What in the World Is Going On? A Study of God's Plan for Man
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Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus
Article contributed by Probe Ministries
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Many of the concepts in John Gray's blockbuster "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Mars" make sense because they are based on God-designed differences between men and women. Probe's Dr. Ray Bohlin and his wife Sue discuss these differences, as well as how God's commands to husbands and wives demonstrate the gender-related needs of their spouses.
[Note: As far as we are aware, John Gray is not a believer in Christ, and we do not endorse everything in his book. However, we take the position that "all truth is God's truth," and in this article we use information from his book that is consistent with what Christian writers (see endnotes) have also discussed. After all, even a broken clock is right twice a day!]
How Men and Women Differ
[Sue] Counselor John Gray made a ton of money—and found a ton of grateful fans—in writing his best-selling book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus1. This book explored the intrinsic differences between men and women in a way that has helped millions of people understand why relationships between the two sexes can be so frustrating!
[Ray] In this essay we'll be examining some of the insights from this book, then looking at what the Bible says about how God wants men and women to relate to each other. It's no surprise that since God created us to be different, He knew all about those differences thousands of years ago when He gave very specific instructions for each gender!
[Sue] The whimsical premise of Men Are From Mars is that many years ago, all men lived on Mars, and all women lived on Venus. Once they got together, they respected and enjoyed their differences—until one day when everybody woke up completely forgetting that they had once come from different planets. And ever since, men mistakenly expect women to think and communicate and react the way men do, and women expect men to think and communicate and react the way women do. These unrealistic expectations cause frustration. But when we understand the God-given differences between male and female, we have more realistic expectations of the other sex, and our frustration level drops.
[Ray] Speaking of which, we do realize that it can be very frustrating for some people when gender differences are painted in such broad strokes, since there's such a large spectrum of what women are like and what men are like. Both men and women come in different shapes and sizes but by and large, we feel that most will identify with these characteristics.
[Sue] With that said, let's look at some of the differences between men and women.
[Ray] Men get our sense of self from achievement. We tend to be task-oriented, and being self-reliant is very important to us. You put those two together, and you get people who hate to ask for directions or for help. I'll wander in a store for 15 minutes trying to find something on my own because accomplishing the task of getting a certain item isn't going to be satisfying unless I can do it on my own. For us, asking for help is an admission of failure; we see it as a weakness.
[Sue] Women get our sense of self from relationships. Where men are task-oriented, we are relational-oriented. Our connections to other people are the most important thing to us. Instead of prizing self- reliance, we tend to be inter-dependent, enjoying the connectedness to other people, especially other women. For us, both asking for help and offering it is a compliment; we're saying, "Let me build a bridge between us. I value you, and it'll bind us ."
[Ray] Men usually focus on a goal. We want to get to the bottom line, to the end of something.
[Sue] But women tend to enjoy the process. Not that reaching a goal isn't important, but we like getting there too. That's why driving vacations are so very different for men and women; the guys want to get to their destinations and beat their best time with the fewest stops, and we sort of treasure the time to talk and look and maybe stop at the outlet malls along the way!
Gender Differences, Continued
[Sue] We believe these admittedly broad-brushed differences are rooted in God-created traits. In fact, some Christian authors like Gary Smalley and Stu Weber have addressed them in their books as well.2 Ray, why don't you continue with the next point about men—something that's bound to be real surprising?
[Ray] Well, yes, men are competitive. Big shock, huh? Whether we're on the basketball court or on the highway, we just naturally want to win, to be out front. Many of us are driven to prove ourselves, to prove that we're competent, and it comes out in a competitive spirit.
[Sue] And it's not that girls aren't competitive, because of course we are; it's just that we tend to be more cooperative than competitive. When girls are playing and one gets hurt, the game will often stop and even be forgotten while everyone gathers around and comforts the one who went down. It's that relational part of us coming out.
[Ray] Men are often more logical and analytical than women.
[Sue] And we tend to be more intuitive than men. This isn't some sort of mystic claim; there was a study at Stanford University that discovered women catch subliminal messages faster and more accurately than men.3 Voila—intuition.
[Ray] This difference is evident in brain activity. Men's brains tend to show activity in one hemisphere at a time . . .
