BraveMen S4E147: Zhenya Kasevich - Hope for Ukraine

It's Brave Man with Paul Lewis Colm, wisdom and courage for the journey. And we're with Jenny Kasovic, who's a remarkable man that I met years ago, pasturing a significant church in Kiev, Ukraine, and Jenny, you and I have talked about this a little bit over this year. Now that all of this is happening in Ukraine. What in the world happened? I mean, how did this happen? Why did they mass on the border and then there by thought everything's going to be okay and all of a sudden Russia attacks? And what's the background and what do you feel like we're at right now? Well, there are a few sides to all of this situation. My mom, who is Ukrainian language teacher, not Russian, Ukrainian. Now everybody understands the difference because you know, when before people would get to me and they said, oh, you Russian, I said, no, I'm Ukrainian. And they got no clue what the difference is. Now I think everybody got a clue, right? Yeah. And my mom, four years since I was a kid, she said to me, son, the big war is coming. The big war is coming. So they knew that all the generations, they knew because you know, Russians always were treating Ukrainians as a small nation like a little brother. They filed in a sense. Yeah, yeah. And that's true because you know, we are small and nation and we are small and country. But there are two sides of it. What people don't realize, there is always the physical side and the spiritual side. The physical side, everybody say, putting one to reestablish Soviet Union, which I believe to some sense, he wants to, he would always tell people everywhere that one of the biggest tragedies of the 20th century was the fall of Soviet Union. Right. And he really believes that. Yeah. And that's why he wants to reestablish that superpower. Let's say now we understand it was not a superpower. I mean, look at the Russian army right now. Everybody thought it's a second strongest army in the world, but now everybody understand. So there is a physical side. Now there is a spiritual side, which I believe is totally devil. And totally devil is, he hates what's going on in Ukraine. You've been to Ukraine. You've been to power churches. And many people, what they don't realize that Ukraine is not just a bread basket for Russia and for Europe. Ukraine is a missionary basket. One of the biggest forces, mission forces in all Eastern Europe, there are pastors from Ukraine. You look at the pastors in Russia, they probably will be from Ukrainian territory. Wow. Look at churches in Ukraine. One of the biggest, some of the biggest ever churches are in Kiev, in Karkiv, in some of those cities in Ukraine. No wonder Satan hates it and no wonder Satan wants to put it down. So I really believe there is a spiritual side to all of this. And you know that everybody is talking about the war situation. It's like David and Goliath story, but that's how we conquer the Goliath because, because spiritually talking, you cannot really find Paul any person in Ukraine who would not just not go just to orthodox church or to Catholic church, but to protest on churches, to church like churches like ours. All of them have been there. All of them have served in those churches. The church made of thousands and thousands and thousands of people. I was, I was, I'll never forget walking in, you know, flying to Kiev. And of course we had another friend there, you know, past our Elijah and other friends that we knew. And then I came over to Hillsong to the church you had helped plant and grow. I was shocked. It was huge and vibrant and young people. And when people by the thousands were, and then there were other churches throughout Ukraine. And being, you know, I'm, I've traveled 84 countries. I've seen a lot, but it still surprised me. I didn't realize the depth of what was happening in the church there of what the kingdom had done of what God had done there. And you're right. I meet people from Ukraine all over Europe who were involved in ministry, passionately involved in churches and whether it's in Bulgaria, where we've been, or Albania, or difficult, difficult places that they've gone to. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That makes, that makes a lot of sense that this is a spiritual battle. And we can see the geopolitical issues. Yeah. That's just one side of it. Yeah. It's a whole NATO thing, Putin saying whatever. But if you will, as followers of Christ, we understand that everything emanates from the fight in good and evil. Exactly. Right. And so the enemies trying to take out the voice of Christianity has been strong and powerful, which is why we did the book never quit. You know, I looked at agenda and I remember calling you right after I mean, it must have been the month after or something like that after this whole war broke out. And you and I started talking to him. I said, there's a book called Never Quit, my father wrote. And I'm looking at what's our part, the Christian is never know where it's everybody has to look at what can we do? Yeah. If we see believers and friends and trouble, whether it's in Ethiopia or Southern Indonesia or Mendenau or wherever it is, what's my part? And look, even in Russia, because they are suffering too now. Well, three years ago, we were in St. Petersburg and had some remarkable meetings with tremendous churches, great pastors. We have maximized manhood in Russian. And then I looked at this and I said, well, what is it that we can help? And so we John Greenwald, who you know with Rayma. And his team grabbed a hold of the book, translated it, did a fantastic