of the room during the service, which is common in almost all Eastern European evangelical churches. It was great to see the people of this church practicing their traditions but not being held back by them. They didn’t judge us for not being as traditional in our way of worship but accepted the different ways and forms of worship. They truly loved and served one another in the church and also depended on one another. These people had such an honor and respect for the Lord and worshipped Him so beautifully. During almost each prayer of thanksgiving before the meals, someone would be brought to tears in thanksgiving for what a great God they had.
These people didn’t have much financially but they gave their very best to God and to us. They gave us the best beds, pillows, and blankets from their homes for us to use.
The pastor of their church had disappeared a few months ago with money that had been donated for the church building and a man in the church had taken on the role of pastoring the church. Not only did he serve the church every Sunday while feeling very inadequate, but he went the extra mile of giving all of his profits from his peach farm and sunflower farm to help complete more of church building.
This church was a great picture of a community of believers coming together and realizing the importance of a covenant community. It was a great blessing to be a part of this community for a few weeks. I want to thank you all who have made my ministry possible this year!
My team and I are now in at town outside of Kiev, Ukraine at our final ministry site for the eleven months. We are living at a camp that hosts several groups of youth and children throughout the year. Our ministry this month has been focused a lot on praying for the community that surrounds the camp, for the ministry itself, and for the orphans of Ukraine and this week we are serving a church that is hosting a Christian camp here by doing maintenance-type work (washing dishes, laundry, cleaning bathrooms, etc.).
Over the past week and a half, we have had a lot of time to process all that we have learned and experienced on the race an have tried to prepare mentally for the next step of our lives.
Over the past 335 days I have lived with the same people, worked with same people, and done life with the same people 24 hours a day and in two weeks I won’t be around them anymore. We will all be hundreds to thousands of miles away, each doing our own thing. We will all move on to something greater and will all hopefully experience God in new ways and continue to give out all that He has given us over the past year.
The world race has absolutely been the best decision I have ever made and the greatest time of my life. I have been around the world with some of the most awesome people I know but I am ready to head back to America for the next thing. I am currently praying about attending a ministry school in California and have no idea how I will pay for it if I get accepted. I am certain that God has called me to consider this school as my next step and I will find out very soon how this will all play out. I know that He is in control so I am just waiting. I ask that you would please pray for me to have discernment and wisdom and to be led by the Spirit as I take the next step.
Also, I would love to give back to all those who have been praying for me over the past year. If you have specific prayer requests please email me at: haleyaustinsmith@gmail.com. I will be praying for you all and cannot wait to see how God moves in each of your lives. I pray that each of you are blessed abundantly today! You all mean so much to me and I praise God for each of you.
Today wraps up our ministry here in Leova, Moldova. We had a great month working with a local pastor at a small church here. Our ministry in the mornings was street evangelism and in the afternoons we were involved in a children sports ministry. Our time here was awesome and we were able to share truth with people who had never heard the true gospel being preached. We spent several hours each day interceding for the city and the local christians and our time was most definitely fruitful. We were able to see the pastor's dream come true with an awesome opportunity to reach the youth of the city through a job opportunity leading Physical Education in the schools here. We had a chance to pray with people of the church about their dreams and encourage them which was truly a blessing.
Moldova is seriously oppressed by alcoholism and a lack of hope; however, I know that our prayers paved the way for God to move in a mighty way in the future with other teams.
We are heading to a village in the deep south of Moldova in a couple hours so I am not sure if we will have internet, but I will post an update as soon as possible!
You are probably
wondering where the heck Moldova is and what happens here… so here is a little
background info:
economic
situation.
Moldova is a country in Eastern Europe located
between Romania and Ukraine.. It is the poorest country in Europe. It is very normal for
a family to live off 40 to 60 USD a month. Majorities of Moldovans
immigrate out of the country for work because the unemployment rate here is so
high. Emigration is a mass phenomenon in Moldova and
has a huge impact on the country's economy. Over the past ten years Moldova has
lost over 50%of its population. It is estimated that 600,000 to one million
Moldovan citizens (almost 25% of the population) are working abroad, most
illegally.
sex
trafficking.
