Passion & Compassion

Fog in Skopje        After two summers in a row coming to beautiful and all around the clock sunny Lapland it was inevitable to come and experience the other side of Lapland, winter and darkness :) It wasn’t something that I was very excited about but after our family in Finland so gracefully paid for our trip I was left with no excuses and no choice.        For few days our trip to Finland was clouded by very tick Macedonian fog which left the Macedonian airport in complete lock down, no flights in, no flights out. But on the day of our flight the weather cleared just enough that we could fly out.         After a night in Stockholm we continued early next morning up north to our final destination Kemi, Finland. On our landing the captain informed us that there is “light snow on the ground and the temperature is 5 Celsius” followed by slight correction from his side, “that is -5 Celsius”. Finally we were in a familiar place, roads, nature, surroundings...but nothing could

          Even though in May this year we already had our annual House of Prayer seminar in the middle of October we felt from the Lord that we should organize another one full day seminar here in Skopje. We were thinking whom to invite to be the speaker and Igor remembered his friend for a long time from States Dan Babcock, who is currently living in Albania with his family. After Dan prayed about this opportunity he felt YES from God and decided to come and teach in this seminar that we decided to call “Teach Us To Pray - Prayer and Prophetic Seminar”. The seminar was held on Saturday the 15th of November at the local Evangelical church that we attend.            We had 105 people from all over Macedonia registered for the seminar, but I think we went even a little bit above this number, which was three times more people than what we expected. The church was packed and unfortunately some people had to stand during the first session, but the presence of the Holy Spirit was so

"And let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them." Exodus 25:8 NKJV        When God said to Moses, build me a Sanctuary, He wasn’t just giving him a command but God was expressing His deepest desire, He was revealing and expressing His very own heart and the desire of God’s heart was for Him to have a dwelling and resting place among His people.                 King David knew the heart of God for we read that when God gave him peace David said; Here I am living in this beautiful palace but the Ark of the Lord is out in a tent.... (1Chronicles 17:1) so David made this vow unto God saying that he will not go home, he will not give himself rest, he will not sleep until he finds a place for the House of the Lord. (Psalm 132)        It is interesting to think that God who is high and lofty, God who doesn't dwell in houses made by human hands (Acts 7:48)  God who says "Heaven is My throne and earth is My footstool. Where is the house that

       It’s been one week since we finished our 2014 House of Prayer - Skopje, Macedonia PASSION FOR JESUS Conference.  The Conference was great and having only Macedonian speakers was a good call too. All credit for making this conference happen goes to my wife since without her I would have canceled it since the American speaker that we were planning to have wasn’t able to come. The lesson I learned from this is very simple: listen to you wife Igor.        We had around 30 people attending the conference mainly youth even though we had almost 50 people registered. That always makes you feel little bit sad because when you plan something like this you have certain hopes and expectations to reach and see as many people as possible especially when they said that they will come. Nevertheless we are thankful for everyone who was able to come and everyone who was able to attend just one part of the conference.        Igor spoke on Worship from the aspect of Tabernacle of God being

"Praise the Lord.  Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the saints. Let Israel rejoice in their Maker, let the people of Zion be glad in their King. Let them praise his name with dancing and make music to him with tambourine and harp. For the Lord takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with salvation. Let the saints rejoice in this honor and sing for joy on their beds. May the praise of God be in their mouths and a double-edged sword in their hands, To inflict vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples, To bind their kings with fetters, their nobles with shackles of iron, To carry out the sentence written against them. This is the glory of all his saints.  Praise the Lord." Psalm 149 New International Version This is such a beautiful Psalm and I don't know if I will be able to express in words all the beauty that it holds in itself. For me this is such a beautiful combination of Worship & Intercession, Psa

"O God, we meditate on your unfailing love as we worship in your Temple ." Psalm 48:9 New Living Translation        Even though singing songs and making music, melodies unto the Lord is the most visible, most expressive way of worship, still worship has so much more in itself. As this verse from Psalm 48 says worship in itself involves very practical activity called meditation. As we worship God in His Temple we are encouraged to think, to meditate, to remind ourselves, to dwell on His unfailing love, His character, His personality, His faithfulness, to meditate on who He is.        It is out of that place of meditation that we worship God. It is out of that place of active thinking that our heart is being moved to respond in worship to who He is through songs and melodies. It is out of that place of meditation that our soul is being stirred up to give our all and pour out ourselves before Him. So how we do that practically?        In order to really get involved

It has been two years since we started the House of Prayer ministry in Macedonia and almost two years I've been living in Skopje.  Is funny to think that one simple sentence kind of started the whole ministry. After I returned from IMI internship in Amsterdam I had a meeting with few leaders from Skopje who wanted to start a House of Prayer and they asked me how to start one. I was a wrong person to be asked that question but in that moment I just said: you just start, no matter where, no matter how many people there is, no matter what you have or don't have, you just start small, just one meeting in the week, just two hours, just worshipping God and waiting on Him.  Oops :) these leaders took me very seriously and the very next week we had our first Friday night time of worship and prayer, waiting on God.  At that time I still had other plans, to go and serve God in Montenegro working with the local church there but one morning I woke up with a thought on my mind; why not Mace