I didn't know our modem was on the fritz until I had written a verrrrryy long post some time last week only to find out nothing I had written had been saved. I've been longing to rewrite for days, but it has taken this long to get it fixed. Here we go again....
Our big girl returned from her week away all fired up - it was amazing to have her back and watch the sibs all light up when she pulled in the driveway with her Dad and brother who went to pick her up. The parents were invited to sit in on any sessions during the week just to see what the kids were hearing, so Renaissance Man and bro went on the final day and were able to hear two great speakers. It was very inspiring. Sharing Christ needs to become our norm, not the unusual was the message of the day.
After a day or two of debriefing...in fact, a week later, we are still debriefing....there has been so much for her to share!.....she had her last driving lesson. All along, we've been letting her go with this instructor, asking for protection, checking in with her to make sure the instructor was keeping it strictly as a driving lesson (you never know....), etc. There was never any extra chatting except for, "Oh look - you have chickens!" The instructor did know, however, that she was going away to a youth conference of some kind and asked how it had gone when she returned. If that girl didn't go right into all that she had learned and starting using all sorts of strategies on him to share her faith. The thing is, he was ready to hear it and was very engaged in what she was saying. By the end of it, she passed him a tract, asking him where he thought he would spend eternity! He responded, "Thank you! You've given me a lot to think about!" Incredible. I'm ashamed at how many opportunities I've missed because I wasn't prepared and I was not bold enough. My daughter has inspired all of us to be more bold as she showed us, it wasn't that hard! Sure enough, a few days later, when the telephone guy was here to fix our modem/internet, RM handed him a tract at the end of his service call and shared with him that it asks the question, "Where do you think you will spend eternity?" Never in my married life has RM done something like that - sharing with someone he doesn't know, highly unusual, but, like I said, it needs to become the norm. The young guy seemed thoughtful and thanked him for the tract - who knows? Will we be the only ones that had a chance to share with that person? Our family is realizing we have a "farm ministry" - God regularly brings non-believers to our farm, either through service calls, farm machinery sales, kitten pickups....and these people seem to be sent by God, at least that is now how we are looking at them. We have a stack of tracts we plan to give out now that clearly share the gospel. We are excited to give them out now as we can!
The other topic I had written about was on books I'd been reading and how they had impacted me recently. This is what I started to write and now I'll try to finish that post, too.....
I don't have time for light reading so when and if I get a chance to read, I always dig into the good stuff....missionary stories. I always learn so much from them. The latest ones I've been reading have been by Helen Roseveare, He Gave Us a Valley, and this week it's been A Thousand Miles of Miracle, by Archibald Glover.
The first book was about a young missionary in Africa and her twenty years of mission work in Zaire. If I ever thought our family was driven or had accomplished a lot in a short time, all those proud thoughts were immediately put away as Helen Roseveare did things that would typically have taken a small army. Missionaries back then were not regular people - they were many, many people in one. But she had a pride issue, it turns out.....Right at the end of her mission work, as she was about to leave Zaire, everyone turned on her, especially the nationals, accusing her of stealing their money, deceiving them, making the foreigners always look good, etc., etc....the list of things went on and on. She ended up being forced to resign her post as director of the medical school, which she had built, with her own hands. She also had to be on "trial" by the elders of the church and community, in front of all the missionaries she had worked with for years......it was a nightmare. Where was God in all this? She couldn't believe this was happening to her! After all she had done for Him?! Or was it for Him.......Days after the trial she found herself in a very serious time of self-examination. All of the things she had been accused of were untrue, but she could see why the nationals wondered what her true motives were. The Zairian people were always suspicious of foreigners. They represented colonialists who, in their minds, had ruined their country - the national radio shows spewed propaganda all about the terrible white people and how they must be gotten rid of. No one trusted anyone