[Sue] . . .Where women's brains will show the two hemispheres communicating with each other, back and forth, constantly. That means that often, men and women can arrive at the exact same conclusion, using completely different means to get there. Our thinking has been accused of being convoluted, but it works!
[Ray] Men are linear. We can usually focus on just one thing at a time. That's why you've learned not to try to talk to me while I'm reading the paper. I really struggle to read and listen at the same time.
[Sue] Yes, I've learned to get your attention and ask if I can talk to you so it'll be an actual conversation and not a monologue! God made us women to be multi-taskers, able to juggle many things at once. It's a requirement for mothering, I've discovered. Many times I'd be cooking dinner and helping the kids with homework and answering the phone and keeping an ear on the radio, all at the same time.
[Ray] Men tend to be compartmentalized, like a chest of drawers: work in one drawer, relationships in another drawer, sports in a third drawer, and so on. All the various parts of our lives can be split off from each other.
[Sue] Whereas women are more like a ball of yarn where everything's connected to everything else. That's why a woman can't get romantic when there's some unresolved anger or frustration with her husband, and he doesn't see what the two things have to do with each other.
[Ray] One more; men are action-oriented. When we feel hostile, our first instinct is to release it physically. And when we're upset, the way for us to feel better is to actively solve the problem.
[Sue] Women are verbal. (Another big surprise, huh?) Our hostility is released with words rather than fists. And when we're upset, the way for us to feel better is by talking about our problem with other people.
More Gender Differences
[Ray] When men are under stress, we generally distract ourselves with various activities to relax. That's why you see so many men head for the nearest basketball hoop or bury themselves in the paper or TV. But there's another aspect of the way we handle severe stress that can be particularly frustrating to women who don't understand the way we are: a man withdraws into his "cave." We need to be apart from everybody else while we figure out our problems alone. Remember, a man is very self-reliant and competitive, and to ask for help is weakness, so he will first want to solve the problem by himself.
[Sue] We women handle stress in the exact opposite way, which of course is going to pose major problems until we understand this difference! When we're stressed, we get more involved with other people. We want to talk about what's upsetting us, because we process information and feelings by putting them into words. But merely talking is only half of it; we talk in order to be heard and understood. Having a good listener on the other end is extremely important. No wonder there is such misunderstanding when people are under stress: as a friend of ours put it, "Men head for their cave, and women head for the back door!"
[Ray] John Gray gave some great advice when he said that when a man's going into his cave, he can give powerful assurance to the woman in his life by telling her, "I'll be back."
[Sue] Works for me! What's next?
[Ray] A man's primary need is for respect. There are a lot of elements involved in respect, which he needs both from his peers and from the significant women in his life: trust, acceptance, appreciation, admiration, approval, and encouragement. A man needs to know he's respected. He also needs to be needed. That's why it's so devastating to a man when he loses his job. He gets his sense of self from achievement, and he needs to be needed, so when the means to achieve and provide for his family is taken away, it's emotionally catastrophic.
[Sue] It's good for us women to know that, so we can be grace-givers in a time of awful trauma. I think that just as a man is devastated by the loss of his job, a woman is devastated by the loss of a close relationship; both losses reflect the God-given differences between us. Just as a man needs to be respected, we primarily need to be cherished. Cherishing means giving tender care, understanding, respect, devotion, validation, and reassurance. We need to know others think we're special. And just as a man needs to be needed, we need to be protected. That's why security is so important to us. A man needs to be able to provide, and a woman needs to feel provided for.
[Ray] One final difference. For men, words are simply for conveying facts and information.
[Sue] But for women, words mean much more. Not just to convey information, but to explore and discover our thoughts and feelings, to help us feel better when we're upset, and it's the only way we have to create intimacy. To a woman, words are like breathing!
Women's Needs and Issues
[Ray] We have been examining how God created men and women to be different. So it's not surprising to find how many of our uniquenesses and needs are addressed by God's commands and precepts in the Bible.
[Sue] In this section we'll consider women's needs and issues, and look at how God's commands fit perfectly with the observations we've made. In the next section, we'll look at men's needs.
As I said above, our primary need as women is to be cherished—to be shown TLC, understanding, respect, devotion, validation, and reassurance.
