Sweet Slovakia

Greetings from Bratislava!

I apologize, I wrote this 3 days ago, but in the absence of internet service, I forgot to post it.  So this is a double-post.

The first thing you notice about Bratislava is that it doesn’t seem to have the eternally crumbling infrastructure of the rest of the formerly Communist world.  The downtown area is sunny by day and well-lit at night.  The sidewalks and pedestrian area are nicely paved and not terribly crowded, although there are plenty of restaurants, shops, and cafes.  And the Slovaks themselves are light-hearted and open, which is probably the most surprising thing of all.  Communism left many people as scarred as their lands.

So how did the Slovaks survive Communism to flourish so nicely?  I think we heard a clue in the Slovakian National Anthem.  Anushka translated and explained the lyrics, which in part tell the story of a woman digging a well.  She dug deeper and deeper, and deeper still.  Then she looked into the well, thinking that she should drown herself in the well.  But she decides not to do that.  These are strange lyrics for a national anthem, but in it you can see the unhappy scars of Communism that tempted the woman (Slovakia) to kill herself.  Somehow she finds the resilience to survive.

The Slovaks, like the woman, bear the scars of Communism, but have turned their attention from the dim past to the bright future.  Slovakia does indeed have a bright future.  The economy here is the best of all the formerly Communist world.  Of course, economic crisis is global, and Slovakia is not immune, but the youth are not fleeing Slovakia like they are from many other East European countries.  In fact, we have met young people here who have come to Slovakia looking for a better life, instead of going to the west.

Our first evening here was at a local church that meets in a movie theater.  It was a youth prayer group meeting, but like none I had ever been to before.  Youth from all over the city, from various churches, came to the meeting, which had over 100 people.  There was worship in music and dance, there was teaching, and there was prayer, both corporate and in small groups.  In fact, when it was time for small group prayer, the leaders asked the people over 30 to pray over the youth.  That means that most of our team sought young people to pray for.  I found 2 university students, sweet, smiling girls, and prayed for them.  They were very encouraged by my prayer, and thanked me for praying for them.

Later I heard that the churches all over the city regularly cooperate and meet together.  It gave me such hope.  Unity!  I would love to see unity like this in Milan—or even in America.  The Bratislavan churches do not compete with each other.  They recognize that the different expressions of faith and worship are simply a matter of the individual character of each church family.  People are not regarded with suspicion if they go to a meeting at another church.  I would guess that there is probably less church-hopping, as a result.  Because giving people the freedom to visit and learn from other believers conversely will instill in them a feeling of familial pride in their own home church.  Plus the home church benefits from the sharing of prophetic insight and instruction.  It’s really how the Body of Christ was intended to function.

Young people are the most precious resource that Slovakia has because young people have not yet lost their idealism or their positive outlook.  When a country loses its youth, it loses something really valuable.  It loses its future.

If you want to see the most flourishing of all post-Communism, you should come to Slovakia.  There is a sweetness here that will make you want to come back.  I know I do!  God is good!

 

Kebap Shop Breakfast

Greetings once again from Bratislava!

I woke up early this morning, and left the hostel in search of coffee.  I was surprised to see on the streets that there were a lot of drunken people, mostly young people, at 6:30 in the morning.  A few were staggering, but mostly I could tell that they were drunk by the volume of their voices.  I’m not sure if there is something about having lots of alcohol in the bloodstream that renders a person incapable of hearing as well as normal or if it’s just a matter of having spent all night with thundering music.  The drunken people on the streets all seemed to know the places where they could find food, which was mostly kebap/falafel shops.  The first place I stopped didn’t have coffee.  The counter person acted like it was strange to want coffee at such an hour of the morning.

The next place I stopped had coffee and seating indoors, so I sat down to drink my coffee.  A young man entered soon after me and asked for his kebap in English.  While he was waiting to pay, I asked him where he was from.  He said, “Ireland,” with some pride in his voice.  He paid and sat down with me.  He told me about his night, which had been spent with friends drinking in bars.  I asked his name, which was Sean.  He ate only half of his kebap, declaring that his eyes had been bigger than his stomach (something my dad had often said).   I asked him what time the bars close, and he said they close at 6.  He said that he was the “last man standing,” and that if the bar hadn’t closed, he would be happy to continue drinking because “I’m Irish,” (again said with pride).

