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INTO EACH LIFE
SOME RAIN . . .
God is preparing His heroes and the time
will come when they will appear and the world
will wonder where they came from.
A. W. TOZER
In many cases, the rain that falls is more like Hurricane Hugo of 1989. The winds of that tempest tore up the lives of thousands in its vicious path. Only in fairy tales do people live charmed lives. We may think that some people have it all, but if we turn the pages of their lives we may see the frog that never turned into a prince or the person who seemed “born to trouble.”
Sometimes life touches one person with a bouquet and another with a thorn bush. But the first may find a wasp in the flowers, and the second may discover roses among the thorns.
Have you ever heard a child wail, “It’s not fair”? There are those who have made their fortunes on other people’s misfortune. The Bible never promised that life would be fair. Christian living that sounds like an article on the lifestyle page of the newspaper may leave us unprepared for a world where hell does break loose. We are in a battle on this earth, and there is no one who is excused from service.
As we pray and give thanks for the end of the Berlin Wall and the opening of Eastern Europe to democracy and religious freedom, we also realize that new tyrannies challenge the Christian faith. We must not become complacent in our sanctuaries.
I met two Christians from an Eastern Bloc country who worked for a Christian radio station. When asked how it felt to be persecuted for their faith, they replied, “We thought it was the normal Christian life.” They were right. It is we who are living abnormally— for the present.
In some churches and religious television programs, we see an effort to make Christianity popular and always positive. This may be a comfortable cushion for those who find the hard facts too difficult. Within the New Testament, there is no indication that Christians should expect to be healthy, wealthy, and successful in this present age. Jesus said, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first” (John 15:18). Christ never told his disciples that they would get an Academy Award for their performances, but He did tell them to expect to have troubles.
This age is interested in success, not suffering. We can identify with James and John who wanted choice seats in the kingdom. We might even ask for reclining chairs and soft music.
Our Lord was ridiculed, insulted, persecuted, and eventually killed. In the face of opposition, He went about “doing good.” Even His enemies could find no fault in Him. He became the greatest teacher of moral values the world has ever known, but after only three years of public ministry He was executed as a criminal.
“Good” people do not escape suffering in this life. The Bible lists in Hebrews 11 the heroes of the faith, both Jew and Gentile, who were tortured, imprisoned, stoned, torn apart, and killed by the sword. They didn’t wear designer jeans but went about in animal skins, destitute and tormented. Those early believers wandered in deserts, crossed mountains, and hid in caves. They were the homeless of that time, without even a cardboard shelter.
In America today, being a Christian is sometimes equated with having good health. Some popular nutrition and psychology publications recommend that a sound body may require a strong spiritual life. Many of these writers lean toward a hybrid of Eastern religious thought and humanistic psychology, but others have been biblically sound. I believe that exercise and proper eating habits are very important, since the Bible says that the body is God’s holy temple, but I don’t think that superbodies equate with committed Christian discipleship. Some of the greatest saints I’ve known have been those with physical infirmities.
Joni Eareckson Tada is a living example. Joni cannot walk and has only limited use of her arms. God has used her to touch millions of lives as a result of her handicap. She is a greater testimony to His love than many others who have strong bodies. “For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things” (1 Timothy 4:8).
Discipleship is not limited to twelve first-century men. Webster says that a disciple is a pupil or follower of any teacher or school of religion. To be a disciple of Jesus means to learn from Him, to follow Him. The cost may be high.
In the earlier part of His ministry, great crowds followed Jesus. However, the moment He started telling His followers that they must take up their crosses, “many . . . no longer followed him” (John 6:66).
Many forms of suffering are predicted in the Bible. The list sounds like Foxes’ Book of Martyrs : persecutions for righteousness, reviling and slander, false accusations, rejection, hatred by the world and by relatives, temptations, shame, imprisonments, stonings, beatings, being a public spectacle, and the list continues. Your personal pain may not relate to any of these, because it is unique to you and to your situation. It may not even be comforting to hear of these forms of punishment. In Western democracies, seldom have people been called to endure physical suffering because they were believers. However, there are many other types of suffering.
If you have ever lost your job because you refused to compromise your principles, you know the hurt. If a friend or family member has ever accused you of being a fanatic, you might have felt humiliated. If you’re a teenager and your best friends have ever excluded you from a spring break beach party, the rejection may be very painful.
What about the average professing Christian? Is living for the Lord Jesus Christ a priority? Sadly, it may not be. In America, churchgoing has become popular, but attending a service (or a crusade) may not necessarily be accompanied by genuine depth in prayer and Bible study or a change in the way we live.
