Today I turn 29. A birthday is a good opportunity to reflect upon the past year and look forward to the next. Any birthday that ends in 9 is a good opportunity to look back on the previous decade.

My wife and I were talking recently about our twenties, and we realized that for me, this decade can be divided in half.

• Five years in Romania; five years in the States.
• Five years getting my bachelor’s degree; roughly five years getting my masters.
• Five years writing devotional thoughts and journal entries; five years writing a blog and (by the time I turn 30) two books.
• Five years serving Romanian churches; five years serving in the U.S.

As I get closer to closing out my twenties, I am filled with gratitude. Every now and then, I listen to the stories of guys my age who have recently gotten married, had kids, and are starting to find their way back to churches they left during their college years. I’ve seen others cry tears of remorse and regret at having wasted many years. Where did my twenties go? they ask. All the factors that the sociologists point to (the party scene, extended adolescence, employment difficulties) only reveal part of the story. Sin is what ultimately lowers the expectations for our generation.

But though that could have been my story, it’s not. So I’m thankful. I’m glad that God preserved me from wasting the past decade in the pursuit of fleeting pleasures. I get choked up when I think that God chose to save me, and then he gave me the awesome privilege of serving him and the church.

That’s not to say that I am better than anyone else. No… sin is often subtle. My temptations resemble those of the older brother in the story of the prodigal son. I battle self-righteousness, pride, and self-centeredness. I find myself drifting back into a moralistic understanding of the gospel, and so I feel the constant need to splash the cold, but refreshing water of gospel truth in my face every morning.

But I am grateful that – in the sovereign plan of God and because of his grace alone – he put me on a path that kept me from wasting my twenties. He has given me much more than I could ever deserve: a beautiful wife, two precious children, a wonderful church to serve in.

Sure, there have been challenges and heartaches:

• Learning Romanian and adapting to a new culture…
• leaving a position of ministry in 2002 that had become (perhaps idolatrous) too big a part of my life…
• leaving Corina’ s family and most of our possessions behind in Romania when we moved back to the States with just a couple of suitcases in 2005…
• the sad feeling of rootlessness and ministerial uselessness during our first year of seminary…
• and right now, being far away from Corina’s father during his time of illness.

But God has proven faithful in the midst of the joys and the heartaches. And as I enter the last year of my twenties, I am challenged to not become too comfortable.

September marks ten years since I hopped on a plane with a one-way ticket to Romania. When I read my journal entries and think back to that little 19-year-old guy, naive and inexperienced but ready to win the world for Christ, I ask myself, Do I have that passion today? Could I leave everything and go?

I’ve got a wife and two kids now, a wonderful place of ministry, Ph.D studies on the horizon, a second book I’m working on. Corina and I have talked about it numerous times: Could we just up and go? We’ve both done it before. Could we do it again? No matter the cost?

I want the answer to be yes. But I realize that sometimes, the bigger sacrifice for a missionary’s heart is to stay put, to continue to (in the words of Kevin DeYoung) plod along and remain faithful in small things.

The more I grow, the more I want that fire I had ten years ago, though contained now and chastened, to continue to burn in me. I hope that the growth of the last ten years and the maturity that comes with ministering for a decade will only fuel that blaze, but that it would burn in ways that bring glory to Christ and his kingdom.