Dana's Christian Journey

“God always works in the opposite spirit as our enemy”, my friend shared last week as he visited our home. He and his wife have been missionaries in Jerusalem for fifteen years. In the summer of 2000 we visited them. Shortly after our departure, this city, quite acquainted with violence, erupted. Despite such dangerous circumstances, these friends and other missionaries decided to remain in Jerusalem. They have been able to demonstrate love in the midst of hate, generosity in the midst of selfishness, and peace in the midst of war. Such is God’s strategy.

God calls His children to replace natural fear with bold faith that enables “normal” men and women to be His witnesses… even while the world around them is falling apart. In 1947, another missionary who had lived in Jerusalem fifteen years had to make a decision. Hannah Hurnard was one of only a handful of Christian workers who remained in the region as war broke out. Even through the Siege of Jerusalem in 1948, Hannah was able to show Jews and Arabs the loving Hand of a God who tells His “little flock” to “fear not”.

Through her experiences, God allowed Hannah to write HINDS’ FEET ON HIGH PLACES, a brilliant allegory of a Christian’s journey through all kinds of trials to reach the Father’s heights of joy, love, and victory. Hannah admitted the main character of the book reflected many of her struggles as a young person who was constantly tormented with all types of fears. But Much-Afraid met the Good Shepherd who promised that He could turn her greatest weaknesses into something altogether opposite. The Good Shepherd gave Much-Afraid two companions on her journey to the High Places. Sorrow and Suffering walked with her through danger and difficulty. At journey’s end, the Good Shepherd’s promise was fulfilled and a transformed follower with a new name wondered if those she left behind could also be rescued:

“Can nothing be done for them down there in the Valley? Must my Aunt Dismal be left unhelped, and poor Spiteful and Gloomy too?… If the Shepherd could deliver me from all my fears and sins, couldn’t he deliver them from all the things which torment them?”

“Yes” said Joy (who had been Sorrow). “If he can turn Sorrow into Joy, Suffering into Peace, and Much-Afraid into Grace and Glory, how can we doubt that he could change Pride and Bitterness and Resentment and Self-Pity too, if they would but yield to him and follow him?”

We have good news to share.

“I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.” Jeremiah 31:13

“The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go to the heights.” Habakkuk 3:19

In SHADOW OF THE ALMIGHTY, Elisabeth Elliot chronicled the life of her late husband. From his youth in Oregon to his wrestling days at Wheaton College to his death with four other missionaries in the jungle of Ecuador at the hands of the Auca Indians, Jim was a sold-out believer. In 1948, six years before his death, he penned these words in his journal: “God, I pray Thee, light these idle sticks of my life and may I burn for Thee. Consume my life, my God for it is Thine. I seek not a long life, but a full one, like you, Lord Jesus.”

Jim Elliot died at the age of twenty-eight; David Brainerd died at the age of twenty-nine… both were abandoned to God. We are encouraged by these heroes, but how many saints will never have a book written about them? John described a strange scene in Heaven: “I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’ Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed.” (Rev. 6:9-11) Does God, “a consuming fire”, waste His children?

Is it good to be consumed by God? If I seek His kingdom first and His righteousness, will it be worth it in the end? If we could only hear from the “great cloud of witnesses” that has gone before! Would they tell us to hold back or would they tell us to press on? Would they tell us Jesus’ promises are false or would they tell us that even He couldn’t fully describe the joy to come? Would they council us to give less or encourage us to give more? Would they say “be careful” or would they say “be consumed”?

Would Jim Elliot retract his most famous journal entry or would he say “It is true!”? – “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Matthew 10:39

I grew up in a section of Chattanooga, Tennessee called Brainerd. We drove on Brainerd Road, we went to church at Brainerd, and I cut grass in Brainerd Hills. Only recently, though, have I learned of the man for whom my community was named.

