Chapter 23
The Ride Home
I felt better after that.
It wasn’t so much that now all of a sudden I figured all my worries would go away. But riding back to Miracle, Mrs. Parrish explained that once I had really given myself to God and asked Him to help me be a person who was more like He wanted me to be, then my whole outlook could change.
“You see, Corrie,” she said, “when a person desperately wants to walk closer to God the Christian life begins to be so much more thrilling. Most people are content with their lives as they are. They don’t think about growth, change, about developing new habits and attitudes. They just take every day as it comes and aren’t really trying to be any different from one day to the next. Growth and development toward more godly behavior isn’t what they base their lives on. But then from out of nowhere comes some trouble that they don’t know how to handle. And then they finally begin to realize that they need some help. They see that they need to open the door and invite someone else into their house, someone who can help them become the kind of person they now see that they want to be. But until that time, they feel self-sufficient and satisfied and content with the way they are, and feel no need for growth and change. It is very difficult for people to be close to God if they are perfectly content to remain locked inside their houses all alone.”
“And that’s why you waited until today to tell me about opening the door of my heart to let Jesus live there?” I asked.
“Don’t misunderstand me, Corrie,” replied Mrs. Parrish. “I truly believe you have loved God for a long time. You and I have had many good talks together about being Christians. I would not have you think that I consider all that meaningless. It’s just that now—now that some of these hurts and frustrations and confusions inside you have awakened a hunger to grow and be better—now you can really begin sharing your life with God more deeply every day. It’s not that what came before wasn’t good and valuable, but now that you realize your need, you can begin depending on God more, and trusting Him for more and more things in your life.”
“Trusting Him—how?”
“Trusting that He will take care of you, trusting Him to work good for everyone out of Miss Morgan’s coming, trusting Him for your pa, trusting Him for your future—for everything, Corrie! If you’ve given yourself to Him as His daughter, then you can trust Him to be a wise and loving heavenly Father, and to take perfect care of you!”
“So I shouldn’t worry about my future, or whether Pa will think I’m in the way in the kitchen? Sometimes I just can’t help worrying.”
“It’s all right to be concerned and to think about things. But remember what I told you a while back, about how God can turn everything and make it into good? Corrie, your whole attitude toward life slowly begins to change when you realize that God is with you every moment, helping you grow, strengthening you, helping you know what to do. Pretty soon all those worries don’t look so big, because you realize He knows all about them too and has the solution all figured out ahead of time.”
“But what if I can’t?” I asked.
“Can’t what, Corrie?”
“Can’t do all those things—trust God better and be nicer and not worry so much. What if God being with me doesn’t change my attitude and make me strong like you said?”
“Oh, but it will, Corrie! There is no what if to it. When God lives in a heart, things do change. He makes sure of that—He helps!”
She stopped, and her enthusiastic look suddenly turned thoughtful. I could tell she was reconsidering what she’d just said.
“Well,” she finally said, still with the serious look on her face, “there is one if to it, now that I think about it. Not all people do grow and change and get to be strong Christians.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, Corrie, I told you that God doesn’t force His way into our lives. And He doesn’t force us to do His will either. We have a choice to accept Him and submit to the changes He wants to work in us. God comes into our lives, saying, ‘I’ll come into your heart, and I’ll give you joy and I’ll make you strong, and I’ll help you become more like Jesus, and I’ll gradually turn you into the person I created you to be.’ That’s His gift to us, His part. But we have to cooperate. We need to respond to His love with obedience. Our part is this: we have to do what He says. God will change us and make us better, but He won’t work against our will. He can only work the changes if we are holding up our side and doing what Jesus told us to do. We need to say ‘yes’ to Jesus—not just to His desire to live in us, but to His desire to rule our lives as well. Our obedience to Him makes it possible for Him to do the changes He wants to do.”
“Well,” I said slowly, trying to take in all she was saying, “I reckon that’s fair.”
“Completely fair! Everything God does is fair, though sometimes the fairness is hard for folks to see. And this agreement—God doing His part, us doing our part—explains why some people never change and others do, and why there are nasty, selfish people in the church who think they are good Christians. Being a Christian is more than knowing in your head who Jesus is—it’s surrendering your heart to His ways. The changes in our lives depend on whether we are obeying God, not on our religious talk or how much about the Bible we know or whether we go to church all the time.”
“So going to church and reading the Bible and praying and all that doesn’t matter?” I asked.
“Oh no, Corrie, I didn’t mean that! Those things are very important. But they’re only important if they help you learn to do more of what Jesus said. Otherwise, I’m afraid they are meaningless. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” I answered slowly. “If I open the door of my heart to let Jesus live there—and I think I have, haven’t I, Mrs. Parrish?”