[Ray] And in Ephesians 5:25, we read God's command that addresses this need: "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her." When we think about the way Christ loves the church, we see a sacrificial love, a tender love, and a love that is committed to acting in the church's best interests at our Savior's own expense. God doesn't just want men to love their wives like they love sports—He wants us to love our wives in a way that makes them feel cherished and very special. He wants us to love our wives with a sacrificial love that puts her needs and desires above our own.
1 Peter 3:7 gives further instruction along this line: "You husbands likewise, live with your wives in an understanding way." The Greek literally reads, "Dwell with them according to knowledge." The only way to live with your wife in an understanding way is to seek to know her. And when a husband listens and responds to what his wife shares—remembering that women are created to be verbal—she will feel cherished and understood and loved.
The last part of 1 Peter 3:7 continues, "live with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel, since she is a woman." This isn't a slam on women. When we read this verse, we ought to think along the lines of a fine china cup. It's definitely weaker than a tin cup, but that's because it's so fragile, delicate, and far more valuable. When we serve dinner on our china, we're very careful in handling it, and extremely protective of washing and drying it. We treat our china with tenderness and gentleness because of its fragility and value. That's how we cherish it. And that's how a man is to treat his wife—not roughly or carelessly, but with tenderness and gentleness, because God made women to be treated with special care.
[Sue] The flip side of needing to be cherished is our need for security. We need to be protected and provided for. Even when a wife works, she wants to know that her husband is the main provider, or at least truly wants to be and is working to that end. The burden of being forced to provide for our families is bigger than we should have to bear.
[Ray] God created that need for security within women. That's why He puts such a high value on the provisional aspect of a man's character. 1 Timothy 5:8 says, "If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." God wants us men to be diligent workers and providers. He created us to bear the burden of providing; women are to be protected from that burden whenever possible.
Men's Needs and Issues
[Ray] Men's primary need is for respect and support—to receive trust, acceptance, appreciation, admiration, approval and encouragement.
[Sue] I think God intends for wives to meet that need by submitting to our husbands, as we are commanded to do in Ephesians 5:22 and 1 Peter 3:1. Submission doesn't mean giving in or being an overworked doormat; it's a gift of our will. It means submitting to God first, then demonstrating that submission by choosing to serve and respect and be our husband's Number One supporter. Even when a man is more of a jerk than a Superman, he needs the respect of his wife, even if she has to ask the Lord for His perspective on what areas of his life are worthy of respect!
It's interesting to me that in Ephesians 5, at the beginning of the passage on marriage, Paul exhorts women to submit to their husbands as unto the Lord, and then closes this section by saying, "And let the wife see to it that she respect her husband."(v. 33) Submission and respect aren't the same thing, but they're both necessary to meet a man's God-given needs. In the middle of this "marriage sandwich," so to speak, is the awesome command to men to love their wives sacrificially and tenderly, as Christ loves the church. What I see is that submission and respect is a natural response to that kind of love.
[Ray] Another aspect of men's constitution is that we're action-oriented, whereas women are verbal.
[Sue] Yes, and that's why I'm very intrigued by the wisdom of Peter's admonishment to women, where he says,
You wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior. (1 Peter 3:1-2)
To men, words are cheap—and if they're coming from a woman, all too plentiful! What impresses a man is what a person does, not what they say. So here the Holy Spirit inspired Peter to basically tell us to shut up and live holy lives, which is the only language that's going to have a true impact on a man.
[Ray] Another characteristic of men is that we tend to be self-oriented, as opposed to women who are more relational.
[Sue] It's interesting to me that Paul exhorts men to love their wives as they love themselves and their own bodies (Ephesians 5:28,33). And he does this without condemning them for that self- orientation; he just uses it as a point of reference to demonstrate how powerfully men are to love their wives. From what I've observed at the health club about the way some men love their bodies, God wants men to indulge their wives with some major pampering!
[Ray] One last comment. While men and women may be constitutionally different by design, we do share one important and serious flaw: our sin nature. Both genders are prideful and selfish. And that is one reason we find commands to both men and women to serve the other sex. But in the midst of our service, we can certainly enjoy the differences God planted!
Notes
1. Gray, John. Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992.
2. Smalley, Gary. Hidden Keys to a Loving Lasting Marriage. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 1984. Weber, Stu. Tender Warrior. Sisters, Ore.:Multnomah Books, 1993.