A friend gave me a book called THE HIDDEN SMILE OF GOD in which John Piper writes about the fruit of affliction in the lives of three men of faith: John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd. In October of 1747, at the age of twenty-nine, David Brainerd died of tuberculosis in the home of Jonathan Edwards (preacher of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”). Two years after his death, Jonathan Edwards published THE LIFE OF DAVID BRAINERD which he wrote using his young friend’s diary. Through this writing about a hidden life of ministry to the American Indians in New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, scores of missionaries have been inspired to surrender all for the sake of the Gospel. Piper quotes Brainerd’s diary:

When I really enjoy God, I feel my desires of him the more insatiable, and my thirsting for holiness the more unquenchable… Oh, for holiness! Oh for more of God in my soul! Oh, this pleasing pain! It makes my soul press after God… Oh, that I might never loiter on my heavenly journey!

How marvelous are the ways of God! He speaks through His Word, through His Spirit, and through the lives of men and women who are abandoned to Him. As David Brainerd battled rejection, loneliness, depression, wilderness, and terminal disease, he often wondered if there would be fruit. But Jesus promises to abide in those who abide in Him with assurance of much fruit. Only God knows the full result of David Brainerd’s life. Sixty years after his death, a group of missionaries serving the Cherokee Indians in Chattanooga, Tennessee decided to name their mission for the young man who had given his all.

Seeing a man “carry his cross” and follow Jesus inspires us to enter the sufferings of Christ and live boldly. Perhaps one way we do this is by entering the sufferings of those around us. Jerusha Edwards, the seventeen year old daughter of Jonathan, cared for David Brainerd the last nineteen weeks of his life. Four months after his death, a father buried a teenage daughter who had contracted tuberculosis while caring for a visiting missionary. Such men and women are a part of the great cloud of witnesses cheering us on.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Hebrews 12:1

“And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.” Hebrews 13:12-14

I feel privileged to know several missionaries, but in a real way, Jesus calls us all to serve in such a capacity… no matter where we live. I heard a brother from Guatemala share the incredible way God changed his village. Jesus saved this man and charged him to stand against the evil one and declare hope and forgiveness of sins for all who would put their faith in Him. This man became a missionary in his own village. Now he is taking orphans off the street, leading them to Christ, and training them to go into all the world. “I believe these children will be the world’s greatest missionaries because they know the One that saves and they know no comforts in this world.”

Comforts may not be wrong, but the missionary sacrifices such rights for a greater good. Certainly Jesus gave up comfort as He left His throne in Heaven to come to this earth. “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.” His mission involved hardship and He was willing to endure all to save us. Now He sends His disciples. “As You have sent Me into the world, I have sent them into the world.”

We may want to argue or say we have pressing business, but Jesus does not waver in His requirements. “No one who puts his hand to the plow and turns back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” “Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves.” “Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

Who will answer such an invitation? It sounds like Jesus is calling followers to pain and trouble. Sir Earnest Shackleton put out an invitation in a London newspaper before his quest to Antarctica in the early 1900′s: “MEN WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY; SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER. SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS.” Thousands responded. Why?

Against all odds, Hudson Taylor left England in 1853 to take the gospel to China. Olympic gold medalist Eric Liddle left fame and success to live the rest of his life as a missionary in Asia. Jim and Elizabeth Elliot went to the unreached tribes in Ecuador. In 1956, Jim and four friends were murdered by those they tried to reach. Three years later, Elizabeth, three year old daughter, Valerie, and Rachel Saint, the sister of one of the murdered missionaries, went back to live with the very tribesmen who killed their loved ones. Thousands of unknown disciples have left the comforts of home to take the gospel to all the world. Why?

Perhaps we must see the invitation of Jesus in a different light. His call is much higher than Sir Shackelton’s and His purpose much greater. Jesus was not trying to scare people off with His words. He simply stated the truth, knowing the same enemy that opposed Him opposes all who follow. “Not everyone will answer My call. You must count the cost before you answer, but when you do, don’t turn back. I am inviting you to fight in a war of eternal importance. You must humbly walk by faith and learn to rely on My grace. Let your main objectives be to love and obey the Father. Remember His ways are not man’s ways. The Holy Spirit will direct and comfort you. You will face hardship, criticism, and perhaps even death, but do not fear… I am with you.”

It is a privilege to follow a King.

“In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:33

“They called the apostles in and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ.” Acts 5:40-42