“You have, Corrie! Yes, His Spirit is inside you.”
“ . . . if I’ve done that, then He will make me better and will help me have better thoughts and trust Him more . . . if I try to do what I’m supposed to—if I obey what Jesus said to do.”
“Yes, that’s it exactly! And that’s why it is important to read the Bible—especially the four gospels—so you can find out what Jesus said, and the kind of people He wants us to be.”
“And then there’s one last catch, Corrie.”
“Another one?”
Mrs. Parrish laughed. “I’m afraid so! But this is the last one, I promise. After this, I think you’ll have plenty to think about for a good long time!”
“All right,” I said, returning her smile. “But I’ve already got more than I think I’ll be able to remember.”
“Well, this last thing may be most important of all. Do you want me to tell you now or save it for another time?”
“Oh no. Tell me now. I want to hear it! But when I write all this down in my journal, I’m going to have to come and ask you lots of questions to help me remember everything you’ve said.”
“Agreed. Now, Corrie, we must remember that God’s work in our hearts takes a lifetime. The changes we’re talking about, learning to trust Him, obeying more like Jesus did, being more loving to people—none of that happens to us all at once. We’re still the same people. We still have the same bad habits. And though God wants to remake us—and does!—it’s a very slow process.”
“Because we don’t do our part very well?”
“Partly. But even when we are good and do what we’re supposed to do, it still takes a long time for us to get to be very much like Jesus. So try not to get discouraged if you get to feeling like you’re not the kind of person you want to be. It takes years and years of practice—of trying to trust God more, of trying to have better attitudes toward people, of trying to be unselfish—before you begin to feel you’re getting anywhere.”
“That does sound discouraging.”
“Perhaps I’m not explaining it very well.” She paused, thought for a moment, and then said, “If we are cooperating, then God is bringing about the changes. But they’re happening so deep inside us that we can’t see them for a long time. You are His daughter, a daughter of His grace and love. And He is gradually making you more and more like Jesus, but way down deep where His Spirit lives—in your heart—and the changes aren’t always visible on the surface. Do you see what I mean?”
“I think so. Kinda like when Pa and Uncle Nick are working in the mine, you can’t see them when they’re way down inside it. They may be digging out all kinds of gold, but if you’re standing looking at the outside, you can’t see it.”
“That’s it exactly, Corrie! God is mining for gold inside our hearts, but we can’t see how much He’s getting, and maybe won’t see it for years and years.”
“And is it kinda like—from what you said before about it being something both God and us have to be working on—is it kinda like we’re doing the gold mining with Him, but can’t see it?”
“The great thing, Corrie, is that we decide how full of gold our own mine is!”
“How’s that?”
“Remember what I said about the years of practice in doing the things we’re supposed to do?”
I nodded.
“Well, every time you or I do some little act of kindness, even though afterward we might not feel any different, a tiny little change happens deep inside us. We’ve added a tiny piece of gold to the mine! Every time I deal fairly with someone in business that I could have taken advantage of, every act of kindness you do to one of your brothers or sisters, every gentle word, every forgiveness, every unselfishness, every time you or I lay aside what we want for the happiness of someone else, every prayer we utter on behalf of another, every generous act—they’re all little nuggets of gold, Corrie. Some Christians are filling their mines with rich veins, while other are letting opportunities pass every day, and their mines are filling up instead with nothing but dirt and worthless rock.”
“But when do we find out?”
“I suppose most people won’t know until they die. But once you’ve been walking through life for five or ten or fifteen years, every once in a while you begin to get glimpses of gold coming to the surface.
“You see, Corrie, the Lord is working away in the mine of our hearts all the time, from now until the day we die—all night, all day, every moment. And all those little specks of gold we fill our mines with, today, tomorrow, next week, next year, every little kindness and unselfishness for all the rest of our lives—they all add up together.
“In the end, our hearts are either rich with the gold we have put there for God to develop into a Christlike character, or else they are still empty, even though God has been picking away all our lives to find some gold to put to use. We don’t see this work going on, but every moment we are either putting gold in the mine of our heart or we are putting dirt and rock there.
“That’s why, at the end of life, some people are radiant with the love of God and others are miserable old grouches. It all depends on the millions of tiny choices we make all day long, every day—golden choices of unselfishness or dirty choices that turn out to be worthless in the end.”
I looked up just as she finished speaking, and we were driving up the road to our house. I guess the conversation was finished for now, because already I could hear the yells of Emily and Becky and Tad running out to meet us.
It was probably just as well we were home. I had plenty to think about for now!