Sean works in Bratislava, but travels often between here, Budapest, Vienna, and Prague.  Because he talked so much, I got the feeling that Sean is lonely here.  Perhaps loneliness is something that he is trying to escape with alcohol.  He looked at my cross and said, “You’ll probably feel better than me in the morning.”  Then he stood up and walked out.

I felt bad that I hadn’t gotten the opportunity to share Jesus with him, but I don’t know how much his boozy brain would be able to really understand or accept.  Anyway, I prayed for him.  He is probably my son’s age, and already very much an alcoholic.  It was a sad way to start a Sunday.

Nevertheless, I am looking forward to a very good Sunday because today I am going to kindergarten.  Actually, it is a church that meets in a kindergarten.  The church also runs the kindergarten.  Zuzana is a girl I met on our first night in Bratislava.  We met at that prayer group in the movie theater church.  Zuzana took me to her church, just to show it to me because it was close to where we were meeting, and it was interesting because of the kindergarten meeting there.  To her surprise and mine, the pastor was there—Pastor Ivan.  Immediately I felt a very strong urging by the Holy Spirit to pray for him.  It was a prayer very much led by the Holy Spirit, and it encouraged Pastor Ivan very much.

So when we talked about going to church last night, although I like Anushka’s church very much, I don’t feel like I’ve made quite the same connection as I did at Pastor Ivan’s kindergarten church.  Since it is close to Anushka’s church, and since Zuzana was sitting next to me, I asked if it would be OK if I go to her church instead.  Nobody had a problem with that, and Zuzana was very pleased to hear that I wanted to visit her church.

Most of all, I want to encourage Pastor Ivan, who has had some problems lately.  Sometimes the simple act of showing up can be very encouraging.  I think he will be very encouraged to see me again this morning in church.  And encouraging him will also encourage me.  In God’s work, everybody is encouraged and blessed.  I love working for the Lord!  He really is the best Boss ever!  I often tell people that my Boss is like a Father to me.  God is good!

Peer Pressure – Pay Your Bill!

Here in Bulgaria if someone doesn’t pay their gas bill, the gas company will shut off the gas to the whole building—something they could never get away with in either Italy or the US (or most civilized places).  They are counting on the neighbors to put pressure on the offender to pay his bill, and it seems to work pretty quickly.  Buck and Nadia don’t suffer much since their apartment is well-insulated, their stove is electric, and there is a backup boiler for heating water.

This method harks back to Communist times, when the government would punish whole blocks or even whole communities where a dissident lived by shutting off the heat.  This was easy for them to do because whole communities were heated from gigantic boilers that looked a lot like nuclear reactor cooling towers.  The heat was shut off for a whole town like shutting off a faucet.

And speaking of dissidents, I heard about another pastor who had suffered severe persecution under the Communists.  There were no details given, and that is either because the family didn’t know the details or because the details are so unpleasant that they didn’t want to speak about it over a meal.  After reading “Tortured for Christ” by Richard Wurmbrand, either one is possible.

Some churches seek to keep their people in line by peer pressure, and by preaching about being ever on guard against sin.  It’s a very common topic in Italian churches.  But a legalistic approach like this is the opposite of grace.

Lately grace has been on my mind.  Pastor Fabio preached two weeks ago that when Jesus said from the cross, “It is finished,” He meant that all the curses of original sin and all the works of the devil have been undone and paid for.  All our sin, all our sicknesses, and death—all of it has been undone and paid for by Jesus’ blood.  No peer pressure is needed to keep us in line.  I John 3:6 says: “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning.  No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.”  And John wasn’t saying that we would never sin because he also wrote: “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin.  But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One,” I John 2:1.  The difference is an occasional sin versus a lifestyle of habitual sinful behavior.  Grace covers the first one, while the second neither knows or appreciates grace.

No church and no pastor anywhere will have a congregation of perfect people who never sin.  And we need to be aware that not everybody who comes to church—not even every active member—is really and truly born again.  That’s what the parable of the wheat and weeds was about (Matthew 13:24-30).  Some people love church, love the music, love the activities, but just don’t really love Jesus.  No amount of peer pressure will ever change them, either.  The only thing that truly changes lives is love.  Love triumphs over all, and that is the story of grace.  God is good!

 

The Scars of Communism Part Two

As I wrote in The Scars of Communism (https://europeanfaithmissions.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/the-scars-of-communism/), just before coming on this trip to Hungary and Romania, I opened the box of books that I had gotten out of storage after a year, and the book at the very top was “Tortured for Christ” by Richard Wurmbrand.  The things suffered by Pastor Wurmbrand and the rest of the Underground Church really moved me.  After all, I could have been born in a Communist country, and had to suffer for my faith, too.