job. And now there's a landing page. If you go to cm.men and click on resources, you can go to Never Quit. And right there in Ukrainian is, is the whole landing page of free download of the book, Never Quit. And that deals with, you know, trusting God in the middle of crisis. And really what Never Quit is about, how do you trust God in the middle of crisis, in the middle of transition, in the middle of spiritual warfare? How do you trust God? It's things like, how do you, you know, don't stop communicating, don't hunker down, don't walk in fear, live righteously, but act on truth. Because in this world, people can amplify untruths so quickly. Yeah. And that's why I like talking to you, you know, because you, you cut through all of that and remind us, because we can get real caught up, especially I live in America. As you do now also, and Americans can get real caught up in our stuff. Yes. You get very myopic narcissistic, if you will. And, and we have to open it up and realize there's a spiritual battle going on. That's what you, you hear right now, even in America, because many voices are now starting to ask questions, why do we have to help Ukraine? Why do we have to send all the billions of dollars to Ukraine? This is not how a war, but what people don't realize it's a spiritual war and it is targeting everybody. Yeah. Well, it's my friend Mike Evans said in a small meeting that we had together right after he talked to some people in government over the Middle East. And he said, what we have to understand that this is actually a world war fought by proxy. However, the entire world is actually a war. At one level or another, everyone is taking sides, right? Whether it's in the United Nations, which may be somewhat, you know, unable to really do anything ineffective. And yet at the same time, everybody's doing something about it. Yes. We really are a world war. Everybody, you know, I've been traveling to Europe in the past 40 days. We took like not a holiday from our daily job. And we went to Europe to work with those refugees in Europe because many don't realize there are five to seven million Ukrainians who are displaced in European countries right now. And most of those Ukrainians are women with kids without husbands because husbands do not be able to leave Ukraine because they have to stay and fight for Ukraine. And when we were there in Europe, the biggest question people are asking, where is God in all of this? And my biggest answer to this, hold on a second, Ukraine is still fighting, right? They say yes. I mean, you got David against Goliath for eight months still fighting. And you are asking, where is God in the midst of that? There is your story. It's a Bible story in a real life right now. That's what we're experiencing right now. And so people are kind of they they caught up in their own thinking about that's why your book is so helpful because you're going through transition time and through transition periods. And what do you do in those situations? And I will tell you one more simple, I preached everywhere I go during this trip, 40 days trip and I preached in five or six different churches and there are the women's conferences because you guys have a great ministry, you're based in Florida now with a with a lot of ministry in Europe and in particular your wife has ministry has she's always been I remember the first time we met and I think the first time we actually met was a Lima Peru with Robert and Karen Berger and your wife did some women's meetings that just really rocked and she's a great minister. I remember you turned to me and I said now I understand the success of your church. It's she. No, I may have said that. No, it it sounds like Paul call right? Yeah, I may have said that. But nonetheless, you've got a great minister you and your wife here. So I wanted to just make sure everybody understood the background. You've been in ministry. And you travel through Europe, you speak to these things and now you speak now give me a little background. Let's go back. Let's roll it back a little bit. A little bit of your background where you grew up, how you end up pastoring one of the most significant churches in all of Europe. Well, my profession, my background is a professional musician and this is funny enough, but now in the middle of the all the financial crisis and economic crisis, I actually took my diploma, which is the highest education in Ukraine and Russia. And I am doing some music therapy sessions, which means for autistic kids working with autistic kids on some daily basis, a part of my traveling schedule and a part of my preaching and teaching and all of that thing. But yeah, my that's my background. I'm professional musician. I play piano by my specialty theory of music, harmonies and creating of music. And I play, I am a pianist, but in a Vera likes to joke, I am a good guy at the daytime and I am a bad guy at the evening. I play bass as my hobby. So I was very much in heavy music and that's how we actually met people from Australia. I was unsaid musician who were hired in 1992 to play for evangelistic concert. And why you would hire unsaid musicians because remember Soviet Union just broke in 1991. So you could not find any saved musician back then. So what do you do when you start a church? You hire unsaid musicians. And the guy named Darko, who stayed there for five years, for four and a half years. And he raised us from small Christian babies. And after he left, I became a pastor of that same church. So they hired you. Yeah, we're a long-haired rock musician. Yeah. And look, not just that, we were not