A large portion of the illegal workers
are the result of sex trafficking. Every day it is estimated that 3-5
individuals are trafficked from Moldova to other countries. The majority of
women and girls that are trafficked come from rural areas. Over 10 percent are
under 18 years old, some as young as 12 years old. Girls out of the ninth
grade (the required level of completion) when coming from abusive, alcoholic,
or unattended homes, as well as orphans, will look for jobs and they will most
likely end up being trafficked. Sometimes families
are paid money in advance through schemes and their daughters are expected to
earn the advance and pay back the family's debts.
culture /
religion (essentially one thing).
Culture in Moldova stems from the
Orthodox Church. Religion in Moldova is very similar to the rest of Europe. 93%
of the population belongs to the national church of the country, which is the
Orthodox Church. 2% of the population is protestant and the majority of the
people outside the Protestant church consider Christians to be part of a sect
or cult. The evangelical church here is only around ten years long and an
evangelical perspective of the gospel just isn’t accepted.
government.
Moldova is one of only three countries
with democratically elected communist leaders.
We are in Serbia for one more week and are loving it already.. We just finished a three day conference where God was moving big time.. These people are hungry for breakthrough and we are so blessed to partner with them in prayer for it.. we are sure it is coming! On the final night of the conference, we all had a Jesus dance party and rocked out for Jesus.. it was pretty awesome! We are working with a church where people from all over the world worship..There were people from at least 6 different nations together and it was like a piece of heaven..
Tomorrow begins our church's youth camp that we will be leading.. We live in the classrooms of the church and all of the children are going to be joining us so it will be one big sleepover for our last week! Please pray that God moves in a mighty way and changes the kids forever!
You guys bless me so much with your prayers.. thank you again! I pray that God multiplies the blessings 100 fold in each of your lives!!
"These are some of the decisions that define who we are as a community
and how we choose to live our lives. These decisions are not
destinations, but rather journeys..."
We have decided that
teaching the gospel without demonstrating the gospel is not enough.
Good preaching, good doctrine, and being good people are not enough.
We have decided that having a good church club is not enough, good
fellowship is not enough, and just being a member of that club is not
enough.
We have decided that having good Bible studies is good,
but not good enough, that just making it to heaven is not our goal, and
that knowing about God without truly knowing and experiencing God is
meaningless.
We have decided that having good programs is not
enough, that change without transformation is intolerable, and that
staying where we are is not an option.
We have decided that gifting without character is futile.
We have decided that singing songs without worshiping is empty, and having meetings without God showing up is pointless.
We have decided that having faith without works is not enough and
having works without love is not acceptable-that our function comes out
of our relationship first with the Father and second with each other.
We have decided that reading about the book of Acts without living the book of Acts is unthinkable.
We have decided that confident faith is good and bold faith is better We have decided that hearing about the Holy Spirit without
experiencing Him is silly, that believing in His presence without
seeing it manifested in signs and wonders is hypocrisy, that believing
in healing without seeing people healed is absurd, and that believing
in deliverance without people being delivered is absolutely ridiculous.
We have decided to be Holy Spirit filled, Holy Spirit led, and Holy Spirit empowered-anything less doesn't work for us.
We have decided to be the ones telling the stories of God's power-not the ones hearing about them.
We have decided that living saved but not supernatural is living below our privilege and short of what Christ died for.
We have decided that we are a battle ship not a cruise ship, an army
not an audience, Special Forces not spectators, missionaries not club
members.
We have decided to value both pioneers and settlers:
pioneers to expand our territory and settlers to build on those
territories. But we are not squatters, people who take up space others
have fought for without improving it.
We have decided to be infectious instead of innocuous, contagious instead of quarantined, deadly instead of benign. We have decided to be radical lovers and outrageous givers.
We have decided that we are a mission station and not a museum.
