Can life get any more extreme?  Extreme sports have nothing on a life in missions!

Ministry often appears sweet and sour, a seemingly contradictory combination of emotions bordering on the extreme.  We experience the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, joy and discouragement, often within the same hour.  The headaches are ENORMOUS, but the successes are the sweetest!

Returning to Moldova from the World Missions Summit, we experienced an extreme range of feelings.  Our first evening, we dealt with headaches concerning the lost.  We had a lost bag, floating through the universe without any tracking tag.  Our associate’s puppy had run from fireworks, now lost somewhere within the city.  We had even lost Irina when she decided to bolt from the Home of Hope.

Those appeared to be the small miracles we needed to experience.

As I was dreaming about a do-over for the last few hours, miracles started happening.  Our bag showed up in Moldova, with the strangest airline route affixed.  Irina called and wanted to meet, returning to the Home of Hope this week. The puppy even showed up miles from our house, after two weeks of roaming the alleys of Chisinau!

There has been many miracles over the last two weeks, yet interspersed among the miracles have been headaches of immense proportion.  We rejoice with one miracle, only to look up and see another miracle-requiring need looming before us.

Never before has such a gamut of “flavors” seasoned our lives.
Never before have we faced such challenges and seen such miracles.

I have lived in windy places such at Montana, yet nothing compares to the spiritual gales we have faced as of late.  The Apostle Paul’s words have been echoing in my mind, “Stand firm….having done everything, stand firm…..Stand firm therefore….”

We do not have the abilities to do this task, but we will stand firm.
We cannot force someone toward Jesus, but we will stand firm and show God’s grace.
We cannot heal a broken woman’s life, but we will stand firm in Christ’s love.

If I may encourage you today—stand firm.  If your situation seems at its darkest, place your trust in Christ, and stand firm.  If the needs and hurts around you are too much to bear, stand firm in His grace.  If the battle seems too fierce, arm yourself with the character of Christ and stand firm.

“For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”  2 Cor. 4:17-18

Waiting for more miracles in Moldova,
Andy Raatz