interested in all of this Christian stuff. We were asked to play for a few songs and then pastor would preach. We would not understand any of that. He would preach with the interpreter. And we would go downstairs to the bar area to smoke a couple of cigarettes, to drink some wine and stuff like that because they used to pay us five dollars per night. Richard 1992 poll was one month's salary, five US dollars per night. So it was pretty good. Wow. Well, in fact, I just was a text with Darko yesterday. It was his birthday. So I did too. God bless God bless that brother and Michael Murphy, who was also a part of that who's actually on our board of Christian men's network today. And a tremendous friend and really behind all of this. So this wild long-haired musician gets hired to play in a band. God grabs ahold of his heart. So were you and Vera met them doing music? No, we already been living together. We had a son, Roman, who is an amazing worship leader and worship pastor. He is a pastor, worship pastor, a Trinity church right now in Miami area with rich workers on the father. Really? In your, yeah, that's where he is a worship pastor there. Back then, he was three year old. Wow. Yeah. That's an amazing story. And now here you are. And you're in touch a lot with, with all of your friends and loved ones in Ukraine. What's the attitude? What's the feeling? What's the spirit of things right now? So what's happening? I always tell people since the war began that there's going to be three different areas and stages put it this way. The first stage is over now. That's when we used to, that was in the February beginning of March and probably April when we had to evacuate everybody in you from our country. I actually, I raised some of the finances between five and ten thousand dollars at the first few hours when the war has started. And people used to send money to my personal bank account and in a matter of hours, I would use this app called PaySend. I would send money to anybody with you, $100, $200, so people would buy gas. People would just go across the border to Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Moldova, anywhere outside of Ukraine. And that was our first, you know, first thing we had to do. Now the second thing we are in the middle of that right now, we need to finish this war. And that's going to take another few months. They say the war is not going to be finished really soon. I mean, we need more heavy weaponry from the United States and some of the European countries. But after we win the war because I believe Ukrainians are going to win this. In any case, we're going to win this war. And after that, it's going to be the third stage which is, which I would call the rebuild, rebuild the church in Ukraine, rebuild the, you know, the spiritual situation, work with those people who were affected by the war. And that's going to take another 10 to 15 years as you can understand. So we are pretty busy with, we're going to be pretty busy with our ministry for another 10 to 15 years. I look at United States as a base and as a missionary ground to raise anything what we need to go back to Ukraine. I can actually see myself and Vera live. That's why we did not sell the house in Ukraine. We still got an apartment in Kiev. And who knows, maybe in a very near future, we're going to be living between two countries, between United States and Ukraine and helping rebuild those countries. I pray that we pray for that for you and Vera. And for all of our friends who are displaced, we have a very, very close friend, Chris, Gina Callahan, who were in the process of adopting a beautiful girl that they had known for about three years. From the time she was nine years old, she's now 12. She was from the countryside. She was an orphan for many years. All the paperwork was done and all they had to do was fly over to Kiev in March. When the battle broke out in February, when the invasion took place, the man who was in charge of the orphanage took 124 kids, crammed them into a bus that first night. Got on the bus and drove towards, I guess towards Sherman, which would be through Poland, is that right? Yes. So very bravely did that. In the midst of everything was going on, that orphanage was hit by a rocket two days later. Oh my gosh. Now he did that without any permissions, you know, government permissions, whatever, just got them out. So Chris finding this out, flew to Germany, drove to a village, they heard they were at, found somebody who spoke English and threw up the providence of God, found his, this would be daughter. Now of course, it's all stuck in limbo, but they're helping underwrite that. So that was actually the first place we sent the never quit book online was into that encampment of young people. There's about 200 young people now that are being taken care of by a German little small German town. Yeah. They're taking care of them, making sure they're okay. They've got it's sort of a high school that they put some fencing around to make sure it was secure. Not just to keep people in, but to keep them safe, you know. My wife, my wife, my wife, sister lives in Kolmar, France. And she said, it's a small town. She said they had probably like five Russian speaking people before the war. Now they have 500. Wow. Wow. Well, I love you were just in Berlin and a number of other cities. I love seeing the photos of people standing at the train stations with signs is said, welcome to Germany. And we have a place for you to live. And we have to do that. And I believe that, that what you talked about in terms of the spiritual battle. What has been