Instead of posting about the Tuesday when I presented my lessons at the conference, I thought I'd take a pause in the journal entries and share the devotional that I wrote out on the evening of June 22nd and shared at our team's nightly meeting on June 24th. I hope and pray that it blesses you. (Please pardon the awkward formatting of the block quote. I don't know the HTML to keep the whole thing a block quote with multiple paragraphs but without the separating lines between paragraphs.)
Some of you have read The Hiding Place, I'd imagine. For those of you who haven't, let me briefly summarize it. It's a true story about a woman named Corrie ten Boom. She was an unmarried daughter of a watchmaker in Holland who lived with her father and elder sister into her 50s when WWII came to Holland. Holland resisted briefly but became a German-occupied nation.
In their desire to help the persecuted Jews around them, the ten Booms started a resistance cell in Haarlem. They knew nothing at the beginning about how to do this. Deception, strategy, and anonymity were not the way the ten Booms were wired. In fact, Corrie's father had such a hard time comprehending anonymity and deception that throughout their operation, he was never able to understand why so many people named "Mr. Smitt" seemed to be involved. However, their cell thrived and aided hundreds of people. It became so large that it put them in danger of being found out. Sure enough, one day the Gestapo arrested Corrie, her Father, and her older sister Betsie.
They started out in jail, then were moved to a Dutch federal prison where Corrie spent 4 months in solitary confinement and where her Father died 10 days into his imprisonment. Corries was moved again to a concentration camp in Holland where she was reunited with Betsie, and finally they were brought to a German extermination camp.
In total, Corrie spent about 11 months in these places facing horrific conditions and brutality. Betsie died shortly before Corrie was finally released. Corrie later discovered her release had been due to a clerical error and happened 1 week before all the women her age were killed at this extermination camp.
After the war, Corrie opened up a home to help former concentration camp victims to heal and recover. She went on to open similar places for Dutch collaborators and finally even for the German persecutors, soldiers, and guards themselves to heal. She spoke in dozens of countries and wrote 25 books, but none of this was by her own strength or ability or even desire always. Let me share a passage from the end of the book, from a time after the war when she was invited to speak.
As I prepared for this trip, I discovered rather quickly that I didn't have what it would take to have a successful trip or time of ministry. I just couldn't do it, but it was exactly where God was leading me to. God has been showing me how His grace is sufficient for me and how His power is made perfect in my weakness. When I believe that I can do something on my own, I rarely turn to Him for help, and I rarely see remarkable results. However, when I turn to Him knowing that He is my lifeline, knowing that I need Him like I need air to survive, His grace comes flooding in and His power goes flowing out and into my life.
I came to Philippians 4:4-7 in my preparations to come here when I was desperate to know exactly what I was supposed to be doing in preparation for the trip and in life in general. It says, "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."
I knew I had my direction from God about what I needed to be doing. 1) Rejoice. 2) Be gentle to all. 3) Pray with thanksgiving. It was free-ingly simple, but I knew I needed God's help to remember to do it, so I prayed for that.
The next day, I was amazed to discover that God not only helped me to remember to focus on these things, but He actually gave me thankfulness to pray back to Him for something I never could have been thankful for on my own. I was getting shots to come here to Uganda while my sister was going to Disneyland. I knew I'd normally be jealous or even bitter, but I was genuinely thankful to be exactly where I was in that moment -- right in His will. This thankfulness was so clearly from God and overflowed back into a prayer to Him.
I was starting to learn what Corrie spoke of: When God calls us to do something, whether it be to love, to forgive, to go, to rejoice, to be thankful - anything- then He gives, along with the command, exactly what He asks of us. He gives us the love, the forgiveness, the ability to go, the praise, the thankfulness.
So what is God asking you to do today? I encourage you to pray, to commit to do it, to step out in faith, and then to watch Him do all the heavy lifting!
Some of you have read The Hiding Place, I'd imagine. For those of you who haven't, let me briefly summarize it. It's a true story about a woman named Corrie ten Boom. She was an unmarried daughter of a watchmaker in Holland who lived with her father and elder sister into her 50s when WWII came to Holland. Holland resisted briefly but became a German-occupied nation.
In their desire to help the persecuted Jews around them, the ten Booms started a resistance cell in Haarlem. They knew nothing at the beginning about how to do this. Deception, strategy, and anonymity were not the way the ten Booms were wired. In fact, Corrie's father had such a hard time comprehending anonymity and deception that throughout their operation, he was never able to understand why so many people named "Mr. Smitt" seemed to be involved. However, their cell thrived and aided hundreds of people. It became so large that it put them in danger of being found out. Sure enough, one day the Gestapo arrested Corrie, her Father, and her older sister Betsie.
They started out in jail, then were moved to a Dutch federal prison where Corrie spent 4 months in solitary confinement and where her Father died 10 days into his imprisonment. Corries was moved again to a concentration camp in Holland where she was reunited with Betsie, and finally they were brought to a German extermination camp.
In total, Corrie spent about 11 months in these places facing horrific conditions and brutality. Betsie died shortly before Corrie was finally released. Corrie later discovered her release had been due to a clerical error and happened 1 week before all the women her age were killed at this extermination camp.
After the war, Corrie opened up a home to help former concentration camp victims to heal and recover. She went on to open similar places for Dutch collaborators and finally even for the German persecutors, soldiers, and guards themselves to heal. She spoke in dozens of countries and wrote 25 books, but none of this was by her own strength or ability or even desire always. Let me share a passage from the end of the book, from a time after the war when she was invited to speak.
It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there -- the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie's pain-blanched face.
He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. "How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein." he said. "To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!"
His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.
Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.
I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.
As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.
And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.
As I prepared for this trip, I discovered rather quickly that I didn't have what it would take to have a successful trip or time of ministry. I just couldn't do it, but it was exactly where God was leading me to. God has been showing me how His grace is sufficient for me and how His power is made perfect in my weakness. When I believe that I can do something on my own, I rarely turn to Him for help, and I rarely see remarkable results. However, when I turn to Him knowing that He is my lifeline, knowing that I need Him like I need air to survive, His grace comes flooding in and His power goes flowing out and into my life.
I came to Philippians 4:4-7 in my preparations to come here when I was desperate to know exactly what I was supposed to be doing in preparation for the trip and in life in general. It says, "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."
I knew I had my direction from God about what I needed to be doing. 1) Rejoice. 2) Be gentle to all. 3) Pray with thanksgiving. It was free-ingly simple, but I knew I needed God's help to remember to do it, so I prayed for that.
The next day, I was amazed to discover that God not only helped me to remember to focus on these things, but He actually gave me thankfulness to pray back to Him for something I never could have been thankful for on my own. I was getting shots to come here to Uganda while my sister was going to Disneyland. I knew I'd normally be jealous or even bitter, but I was genuinely thankful to be exactly where I was in that moment -- right in His will. This thankfulness was so clearly from God and overflowed back into a prayer to Him.
I was starting to learn what Corrie spoke of: When God calls us to do something, whether it be to love, to forgive, to go, to rejoice, to be thankful - anything- then He gives, along with the command, exactly what He asks of us. He gives us the love, the forgiveness, the ability to go, the praise, the thankfulness.
So what is God asking you to do today? I encourage you to pray, to commit to do it, to step out in faith, and then to watch Him do all the heavy lifting!
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