Prayer played a huge part in our trip to Ukraine. Each team member had a group of people back home praying consistently for them while we were away and each one of us had been praying since the start of our planning for the trip. Prayers take on a heightened fervency when you are outside of your comfort zone and feel more urgently the need for God to intervene, protect, and provide. We always have that need, whether on an international mission trip or simply living our daily lives, but we are more attuned to it when we are stepping out in faith.
I had prayed before the trip that God might give me an opportunity to preach. In my mind, this would be the chance to share the gospel with an audience of people who did not know Jesus. I did get this opportunity later in the trip. But I was also asked to preach at a Wednesday night service at the church where we were doing our Bible camp. I hadn’t planned to speak to an audience of mostly Christ-followers and I had trouble deciding exactly what message I wanted to share. I couldn’t settle on anything specific for a couple of hours on Tuesday night and it wasn’t until Wednesday morning that God led me to share a devotion on prayer from Exodus 17.
Exodus 17:8-16 is kind of an odd story about Israel fighting a battle with the Amalekites. Moses, Aaron, and Hur go up on a nearby hillside to pray while the battle is going on and Moses realizes that as long as he is praying with his hands in the air, Israel is winning the battle. But as soon as Moses lowers his arms, the Amalekites start to win. Eventually Aaron and Hur hold up Moses’ arms in prayer until Israel is victorious. God tells Moses to write this story down and Moses builds an altar and gives God a new name: “The Lord is my Banner.”
I took this story and made five quick points about prayer (the points had to be short because I was preaching through an interpreter who was translating into Hungarian and there was another person in the audience translating into Ukrainian for another handful of people). The main point in the story is that we need partners to help us pray – Aaron and Hur were there to support Moses and hold his arms up. Our team had many people praying for us and we were praying for each other. But prayer can get difficult when we go it alone.
I also talked about what “the Lord is my banner” meant. A banner or flag is something that gives us our identity and something to rally towards. I told the church there that since the war had started, many people in the United States had started flying Ukraine flags or wearing Ukraine colors. But ultimately it is God who must be our banner, our rallying point.
After the message, Tonee, the pastor of the church were we were serving, spoke about how encouraging this story was at a time where ministry has understandably become very taxing and tiring for him. He shared that he really needs to look around for his own Aaron and Hur – people who would come alongside and help lift him up. He wanted to find those faithful people who would encourage and help in the hard work of ministry. Our host missionary also expressed a weariness after what has been a difficult stretch of work both in Hungary and Ukraine. All of this is completely understandable as the work God calls us to often exceeds our ability and endurance, forcing us to rely on Him.
It is hard to describe how humbled and grateful I felt that God used me to communicate his love and encouragement to his faithful servants. Where I had struggled to decide what to share, God knew what needed to be said. There is nothing better than seeing that God has placed you in just the right place at just the right time to speak and work through you to accomplish His purposes. I have no idea why God would use me in this way – there is nothing special about me and lots of broken stuff – but I am so thankful that I get to see him do amazing things.
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