happening in Ukraine for many, many years with the rise of the churches and actually Ukraine was sending missionaries to other parts of Europe. Yeah. And into Africa, into the Middle East. I believe that's not only going to happen again, but it's going to accelerate our small part of that getting this first little thing done. You know, I begin to understand what it takes to move things around right now in a crisis area because just trying to get the translation done. We got an email one day from one of the men who was involved in getting a translation of never quit done. And he said, I'm sorry we had to cause on that. He said, we had to leave our town because so many rockets were coming in and we had to move to another place. I had a similar situation when I said, we used to do this app called pay sent. And the guy who said everything up was from Ukraine. And he was like, hold on a second. I can hear rockets coming my way. So I need to go to the bomb shelter. Same thing. Oh, man. Well, I want to thank also as well as we finish this. Thank you, as you're for taking the time to be with us on this never quit special podcast and video. But I want to thank those who were involved, those who are part of the Christmas network involved in making sure this was funded and getting done to translate the book never quit into Ukrainian. I know it's going to be a great blessing. I'm believing for hundreds of thousands of downloads, believing that it'll help undergird people, believing that it'll help lift their spirit, bring hope in the midst of darkness, bring, bring health in the midst of an unhealthy situation. And take their hearts and minds and spirits and open their eyes. I believe that there's going to be many, many people who come to become followers of Jesus Christ, who give their lives to Christ in the middle of this crisis. I mean, how many, how many times when we look at even our lives, most of us came to Christ in the middle of a crisis. It may not have been the middle of warfare, but it was spiritual warfare. It was, it was the goal of some sort of crisis. We did this concert in Germany in this beautiful church, thanks to the pastor. He brought about 150 unsaved people and there was singing couple of songs and other guy was singing and I did a little preaching like for 10 minutes, you know. And I can tell you, after that concert, 150 people unsaved people were praying the prayer of salvation. Thank you. Don't have to do much these days. You don't have to do much these days. People are looking for anything to feel better and that's when God comes. You know, it's the light never shines brighter than in the darkness. So, Jean, Kasovic, as Jean and Vera want to pray over you and thank God for you. Thank you for your friendship, looking forward to times together in the future. And as the Jews used to say, they used to say when there was no nation of Israel, they used to say next year in Jerusalem. Right. There was always that promise for a couple thousand years. And so I think you and I could say next year in Kiev. Hey, I got people in the government who said we already got your invitation to the victory parade. Well, I look forward to being here. I'll make sure, I'll make sure I got a couple of tickets for you, my friend. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for Virginia and Vera and their family. Thank you for Roman. I thank you Lord for what you've done in their lives. I thank you for the significant impact of the kingdom of heaven in the nation of Ukraine. Father, I pray right now, Virginia and Vera, every place they put their feet is holy ground and everything they put their hands to will prosper. I pray, Father, safety, protection, vision. I pray remarkable and unusual favor over the nation of Ukraine, over President Zelensky, every single person involved. Father, whether it be in the army, armed forces, politics, in the local churches, in the food programs. I pray over all of those compassion ministries that are taking food into Ukraine right now. Many of our friends who are driving trucks, many of our friends who are helping pay for the freight. Lord, I pray right now, increase, increase in the name of Jesus. And I pray the end result of all this is that many people in Russia and Ukraine across Europe become followers of Jesus Christ. I pray Father and increase in the kingdom because we recognize these days as the last days. And your word says in Acts chapter 2 verse 17, in the last days, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Sons and daughters will prophesy that means speak life. So Father, I pray and we speak life over Ukraine, speak life over every city, speak life over our loved ones, speak life over all of our friends in Russia. All of our loved ones there, all of the family and the body of Christ throughout Europe, we speak life. And we thank you for the outpouring and the 19 of your Holy Spirit and all of this in our union, Vera. And on this book, never quit. I pray Father, it comes into the hands of thousands of people who find that spark of life that erupts in them as they meet Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. In Jesus name, we pray to the glory of the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Thank you for taking the time. God bless you. I'm glad you're home safely from that huge tour. I watched you. If it looked tiring, it looked intense, but it looked like a great success. So well done. Love you Father. You just experienced brave man with Paul Lewis Cole. Paul is president of the Christian men's network. Connect with Paul at cmn.man or write to him at Paul at cmn.man.