anymore, even missionaries. This she knew and had sensed it for some time. Earlier on in her missionary career, it came to a head. A terrible time of unrest followed in Zaire where many protests and eventually civil war had gone on...so much so all the missionaries were told to leave. She left, too, but not before being brutally attacked by some rebel soldiers one night and even raped. Shockingly, after she returned to England to recover and wait for the war to calm down, she returned to Zaire. This was when she was approached with the idea to build a medical school, hospital and training center for the Zairian people in order to teach them how to help their own country. See, this all seems so good! Why would God seemingly desert her in her hour of need for all that she had done, even when she had returned to a people that had treated her so badly! They didn't deserve her help!? She was confused. But then she heard God speak to her as she argued with Him about her circumstances. This is what she wrote,
"He quietly rebuked me. 'No. You no longer want Jesus only, but Jesus plus...plus respect, popularity, public opinion, success and pride. You wanted to go out with all the trumpets blaring, from a farewell-do that you organized for yourself: with photographs and tape-recordings to show and play at home, just to reveal what you had achieved. You wanted to feel needed and respected. You wanted the other missionaries to be worried about how ever they'll carry on after you've gone. You'd like letters when you got home to tell you how much they realize they owe to you, how much they miss you. All this and more. Jesus plus...No, you can't have it. Either it must be "Jesus only" or you'll find you've no Jesus. You'll substitute Helen Roseveare.'"
I couldn't fathom it. There she was ending her career in shame because pride had gotten in the way. Fortunately this happened with six weeks left to go before she actually got on a plane and left the country. In those six weeks, she humbly trained the new missionaries taking her place. She humbly set to work on handing over the reins to other people. No farewell party was to take place, all exciting events had been cancelled. No thank yous or anything was to happen. But in those six weeks, as God changed her heart and she took his gentle rebuke, she was changed. In the end, she was sent off by her fellow missionaries with tremendous gratitude. All the nationals who had accused her came back and asked that they would be "remembered to her as sons who loved her and to let God blot out the memory of the sore wound they had tried to inflict on her in their stupidity." So there was healing in the end.
A very low time in her life, undoubtedly. I can't stand it when we have to be knocked down a notch to learn a lesson.
Archibald Glover's book was very moving, too. He and his young family had to escape China in 1900 as China, too, was trying to rid itself of all foreigners during the Boxer Rebellion where thousands of missionaries and other foreigners were killed. China, not unlike Zaire, didn't want the influence of Westerners anymore and planned to exterminate them all. The ordeal this family went through is mind-boggling.
At one particular time, they found themselves hiding on top of a mountain so they wouldn't be seen by the people that were chasing them, but they found themselves without shade or cover of any kind from the blazing sun that was literally blistering them and their children for hours. It was during this time that Glove wrote about this experience,
"As the sun mounted toward the zenith, darkness gathered over my soul. I think we were each one conscious of the same experience. It was not difficult to believe that Satan had been desiring to have us that he might sift us as wheat. That hallowed sense of our Lord's near Presence, which had hitherto solaced us and given us power to endure, was now withdrawn; and the language of our hearts was, 'Oh that I knew where I might find Him.' Yet all the while the Lord was near, though for the time being He willed, for His own great name's sake, that our eyes should be holden that we should not know Him....In that hour all God's waves and billows seemed to go over me. As the sun poured its fiery heat upon us from above, the Wicked One hurled his fiery darts at us from beneath. How often I fell back upon the word, "I have prayed for thee that they faith fail not.' Over and over again I said to the Accuser, 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.'"
I appreciated this man's honesty so much....to acknowledge the fact that even he, a seasoned missionary, could experience a darkness over his soul, was so comforting to me. It was interesting to notice that though it seemed the Lord wasn't there, He was, but Satan was sifting them like wheat. What a battle it must have been! How many times have I, too, had to speak to the Accuser who tries to whisper in my ear doubts about God as well.
