Christ Is Joy

It’s been quite a while since I posted. I’m currently living in Craiova, Romania. It’s safe to say, ministry has been very time-consuming. However, God’s been moving big time. One of the biggest ways I’ve seen the Lord show up is by transforming minds on what a life sacrificed to Christ looks like. One of the big misconceptions they have is that they simply don’t believe God is fun. In their eyes, God isn’t relational. He only cares about people following rules to a tee and staying in line with tradition. But, quite frankly, I don’t vibe with that. In Galatians 5:22-23, it says this, “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!” One thing is for sure, God is NOT against joy. He IS our joy.

Here are just a couple of stories of God showing up for us in some fun ways.

Caedmon, Matt, and I were doing ministry together just a couple of days ago. We were walking around the town praying about what the Lord was leading us to do. As we prayed, we ran into a homeless man that we had met briefly a couple of times before. But this time our interaction was different. We felt the Lord telling us to push in, that this man was our ministry for today. Out of the blue, as we talked to him, both Matt and I got the idea that we should have a snowball fight. It was odd, but we felt called for some reason. So we asked him, “do you want to have a snowball fight?” His face brightened and through a deep smile he responded, “yes.” We figured he was going to lead us to the park that was only a minute or two away from where we were, we were quite wrong. We ended up walking 30 or 40 minutes away to the biggest park in the whole city. As we walked into the park, two more homeless boys walked up. At this point, we had a full-fledged snowball war. We threw snowballs and had a blast but it didn’t just end there. We got to teach them about the love of Jesus both through our words and through our actions. We got to tell them about how God is fun, and He’s not some guy in the sky who only cares about rules. He’s a relational father who rejoices when we rejoice and mourns when we mourn. That is the God who lives.

After this whole experience we brought the initial homeless man with us back to the church. At the church we asked, “Do you want to have a bible study?” He immediately nodded and gave us a big smile. We quickly realized after starting that it was hard for him to understand what he was reading. We were on the Bible app trying to think of how to make it easier for him. Out of nowhere, a Bible Project video popped up. If you don’t know what the Bible Project is, it’s a project where they describe the whole Bible in different videos. The Bible characters are cartoony and it makes it really simple to understand and extra fun to learn. We began showing him the Bible Project videos and he couldn’t get enough. He kept asking for more, as soon as one finished you had to get the next one up and going quickly because he was ready to watch. This went on for quite some time, but eventually, we had to go. It felt like we had to pry the phone out of his hands, he was so invested. I could feel the Lord working in his life. He was showing him what it meant to have a childlike faith.

This past weekend a couple of other guys and I from the squad were evangelizing. We were going through a park when we found a man hitting a giant board outside an Orthodox church. We were honestly quite confused, so we came up to him and started a conversation. He only spoke Romanian so speaking was quite difficult. But through a bunch of confusing hand gestures and words we didn’t understand he brought us to the bell tower. Of course, as Mogs, we decided that this wasn’t sketchy at all. So we came with him and climbed up a rickety ladder to the top floor. He started to ring the GIANT bell. Quickly after this bell started ringing, Justin asked if he could try. He tried for a few pulls of the huge chain and I decided I wanted to try as well. But, when I grabbed the chain from Justin, I grabbed the top of the chain on accident. When the bell swung back up, I LAUNCHED at least 4 feet into the air holding onto this chain. It swung back down and I crumpled onto the ground. I was completely in shock still as to what was even going on. The man who brought us in quickly tried to save me but I was still holding the chain and getting thrown around. After about 10 seconds in total of getting flung around I was helped back up. It was absolutely hilarious and quite unexpected. The other guys made sure to let me know by dying laughing at me for quite a few minutes.

Both these stories are on the fun side. But that doesn’t mean God wasn’t moving in big ways. One of the coolest things I’ve seen here is how God is breaking down huge walls in peoples’ lives. One of the big walls people have here is thinking that religion is a chore. Christianity is believed to suck the life out of you. We’ve had so many opportunities to show people that just simply isn’t true. God doesn’t suck the life out of us, He breathes life into us. God is joy. How can we be Christians and not take pleasure in Christ? Christ is the one who ALLOWS us to have any fun at all. I can’t speak for anyone else; But if the Lord gives me a blessing, why would I refuse to accept it? It’s a gift.

I’m going to be posting more soon, stay tuned! Thanks for reading!