Remember the words ‘feed me till I want no more’ from the old hymn, Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah?  Even though I haven’t heard that hymn in years, it has been playing and playing through my head this morning!  So, as I was thinking of returning to my beloved Romania, the reality of my not receiving the ‘feeding’ in the very ‘dark’ culture of Romania that I do in the States reminded me of the steps I have to take to protect myself, spiritually.

I love America!  I feel so blessed to have been born here.  And even though it seems as though there is no hope for America at times, besides all the freedoms we have which includes being able to worship in the church, synagogue, mosque of our choice, as a follower of Christ, I can turn on the radio or TV and in a moment’s notice can be presented with a plethora of Christian programming.  After traveling around the world a bit and seeing all the moral decay elsewhere, actually America can at times look like one giant Sunday School to me.

So that is a ‘miss’, a ‘lacking’ in my life while in Romania.  I have no TV, there is no regular Christian programming on the radio which I really wouldn’t understand with the language barrier.  And I certainly don’t understand everything my pastor is saying during his sermon on Sundays.  Even though he gives me a typewritten outlined copy of his message, any foreign language is as complicated as the English language.  Certain words have more than one (unrelated) meaning – and then there are the words and phrases that contain the schema around them that would have had to be learned from childhood.   Then there are the allegorical phrases.  Who knows what they mean?!

So to guard myself spiritually in Romania, such a depressed and oppressed area of our world, I found that I had to add a couple of additional steps in order not to be sucked into all the evilness the ‘enemy’ has cast on that country.  First of all, before I go to bed at night, I program a sermon or message from a favorite speaker or pastor, and when I wake in the morning all I have to do is roll over and hit one button and voila! – even before rising, I get instruction and feeding from the Word.  From that first spiritual exercise, I go into my little living room and raising my arms, affirm to my God my heart towards, and for Him.  “God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit – Three in One, I love You and trust You as the only sovereign power in my life today!”  Then, with a cup of coffee in hand, I proceed to my desk and spend as much time as possible in personal study in the Word.  Nearly daily I know, then, that it is wise to ‘put on the whole armor of God’.  – Ephesians 6:10-18.   And finally my translator and I pray deeply and in the power of the Holy Spirit in so many ways before ever entering either orphanage to minister.

I once heard a pastor say that he spends four hours in the Word, daily.  Unfortunately, I thought rather sarcastically, “Bully for you!  Not all of us have that kind of time”.  Nor, sadly, does my heart always ‘pant after You, O Lord’.  – Psalm 42.1   But I learned quickly in ‘the other land that I love’ that it behooves me to stay spiritually fit.  Not only is it important to get physical exercise, but also spiritual exercise in maintaining spiritual discipline in our lives.  I want to say with Paul:

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”  – II Timothy 4.7