The Gospel Coalition

Last week, I wrote about doing the preparations for a mission team from my church to come and do ministry in the Romanian village I worked in every weekend. A few days into the trip, I was discouraged.

I began to feel emotionally and physically exhausted. Plus, one problem weighed heavily upon me. The Pediatric team was not being utilized properly. Because no one had gotten the word out, there were very few children for them to see. Their potential had been wasted. I felt like all this was my fault.

I was also upset because some members of the team, on the Romanian side, had let me down. Many of the details had not been coordinated well enough in advance, and furthermore, the village pastor had not been as approachable or organized as was necessary for a trip of this magnitude. Still being “new” in Romania, I was not able to do all that I would have wanted to do to help. All of this turned out to be very disappointing, and I felt like that much of the trip was being wasted.

As the week went on, I began to grow bitter about the events taking place. The Romanians I had counted on were letting me down left and right. I felt helpless to resolve some of the situations. I was tired of being the contact person between two languages and cultures. I could barely focus on my long-term ministry in Romania when the short-term trip was squeezing the life out of me. And what’s more, I was embarrassed that things had not run more smoothly for the American group that had come.

Because I was discouraged and exhausted, Satan was blinding me from the great things that were taking place.

• A revival was beginning in a small village church along the Hungarian border. For years, no one had given the church any attention, and their numbers had dwindled down to just a handful. Now, the church was filled with visitors and many trusted Christ. (I would later spend many a Sunday in this village, encouraging the faithful.)
• Though the Pediatric team had not been heavily involved in ministry, the other medical and evangelistic teams saw great success.
• The eye-glass team fitted hundreds of Romanians for glasses.

The saying goes: “The Devil’s in the details.” Perhaps that’s true in more ways than one. The devil can sometimes use the details in order to distract us from the bigger picture. Things went wrong that week, yes. But many things went right. Many people trusted the Lord. God worked in a wonderful way, and yet I could not rejoice because the few things that went wrong had trumped my joy over what all God was doing.

By far, the most important event that week was the conversion of one of the teenagers that we had spent many months praying for. I’ll get to that next time…

written by Trevin Wax  © 2008 Kingdom People blog