One of the most encouraging passages was as Glover was separated from his wife and children for a period of time. He wrote,
"Separated from the fellowship of my companions I was left to my own reflections. The bitterness of the lonely ride who can tell? Some may perhaps wonder why, after such signal deliverances and sustaining grace, faith did not rise superior to the new trial. I only record the fact that it was so. Seasons of darkness do not necessarily argue the failure of faith. Often the very reverse is true, for faith needs to be educated and its schooling has to be done in the valley of sorrow as well as on the hill of vision."
This quote reverberated with me so much because, I, too, have had so many "signal deliverances and sustaining grace", too many miracles to count even, and yet how often do I find myself in a place where my faith does "not rise superior to the new trial"! His simple response was wonderful, "I only record the fact that it was so." He doesn't make a lot of excuses, he simply states, it was so. That's where he was at and it helped me to know, even a mature Christian has these periods of darkness and trial. Yet, he explains, his faith wasn't gone. This is true for me, I don't ever think I lose my faith. No. He says it so well, his faith was not gone at all, it was just being educated! But in a valley of sorrow. That is not where I like being educated. I much prefer the hill of vision! My greatest times of education, though, have been in that low place, I must admit.
So those two books impacted me greatly these past few weeks. I've appreciated the authors so much and wish I could go back in time to meet them and thank them for writing their experiences as they've helped me more than words can describe. It is the power of the pen. They would have no idea their impact when they were first writing the words down.
I can now write in retrospect myself as when I was first reading the books, we were in the middle of another trial, waiting for work.....RM had put in a bid on a contract that we were not supposed to get. He went after this one particular contract as he had some rink experience, automating ice rinks, from years ago when he used to commute downtown. He realized it was a longshot as he was going to be bidding against his former mega-employer, but God was on his side, wasn't he? He wrote a 50 page proposal and left it with the purchasing agent nearly a month ago. Days turned into weeks with no news. Then he finally talked with someone over a week ago. The guy on the phone said RM would be notified the next week as to whether or not he had gotten the work. No news for over a week again! That is never good news. It seemed they had notified the person who had gotten the work and just left us out of the picture for the time being. Meanwhile, I was reading these great stories of faith. I was fasting. I was crying out to the Lord. I was speaking to the Accuser who was trying to make me doubt not only God's goodness, but even worse, getting personal and making me question my own husband. That is hard. I shared that with RM two days ago and communicated as carefully as I could that I was sensing the attack that was going on in my mind was not good. I needed reassurance from him. All during this fast, we've been praying for work, for this contract and for serious breakthroughs. RM took my doubts and laid them to rest, reassuring me he was doing all that he could, the rest was in the Lord's hands and then we prayed. "Lord," he prayed that morning, "we need a breakthrough today." We separated, the attack was over and we both went about our day. I had to go to the dentist with my children's expensive mouths. He went and tried to get more info on whether or not we were getting the job, though it seemed impossible. When he finally got a hold of someone, they said, they'd try to let him know by the end of the week. He said to them, "Well, it's not looking like it'll be us." "I wouldn't say that, " was all the lady said on the other end of the line.
Meanwhile, back at the dentist's office, I heard a text come through, "We got the job!" What?! We weren't supposed to hear for a few more days?! I couldn't believe it. I found tears coming to my eyes while I was sitting in the dentist's waiting room. This was a huge coup, to take work out of the competitor's hands...to just a little guy. I quickly told the kids - they were so excited as they'd been praying with us for weeks, too. It was amazing. We came back together that afternoon as a family and just thanked God for His goodness to us. Another faith education had happened for all of us.
It's still not easy street by any means, we are still in the valley, not of sorrow per se, just a plain valley. But it is keeping us on our knees. I appreciate the education. I don't love going through the educating process, but I know it is a necessary part of the Christian life. As I write the stories down, maybe one day my children will look back and it will help them in their walk later on in their lives. Who knows, for now, writing it is helping me! I see God's "signal deliverances and sustaining grace" and I'm encouraged once again.
Ok, all caught up for now - hopefully this time I won't lose the whole post!
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