3. Smalley, Hidden Keys, p. 17.
©1995 Probe Ministries
Related Topics: Divorce, Marriage, Relationships, Women, Women's Articles
8b. Dreams Call for Faithful Servants of God Lecture
Related MediaThis lecture page is designed to go after the student has followed the workbook and done the homework for Lesson 7. A powerpoint to accompany the audio lecture is available, as well as a handout.
How many of you wear glasses or contacts or have had some sort of corrective surgery for your vision? I began wearing glasses when I was about 12 because I wasn’t seeing things in the distance clearly; they were blurred. I wondered how it was that my friends seemed to recognize people in other cars as we passed them; I couldn’t make out who they were. At school I had to strain to figure out what was on the board. Eventually (I was slow to get this), such clues made it clear that I needed help. Today, when I wear my contacts for distance, I have to wear these reading glasses in order to see what is close. If I don’t wear either contacts or glasses, I can read fine but can’t see beyond my hand with clarity. Without help, I cannot focus correctly.
In a similar way we need help to focus our lives on God; otherwise, we end up missing what is most important in life because our vision is blurry. We cannot follow that dream for the course of our lives without that focus. We must make an effort to see God clearly; it doesn’t just happen; we must work on it.
Joshua kept his vision focused on God for his entire life. Only once did Joshua fail to focus on God, when he did not consult Him about making a covenant with the people of Gibeon, as we discussed last week. Every other time that the Bible mentions Joshua, we see him following that dream by walking closely with God.
So today we want to learn from Joshua about focusing our vision on God. We will look at his last two public addresses in Joshua 23 and 24. His words here are merely examples of what we have seen week after week as we have studied the life of this man of God because Joshua had lived out what he told Israel. In these speeches, Joshua re-focused the people on their God.
As you saw in your lesson, there were two separate gatherings of people to whom Joshua gave his last words. The way the scripture reads sounds like they were two very similar groups. The scholars tend to feel that the first group was the leadership, which represented the entire nation, while the second included everyone. As Joshua addressed each group, his messages were similar although he stressed different things. As we noted in the lesson, a person’s last words are extremely significant; they reveal what that person believes is important for the next generation to hear.
So how did Joshua focus the people on God so they would continue to follow God’s dream? Joshua pointed them to the past, in particular he helped them remember God’s faithful deeds on their behalf.
Turn with me to Joshua 23:1, the beginning of the speech to the leaders.
“A long time passed after the Lord made Israel secure from all their enemies, and Joshua was very old. So Joshua summoned all Israel, including the elders, rulers, judges, and leaders, and told them: “I am very old. You saw everything the Lord your God did to all these nations on your behalf, for the Lord your God fights for you.”
Joshua reminded them that God had brought victories because he was doing it for them. Joshua summarized in this one verse all that this group had watched God do for them.
However, when Joshua went before the larger group, he went into greater detail of God’s faithful deeds.
Look at Joshua 24:1-13:
Joshua assembled all the Israelite tribes at Shechem. He summoned Israel’s elders, rulers, judges, and leaders, and they appeared before God. Joshua told all the people, “Here is what the Lord God of Israel says: ‘In the distant past your ancestors lived beyond the Euphrates River, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor. They worshiped other gods, but I took your father Abraham from beyond the Euphrates and brought him into the entire land of Canaan. I made his descendants numerous; I gave him Isaac, and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. To Esau I assigned Mount Seir, while Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt. I sent Moses and Aaron, and I struck Egypt down when I intervened in their land. Then I brought you out. When I brought your fathers out of Egypt, you arrived at the sea. The Egyptians chased your fathers with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea. Your fathers cried out for help to the Lord; he made the area between you and the Egyptians dark, and then drowned them in the sea. You witnessed with your very own eyes what I did in Egypt. You lived in the wilderness for a long time. Then I brought you to the land of the Amorites who lived east of the Jordan. They fought with you, but I handed them over to you; you conquered their land and I destroyed them from before you. Balak son of Zippor, king of Moab, launched an attack against Israel. He summoned Balaam son of Beor to call down judgment on you. I refused to respond to Balaam; he kept prophesying good things about you, and I rescued you from his power. You crossed the Jordan and came to Jericho. The leaders of Jericho, as well as the Amorites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hittites, Girgashites, Hivites, and Jebusites, fought with you, but I handed them over to you. I sent terror ahead of you to drive out before you the two Amorite kings. I gave you the victory; it was not by your swords or bows. I gave you a land in which you had not worked hard; you took up residence in cities you did not build and you are eating the produce of vineyards and olive groves you did not plant.’
