Our Lord commands us to rejoice:
·
“…steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in
the Lord. Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all
you upright in heart! (Psalm 32:10-11; Matthew 5:11-12)
We are the ones who need to practice rejoicing. Pastor
Andrew Brunson learned this valuable lesson as he struggled to maintain his
life and sanity for two years in a Turkish prison.
He never dreamed that it would be so difficult. He had felt
that God had abandoned him after 20 years of church-planting in Turkey. He had
also expected to receive a divine visitation to bolster his faith in prison but
never received one. Therefore, Brunson began to read about how other
missionaries coped to survive prison. https://www.persecution.com/ifcevent/watch/?_source_code=YTA21A2C
Richard Wurmbrandt had been imprisoned for 14 years by the
communist regime in Romania. From him, Brunson learned to daily recommit his
life to the Lord, despite His doubts, and to rejoice. Amid his great suffering,
Brunson had many doubts which he had stuff.
You might think that we must face our doubts rather than
stuffing them. The atheist might even respond, “That’s typical of mindless
Christians!” However, when we are fighting for survival, confronting doubts is
a costly luxury.
Besides, we tend to understand far less than we think we do.
Therefore, God warns us:
·
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither
are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than
the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your
thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)
Our Lord is trying to protect us from our conceit and hubris
and to teach us to rely on His wisdom:
·
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do
not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he
will make straight your paths. (Proverbs 3:5-6)
Our limited wisdom should teach us to rely on His wisdom.
Only a fool would perform surgery on his child. Compared to a surgeon, we know
virtually nothing:
·
If anyone imagines that he knows something, he
does not yet know as he ought to know. (1 Corinthians 8:2)
Knowing where our knowledge ends is both liberating and
wise. Brunson read that there had been incarcerated Christians who had been
driven by insanity to their deaths. I too am bewildered:
·
God, why didn’t you intervene? You could have
rescued them. Can I trust you to rescue me?
I have no answer, but He has rescued me so many times in the
past that I trust He will continue to rescue me (2Corinthians 1:8-10). Knowing
this liberates me from trying to find an answer. Instead, I trust that God has
a satisfying answer, whether it pertains to a temporal or an eternal
explanation.
I also have learned that some knowledge can be destructive
if we lack the wisdom to benefit from it. For example, the Bible doesn’t
explicitly tell us about the ultimate fate of the aborted and stillborn babies
and for good reason. If the Bible taught us that all babies would go to heaven,
concerned mothers would be tempted to kill them. The abortion industry would
use it as a sales pitch.
Wisdom should teach us to trust in the Greater Authority
whatever our circumstances, and it’s the very thing our Lord wants us to do!
No comments:
Post a Comment