Slovakia!
I did not realize how long it has been since I’ve been to Slovakia. I brought our extra Slovak crowns with me, but they have been using the Euro for over a year! The other side to that is my friend Pavel Zsolnai, pastor of Bratislava City Church, has faithfully carried on the next round of schools without needing much input from us. That is part of our vision, to see the Leaders equipped to carry on their own training.
Be that as it may, it was good to come again to Bratislava and see friends I haven’t seen for over a year. It was great to see Maria, one of my interpreters, again! She came running up to me to tell me that a prophetic word I had given her at the graduation of the first school had come true in her life. What a blessing THAT was!
Saturday night I taught in their discipleship school on the topic of learning to use your spiritual gifts. It is part of a series that they are doing on learning to be a servant. I taught two 45 minute segments with a lot of questions and feedback. It is always such an honor to teach students that are hungry to learn. I did my best to make it practical and real, but God seemed to accomplish more in the sessions than I did. There was some great responses from the class and when I issued a challenge to them, over half the class accepted the challenge. I challenged them to stand up if they were willing for me to pray that God would bring a specific opportunity to them within the next two days whereby they would discern the prompting of the Holy Spirit and they would need to be willing to obey that prompting. It was great to see how many of them stood.
This morning (Sunday) I preached at the Bratislava City Church. They are doing a series on learning to walk with God so I joined in the series by talking about becoming useful to God. It was a very simple sermon, but maybe one of my best. I really only had one point. I stole it from Bill Johnson, “I am learning to stop living FOR God and begin living FROM God.” It seems that every day I get more revelation on this for my own life. I used 2 Timothy 1:12 and Galatians 2:20 as supporting texts but I really just shared my own experience of how God is bringing me into his “rest” and how much he can do through me when I operate from that place. Very simple but there was a strong presence of God there and many people responded.
Well, tomorrow I head to Prague with Pasho (Pavel) and will meet up with Randy and Jackie. Please be praying for the first-ever meeting of the Antioch Project. We’ve had a strong response from those we’ve invited and we will probably have close to 50 Pastors and leaders from churches that want to transition into an Antioch-style church. This could have huge implications for the spread of the gospel throughout Europe.