Christianity is not a spectator sport, it’s something in which we become totally involved. The Scripture says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Those who believe are expected to be different from the world about them. They are to be members of the new society and the new community that God has created.
Too many Christian television and radio programs have been geared to please, entertain, and gain the favor of this world. The temptation is to compromise, to make the Gospel more appealing and attractive.
At times in the Crusades we have conducted, I have looked into the cameras and realized that several million people were watching. I know that many of the things I have said from the Scriptures have offended some, but I cannot afford to tone down the message. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:17, “I have a stewardship entrusted to me” (NASB), and that is to preach the pure and simple Gospel in whatever culture I am in.
The Bible says, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, but let God remold your minds from within” ">(Romans 12:2PHILLIPS). Charles Colson wrote, “If Christianity is true—then it cannot be simply a file drawer in our crowded lives. It must be the central truth from which all our behavior, relationships, and philosophy flow.”1
It is easy for Christians to allow themselves to be squeezed into the world’s mold. It doesn’t mean that we can’t be fashionable, or that we have to wear drab clothing and live in hovels. It’s the attitude of the world, rather than appearances, that we should not adopt. When nonbelievers see nothing different in the lifestyle of believers, they wonder if our profession of faith is sincere.
Our job in life is not to be successful, but to be faithful. Many Christians would prefer to hear “What a great guy” from the crowd rather than “Well done, good and faithful servant” from the Master.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a brilliant young German pastor from an aristocratic family of wealth and education. At the age of thirty-seven he was imprisoned by the Nazi government for his alleged involvement in an attempt to assassinate Hitler. He was never tried, but two years later, near the end of the war, Bonhoeffer was executed. Fellow prisoners who survived reported a message he sent to a friend, “Tell him that for me this is the end, but also the beginning.” Bonhoeffer knew the cost of discipleship.
Many Christians want the benefits of their belief, but they hesitate at the cost of discipleship. Again, we have choices to make. Moses had a choice of following God or reveling in the pleasures of Egypt. As heir to the throne of Egypt, he enjoyed luxury; he didn’t desire to suffer or sacrifice any more than we do, but he chose to follow God. “He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time” (Hebrews 11:25).
Salvation is free, but there is a price to pay in following Jesus. It is never said in Scripture that we can have “Christ and . . .”; it is always “Christ or . . .” Christ or Caesar, Christ or the world, Christ or Antichrist. What is your “or”?
Jesus said, “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters” (Matthew 12:30). Following Christ has been made too easy. It is easy to follow Him when our world is safe and comfortable, when we have good health, a contented family, and three meals (plus snacks) a day. But when that world shatters, only a secure faith will sustain us.
In a country where Christians were looked upon with suspicion and disfavor, a government leader said to me with a twinkle in his eye, “Christians seem to thrive under persecution. Perhaps we should prosper them, and then they would disappear.”
Gretchen was a woman who had her comfortable world disintegrate in one blinding moment. Without her faith in God, she might have remained for the rest of her life hidden in a dark room.
As she told her story, she was sitting on a California patio, the brilliant sun emphasizing her cruelly disfigured face. It was obvious from the blank socket where one eye should have been, the reconstructed nose, the scarred skin, and the missing arm that she had been in some hideous accident. And yet her beauty was evident. The transcendent glow of her inner strength was not artificial.
Gretchen’s world changed one morning in 1982 when a drunk driver forced her car into a fatal spin, hurtling it across the freeway, where it exploded into a burning inferno. Her mother was instantly killed, and Gretchen was miraculously saved from burning to death.
Before that dreadful day, Gretchen had led a sun-filled life. Beautiful, wealthy, with an attentive husband, she seemed to be living every girl’s dream. In the following nightmare, she lost everything but gained much more.
She was in a coma for six weeks. When she finally understood that her face was virtually gone, she did not want anyone to see her. Television was her companion, and it was during one of her more than seventy operations that she saw one of our Crusades and gave her life to Christ.
After seven years of seclusion, she realized that she could not stay in hiding. She knew God had saved her for something. She began to volunteer at a rehabilitation center where her own disabilities gave her the credibility to reach out to others. When asked about her greatest joy, she answered, “It’s waking up in the morning and knowing that nothing is an accident.”
The marks of the cross are not to be confused with self-inflicted austerity or the rigors of the Middle Ages brought up-to-date. We should not intentionally seek suffering with the mistaken idea that we might earn special merit with God. Asceticism is not necessarily a virtue.
Amy Carmichael wrote:
The narrow thorny path he trod,
“Enter into my joy,” said God.