As I was studying this, I was struck with the heritage that Joshua recounted to them. He reminded them of God’s work in the lives of their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and went on from there to what He had just done for them.
What is your spiritual heritage? What faithful deeds has God done, not only in your own life but what did He do in your family that gives you a spiritual heritage? Or maybe you are the Abraham of your family, the first to have faith in the God of the Bible. Maybe, you like Abraham will begin a spiritual heritage for your children and their children. But you have a spiritual heritage. By whom were you influenced? Whom did God put into your life to draw you to Himself?
One of the great emphases that we have seen throughout this book is that of remembering God’s mighty deeds. Moses had recorded some of those deeds in the books that he wrote—in Genesis through Deuteronomy. That is a way to remember God’s deeds—to write them down for future generations to read. Joshua not only used the scriptures, as we saw when they read the blessings and cursings on Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal, but Joshua also used stones and place names to help ignite their memories.
We, too, need to be sure that we remember all of the great deeds that God has done for us. We need to read the stories of what He did in the days of the Bible; we need to record the things that He has done for us, possibly all the way back to our spiritual heritage. We may need other physical reminders, like the stones that we gave you a few weeks ago.
If you were in our study of the minor prophets last fall, you probably remember how often God said that His own people had forgotten Him. God’s people are prone to forget Him instead of remembering what He has done. We are no exception; without reminders we will forget the faithful and mighty deeds of God.
As we do that, as we focus on the faithful deeds that God has done, we grow in faith and gratitude. The only way to trust God is to know that He is trustworthy. If we are to have faith in Him when we reach the hard times in life or when our dreams are slow to come true, we must know that He is trustworthy and mighty from our past experience. When we forget and begin to focus on the hardship or the delay, we are not seeing clearly; our vision has blurred, and we can easily move in the wrong direction.
Some years back when my husband had the problem with his eye that I have mentioned in here before, I had to rely upon what I had learned about God in previous trials. I had to remember that He was faithful to me before, that He had kept His promises before, that He had proven Himself wise before. I remembered how He had carried me when I grieved over my father’s death. That is how I had the faith that I needed to go through the present experience. And remembering those things in the midst of a hard time helped me be grateful; even though we were struggling with a difficult situation, I could be thankful for the little ways that I saw God at work, believing that He was at work now as He had been in the past.
So the first thing that we see from Joshua’s example is to focus on God by remembering the past, the faithful deeds that He has done in our lives and for our families.
Secondly, we see that Joshua teaches us to follow that dream, focusing on God in the present—to revere His majestic power. As we read in Josh. 23:6-16, think of how Joshua describes the greatness and power of God.
Joshua 23:6-16
Be very strong! Carefully obey all that is written in the law scroll of Moses so you won’t swerve from it to the right or the left, or associate with these nations that remain near you. You must not invoke or make solemn declarations by the names of their gods! You must not worship or bow down to them! But you must be loyal to the Lord your God, as you have been to this very day.
“The Lord drove out from before you great and mighty nations; no one has been able to resist you to this very day. One of you makes a thousand run away, for the Lord your God fights for you as he promised you he would. Watch yourselves carefully! Love the Lord your God! But if you ever turn away and make alliances with these nations that remain near you, and intermarry with them and establish friendly relations with them, know for certain that the Lord our God will no longer drive out these nations from before you. They will trap and ensnare you; they will be a whip that tears your sides and thorns that blind your eyes until you disappear from this good land the Lord your God gave you.
“Look, today I am about to die. You know with all your heart and being that not even one of all the faithful promises the Lord your God made to you is left unfulfilled; every one was realized – not one promise is unfulfilled! But in the same way every faithful promise the Lord your God made to you has been realized, it is just as certain, if you disobey, that the Lord will bring on you every judgment until he destroys you from this good land which the Lord your God gave you. If you violate the covenantal laws of the Lord your God which he commanded you to keep, and follow, worship, and bow down to other gods, the Lord will be very angry with you and you will disappear quickly from the good land which he gave to you.”