We have decided that it is better to fail while reaching for the
impossible that God has planned for us than to succeed settling for
less.
We have decided that nothing short of His Kingdom coming
and His will being done in our world as it is in heaven will satisfy.
We have decided that we will not be satisfied until our world cries
out, "Those who have turned the world upside down have come here too"
(Acts 17:6, NKJV).
Unclouded Sky. notes from a sermon by Bill Johnson
We must make our own history with
God. Gifts are free. Maturity is a process. We grow in the secret places with
God. We grow when problems come up and we seek him for the answers. We grow
when we go before God, face to face with his word. We must stay there until he talks us.Nothing in the world can
replace the time you have alone with him.
If you make history with God, he’ll
make history through you.
Sometimes we meet with the Lord and
he speaks in the momentâ€"and when He speaks sometimes it might be months before
the word comes to pass, but it gives you an anchor in the storm.
In 1 Kings 18, Elijah was
in a drought and he waited, bowed down, in a posture of prayer before the Lord until
The Lord sent him a cloud no bigger than the size of a man’s hand.
We must be looking for a
cloud of rain in the impossible.Something must be born in you so deeply that you become possessed with a
vision. You become possessed with a sense of destiny and purpose and promise of
the Lord where something begins to ache in you for something that seems so
impossible and yet you know that in God it is possible. It is vital that we
have things like that in our life that we pray into.
Everyone is called to take
possession of a promise from the Lord. We must find a cloudless sky and pray.
Find some realm where there seems to be no hope and position yourself and
fight, take the posture to contend.It is important that you refine your focus to the thing that ignites
you, the think that wakes you up at night, that thing that stirs your passions
unlike anything else. Find a cause that you have a passion for. Don’t devote
yourself to something that doesn’t make your blood boil. God is doing something
in this world and wants you to be a part of it. Find your cloudless sky and go
before the Lord and travailâ€"it’s got to be something significant. Don’t spend
your life on trite things. Take something that is earth shaking. Find something
in prayer to contend for.
Elijah was praying and sent
his servant up six times. The servant kept looking at the landscape telling Elijah
there was no sign of rain and on the seventh time, his servant said, well there
is a cloud, but its about the size of a man’s hand; however, that is all Elijah needed.
When you are leaning into
something and undivided in your focus, you don’t need a heavy manifestation to
impress you.When you are
possessed by a promise of what is possible that takes you back before the Lord
on a regular basis, it pulls at greatness, and significance. You don’t feel
great at all in that moment, you don’t feel significant at all. You are on your
knees, with your head in between your knees and you are crying out before the
Lord, but you are contending because you know you are carrying divine purpose.
It’s like the king himself has sent you on a mission and there is something
about that moment when we are before the Lord and we contend for that which is
impossible. When your heart is anticipating, leaning into what you know will
bring breakthrough, a cloud the size of a man’s hand is all you need.
Find your reason for living by adopting a cloudless
sky. Find something you will have to fight to bring about, something that you
know that when the breakthrough for that area comes it will affect cities and
nations of the world. Everybody
gets to make their own history and everybody has the potential of finding
encouragement from the smallest cloud once the heart is set on taking
possession of the impossible.
I hope you took some encouragement from this! This message has motivated me to fight for more of God. Have you sown into God lately? are you willing to fight for his presence?
You can change the world with God.
Focus on your potential to be a world changer.
If your dream are possible without God, they aren't large enough..
I just finished up with ministry in Romania and had debrief to finish the month off right.. Debrief was an awesome time of encouragement and stirred up a lot of hope in me. I am blessed beyond belief to be a part of L-Squad and to have had such a special weekend with my former squad leaders (Andi and Sean) and our fabulous coaches Mike and Patti Paschall.
My team and I are now en route to a small town in northern Serbia for around 13 days. I have no idea what our ministry will be, but I will send an update asap! Great things are going to happen!
one last thought I was reminded of the other day...
If your dreams are possible without God, then they are far too small!