Dober Dan.

June 10, 2019

For my American readers this is a Slovene greeting that means “Good day!” This is one of the handful of Slovene words that I have learned. I still have a long way to go.

It is crazy to think that I have been in Europe for a week in a half now. Time has flown by so quickly. Adjusting to a new area has been interesting. There was a fighting of exhaustion from being jet legged during the amazing race and now there is an adjustment of being in a new environment. It is weird being in a new place where every conversation you encounter is in a different language and all of the faces are unfamiliar.

This past week has consisted of meeting the rest of the missionaries in Slovenia that we will be working with, in addition to Mary joining us! Yay! So our Celje team is finally complete. This summer all of 4 of us, interns, are living with our missionary family, the Stevens family. They have so graciously welcomed us into their home. The 3 of us girls will be living downstairs in their apartment that is in the basement of their house, while Mitchell will be living upstairs with the family. I love family has embraced us and created a discipling community for the summer as we reach out to the youth of Slovenia.

Every Monday we will be traveling to Ljubljana, which is the capital of Slovenia, for our Intern Day with the rest of our Slovenia team. This is a day of spiritual rest for the week where we are spiritually poured into by our intern leader, Matt, and his family. Today was the first Intern Day which was refreshing and familiar to do in the midst of all of the new activity we have been introduced too.

By the end of the summer we will have read through the entirety of the New Testament, which means a lot of reading each week. This past week and half we read through Matthew and Mark. As we read through we were encouraged to underline/highlight parts of the Bible that stood out to us and spoke to us differently.

“Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.” He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three day and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

Matthew 12:38-40, NIV

I did not remember reading about the Sign of Jonah until I saw it reappear in Matthew chapter 16 when the people were still demanding signs from Jesus. Reading these chapters in a short span of time helped me to see this repetition and want to dig a bit deeper into what the Sign of Jonah was exactly. If you are familiar with the story of Jonah you know that he turned away from what God was calling him to do and even through a stubborn and reluctant heart of a prophet, God was able to use that move in the hearts of the people of Nineveh.

At first I was confused why there was a comparison of Jonah and Jesus. It did not make a lot sense to me. One is answering God’s call while the other one ignored it. But it all comes down to the circumstance that each individual is placed in. Jonah continually ignored God until he found himself in an impossible and absurd situation. He did not believe God could do what he said he was going to do with the people of Nineveh – he was scared. In the same way, the people that Jesus interacts with resemble the little faith that Jonah had. They will only believe that Jesus is who he says he is if he performs just one more miracle. Their belief has conditions. Even though Jesus has been walking around healing one person after another. The people are asking for a sign but were blind to the one happening right in front of their faces.

This was eye opening for me and the way in which I demand a sign from God before I choose to follow through. It is almost as if I challenge God to prove himself to me. I feel as if this is how a lot of us treat God. We want to be ensured for the future instead of trusting in the faithfulness we have seen in his Word. Which is definitely easier said than done.

This passage reminded me to continually be all in for Christ and trust his Word. There are so many times that we are discouraged because it is taking too long or we overlook the miracle performed because it is not what we expected. We start to lose faith. Jesus came to share the good news and did so every moment of his life on earth, but not everyone understood. It took time for people to grasp that Jesus was the Son of Man. As we are all familiar with, people did not start believing until after he had been crucified and even then people were trying to cover up the fact that Jesus had stayed true to what was prophesied.

The people of Slovenia need to hear the good news. And even when there is little faith, we are reassured that even the faith of a mustard seed will make mountains move. So as I am challenged with creating intentional relationships with youth who do not know Jesus and what he has done, I challenge you to invest in someone who is not familiar with the good news or someone who is new to the faith and is in need of discipling. Yeah it is scary to be open and vulnerable, but saying yes to Jesus opens doors to paths you cannot see yet. Your story and the way you have been impacted is more relatable than you realize. You never want to underestimate God because he will use you even when you are moving in the wrong direction.