And in The Wild Life (https://europeanfaithmissions.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/the-wild-life/) I wrote:

Today there was a conference for the seniors of the church, at which Pastor H. Koraćs Gėza spoke.  I was told that I would have about five minutes to speak to them.  So of course I prayed about it, and here’s what I said:

Looking out here at all the gray hair, I am aware that many of you and your parents kept your faith in Christ under the oppressive rule of the atheistic Communists.  I have two things to say to you: First, I am deeply sorry that my country believed the lies of the Communists and did nothing to help you.  Secondly, I know that someday you will trade your silver crowns for gold crowns.  I am here to honor you for your faithful service to your Lord and mine.

To the young people here I say: learn from these elders, and share the love of Christ with everyone you know.

And finally, I would like to thank Pastor Gėza for coming.  It is an honor to meet you.

When Pastor Gėza returned to the platform, he observed that Christianity had actually flourished and grown under Communist oppression.  He said that Christianity now faces a far more dangerous enemy in the form of complacency.  I believe he’s right.

It is the danger of complacency in Eastern Europe is that it is following the same pattern that makes Western Europe such a difficult mission field.  Complacency has caused Western Europe to evolve from nominal Christianity through religious disconnection, cynicism, and xenophobia to become the secular, materialistic, humanistic, hedonistic, nihilistic, hopeless, suicidal people they’ve become, seeking answers in drugs and alcohol, Eastern Philosophies, Witchcraft, and Satanism.  Is it any wonder that abortion and human trafficking thrives in such an environment?  In Switzerland it is now possible to request physician-assisted suicide without any physical illness.

The most frightening thing of all is that the United States is following the unfortunate pattern of Europe.

What does complacency look like?  Complacency looks like Christianity, but lacks the power of the Holy Spirit, or as the Apostle Paul put it: “having a form of godliness but denying its power,” (2 Timothy 3:5).  Complacency seeks answers and help through human means instead of looking to God as the Source of all things.  Complacency seeks its own comfort instead of God’s way.

When Jesus says, “Follow Me,” Complacency answers, “But I have family responsibilities,” (Matthew 8:21).

When Jesus says, “Follow Me,” Complacency answers, “OK, but let me say goodbye to my family,” (Luke 9:61).

When Jesus says, “Follow Me,” Complacency answers, “But it’s dangerous,” (John 12:25-26).

When Jesus says, “Follow Me” Complacency answers, “But the food there is gross!  I can’t sleep on the floor!  There’s no electricity!  No internet!  No phone signal!” (Matthew 8:19-20).

Complacency makes all sorts of excuses for not following Jesus, and some of them seem appropriate and valid.  But there are missionaries all around the world who have said yes to Jesus even though it meant leaving family responsibilities, saying goodbye to family, going into danger, eating disgusting food, sleeping on the floor, without electricity, internet or phone.

But Complacency is worse than that.  Complacency doesn’t want to rock the boat by bringing Jesus into the school or the workplace.  Complacency believes in the separation of church and state.  Complacency won’t even talk about Jesus at parties with friends, for fear of offending someone.

Because of these attitudes, Jesus is no longer welcome in our schools or workplaces; Biblical Christianity has no say in lawmaking; and political correctness has become more important in American society than the salvation of souls.  Those people that you’re so worried about offending need to hear the Good News that Jesus died for them.  And the person you know with the hardest heart is someone who desperately needs Jesus.

Jesus was meek and gentle, and offensive to the people who rejected Him and His free offer of salvation.  He never backed down from telling the truth.  He is our Perfect Example, and like Him, we need to be ready to “offend” people with the truth.  But to do that, we’ve got to step out of our comfort zone.  We’ve got to give up comfortable Complacency.  We’ve got to pick up our cross and follow Him, even when that leads us away from family and friends.  And to do that we’ve got to trust God.

Here’s one last thought:  Have you ever read the list of the people who are going to hell in Revelation 21:8?  “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars —they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur.”  Look who leads the list: not the murderers, not idolaters, but the cowardly!  Many times throughout the Bible we are encouraged to be strong, bold, and courageous.  Jesus said, “If anyone is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when He comes in His Father’s glory with the holy angels,” (Mark 8:38).