The sad ascetic shaved his head,
“I’ve lost the taste for joy,” he said.
Christ admonished His followers: “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting” (Matthew 6:16). This was a clear warning not to boast of trials we have brought upon ourselves.
Bearing our cross does not mean wearing gunnysacks and long faces. Some people we meet imagine that every little headache is a part of their cross. They wear the look of a martyr every time they hear criticism. Sometimes we deserve the criticism we receive; however, we are blessed only when men speak evil against us falsely for Christ’s sake.
A book was written about me that contained some blatant falsehoods. At first I was offended, but then I began to laugh, because I had just been talking about being blessed for false accusations and God gave me a personal illustration.
Christians should be a foreign influence, a minority group in a pagan world. We are the “light of the world,” and light exposes evil. We are the salt, and it adds flavor. If we are at peace with this world, it may be because we have sold out to it and compromised with it.
Dwight L. Moody once said, “If the world has nothing to say against you, beware lest Jesus Christ has nothing to say for you.”
I am not suggesting that we live anticipating trouble at every turn.
Some people spend so much time worrying about what might happen that they never enjoy what is happening. Take one day at a time. Today, after all, is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
Jesus knew His disciples were worried about the future, and when He talked to them at the end of His ministry, on the very eve of His death, He said, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
Trouble is different for all of us—translate it as you will: money, marital, health, social, loneliness. Jesus said His followers would have trouble. But He also promises His presence with us, not to deliver us from our problems, but to be with us in the midst of them and give us the power to overcome whatever circumstances come our way.
Nancy Bates, one of our researchers, is an example of overcoming circumstances. She has a delightful sense of humor and is a joy to be around. Nancy was struck by a car when she was seventeen, and her back was broken. She is a paraplegic. And she is a contagious Christian.
When the apostle John recorded Christ’s message to the church in Smyrna, he wrote, “Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution. . . . Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10).
Mysterious as it appears to be, true faith and suffering frequently go hand-in-hand. You seldom have one without the other. I think of my dear friend, Corrie ten Boom, who has gone home to be with the Lord. One incident in her last years comes to mind after reading the previous passage from Revelation.
After being a prisoner in Ravensbruk, the infamous women’s concentration camp, Corrie traveled throughout the world, telling her story of suffering and joy. For thirty-three years she never had a permanent home. When she was eighty-five years old, her supporters provided her with a lovely house in California. It was a luxury she never dreamed she would have.
One day, as her friend and movie director, the late Jimmy Collier, was leaving her home, he said, “Corrie, hasn’t God been good to give you this beautiful place?”
She replied firmly, “Jimmy, God was good when I was in Ravensbruk, too.”
No suffering that one of Christ’s own endures for Him is ever in vain. Living for Christ, walking in His way, will not be an easy path. The way of the cross is a hard one, but He never said it would be easy.
The scriptural principles relating to the endurance of pain are just the same today as when they were first written for us in the Word of God. Some of us may have to die, or at least suffer, for our faith. The twentieth century has seen more people tortured and killed for Christ than any other century. Our generation has known its martyrs, like Paul Carlson, the missionary to the Congo who was killed trying to rescue others. Jim Elliot was killed, along with four friends, trying to get the Gospel to the Auca Indians in Ecuador. Bishop Luwum, the archbishop of the Anglican Church of Uganda, was shot in the head at point blank range.
Festo Kivengere was speaking in Asheville, North Carolina, and said this about Luwum’s martyrdom: “When a man has lived for God, preaching the Gospel fearlessly, opposing cruelty, injustice, and oppression with courage, yet speaking the truth graciously and in love—when that man seals his testimony with his blood, that is not tragedy, that is glory!”
When Ruth was speaking in Sweden, her interpreter, Gunvar Paulson, told about being in the Salvation Army in Rhodesia when insurgents broke in and murdered many people. Her coworkers were killed. She alone was spared, but after repeated operations has only limited use of her left arm. Impulsively, Ruth said, “What an honor it is to sit beside you—I have never had to suffer for the Lord.”
Miss Paulson replied, “Believe me, in spite of all that was going on around me, I felt such a sense of the presence of the Lord Jesus, it was pure joy!”
When David Livingstone returned to his native Scotland after sixteen difficult years as a missionary in Africa, his body was emaciated by the ravages of some twenty-seven fevers that had coursed through his veins during the years of his service. One arm hung useless at his side, the result of being mangled by a lion. He was speaking to the students at Glasgow University and the core of his message to those young people was this: “Shall I tell you what sustained me during the hardship and loneliness of my exile? It was Christ’s promise, ‘Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end.’”
That promise is ours as well.