In this address to the leaders, Joshua not only recounted God’s great deeds of the past, but he also clearly warned them that God in His greatness will bring consequences if they forget Him. God is God; and He is able and willing to deal with His people who are drawn away from their allegiance to Him. In 23:16 Joshua reminded them that they were in a covenant with God, as we discussed last week, and that God expected them to be loyal to Him alone in their worship. God is majestic and great and expects His people to worship Him alone because they recognize it. The reason we focus on the present, revering the majestic power of God is so that we remember to obey and serve Him alone.
Now look at the second public address in Josh. 24:14-28:
Now obey the Lord and worship him with integrity and loyalty. Put aside the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates and in Egypt and worship the Lord. If you have no desire to worship the Lord, choose today whom you will worship, whether it be the gods whom your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. But I and my The people responded, “Far be it from us to abandon the Lord so we can worship other gods! For the Lord our God took us and our fathers out of slavery in the land of Egypt and performed these awesome miracles before our very eyes. He continually protected us as we traveled and when we passed through nations. The Lord drove out from before us all the nations, including the Amorites who lived in the land. So we too will worship the Lord, for he is our God!”
Joshua warned the people, “You will not keep worshiping the Lord, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God who will not forgive your rebellion or your sins. If you abandon the Lord and worship foreign gods, he will turn against you; he will bring disaster on you and destroy you, though he once treated you well.”
The people said to Joshua, “No! We really will worship the Lord!” Joshua said to the people, “Do you agree to be witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to worship the Lord?” They replied, “We are witnesses!” Joshua said, “Now put aside the foreign gods that are among you and submit to the Lord God of Israel.”
The people said to Joshua, “We will worship the Lord our God and obey him.”
That day Joshua drew up an agreement for the people, and he established rules and regulations for them in Shechem. Joshua wrote these words in the Law Scroll of God. He then took a large stone and set it up there under the oak tree near the Lord’s shrine. Joshua said to all the people, “Look, this stone will be a witness against you, for it has heard everything the Lord said to us. It will be a witness against you if you deny your God.” When Joshua dismissed the people, they went to their allotted portions of land.
In this second address, Joshua renewed the covenant that their parents had already made with God at Mt. Sinai. Joshua told the crowd that he and his family would worship Yahweh, even if everyone else turned away from Him, but the people committed to worship and obey the Lord God of Israel. They even agreed to be witnesses against themselves if they failed to keep the covenant. Then, Joshua wrote it all down and set up another stone as a witness to the covenant. These people left stones all over the place, didn’t they?
And look what happened because of this focus on God in Joshua 24:31:
“Israel worshiped the Lord throughout Joshua’s lifetime and as long as the elderly men who outlived him remained alive. These men had experienced firsthand everything the Lord had done for Israel.”
It is our firsthand experience of the majestic power of God that will hold us faithful throughout our lifetimes, that will help us obey and serve God and not replace Him with the gods of money, or children, or husbands, or success, or even ministry. God alone is majestic and worthy of our worship, but it is keeping those firsthand experiences with God in focus that help us do so.
As we have read Joshua’s final words, you have probably noticed how all of these elements or focusing on the past and present are mixed together. I couldn’t just pull out remembering the past from considering God’s majestic power in the present. Focusing on both past and present work together to keep us faithful to Him.
I have to admit that there are days when I would love to just quit what I am doing and take it easy for awhile. Just not have to think about the next Bible study or the next women’s event or hear about the troubles of this life! Just enjoy life for awhile—relax and take it easy! I would love to just take pleasure in what I have already done and leave it to someone else to do the rest!
I think that was what happened to the Israelites. They had apparently fought for over seven years when Joshua sent them to settle down in the land and take the rest of their territory tribe by tribe. I can just imagine them wanting to simply enjoy life for a while, and so they became content with what they had. Instead of focusing on God’s plan to take the whole land, they decided to sit back and enjoy what they had. It seemed to be enough!
