Sunday, May 29, 2022

WISDOM, PRISON, REJOICING, AND TRUST

 


 
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!

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