Those kinds of thoughts are so deceiving, especially when we have already been doing things for God. We begin to feel that we are entitled to retire and let others fight the battles, let them finish the dream. As Christians, we are fighting spiritually on behalf of a people of God, just as Joshua and his army fought for a land. We can never say that we have done our part because there is always more to do. As long as we live on earth, our desire should be to persevere in God’s work. And that brings us to the final focus that we need in order to do that.
We not only focus on the past, those faithful deeds that God has done, and the present, the majestic power of God who alone deserves our worship, we also must focus on the future—trusting His promise to fulfill the dreams that He has given us so that we persevere in hope.
Look again at Josh. 23:5. Although at this point most of the dreams that God had given them had already come true, as you know, they had still not totally occupied the land. They had taken most of it, but there were still large pockets of inhabitants left in the land. So Joshua focused them on the future:
Josh. 23:5: “The Lord your God will drive them out from before you and remove them, so you can occupy their land as the Lord your God promised you.”
There was still work to be done to complete the dream; they had the promise that God would fulfill it, but they had to move forward to do it. If they trusted God and fought their enemies as He had asked them to do, they would have success. It was His promise.
When I begin to feel that I wish I could just hang it up for awhile, I need to focus on the future and on God’s promises to fulfill those dreams. That focus will help me when I am tempted to become content with what God has already done and think that I have already arrived.
A dream that God gave me long ago was to teach the Bible, not to a large group like this but simply to a group like a Sunday School class. I had grown up in the church hearing the Bible taught for all of my life. But as a young wife and mother, I finally had a teacher who was truly gifted in that area. She was wonderful. And at that time the thought came to me that I wish I could do that. I certainly didn’t think it was a dream from God then. But in time and with experience, God showed me that it was His dream for me. Everything that He opened up for me pointed to this being His dream. I never volunteered to teach anything; God always opened the door of opportunity. But more and more I began to make choices about my time and my energy and my ministry that allowed me to follow this dream.
But the temptation now is to decide that what I have done is enough. I don’t need to study more; I don’t need to take on new challenges; I don’t need to write any new studies; I don’t need to work so hard; I could just be content with what I have already done.
Maybe it is harder to focus on the future and what God wants to do with us when a lot of the dream has already become reality. God has fulfilled the dream, for the most part. But does He have more for us? Is the dream over after a certain point? When I get so old that I am unable to teach, I’ll know that I have done all that I can to fulfill the dream, but until that time, I need to continue pressing forward. The only way to persevere in faith for a lifetime is to continue moving forward in hope that there is more to come in the dream. God has more if we don’t become discouraged or content. There is still more to do for His kingdom.
Eph. 3:20-21 says,
“Now to him who by the power that is working within us is able to do far beyond all that we ask or think, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
God has planned even more to this dream than I have imagined. He has already proven that to be the case. As far as I could imagine with this dream was to teach a Sunday School class or a small group, but God has already done exceedingly above what I thought. I never imagined being on a church staff or leading a women’s ministry or writing a Bible study. I simply followed Him step by step and day by day into the dream, and He has led me to where I am today.
So I can’t say that I’ve done it and that it’s all fulfilled; God has more in mind than I can imagine. By focusing on the past, God’s mighty deeds in my life and on the present, God’s majestic power, I move toward realizing God’s dreams for me. But if I fail to continue looking ahead and believing that there is more to come out of that dream, there is the rest of the land to take, I will not persevere.
I need to hope in a greater future for the dreams that God has given me. And I need your encouragement to do so, just as you need the encouragement of others to see your dream realized. They can help you identify God’s dream if you aren’t sure; sometimes we want something that God doesn’t want for us. Once you do identify God’s dream for you, you will need others to encourage you, as Joshua encouraged the people of Israel; otherwise, it will be difficult to persevere to the end, serving and worshipping God, as Joshua did.
What is your dream? What has God shown you that He has in store for you? It’s time to follow that dream. Even if you are a young mom with small kids, there are ways to follow God’s dream. That is never an excuse to fail to move toward the place that God’s will is sending you. It may look a bit different now but you need to move toward the dream. When my kids were pre-schoolers, I began to lead small groups of women in various Bible studies. The dream looked a bit different then than it does today, but I was following God’s dream where He opened doors of opportunity for me that fit with the needs of my family.
Maybe you dream of becoming a spiritual influence on others. Maybe you thought you would be a missionary in a foreign place but find yourself at home with kids or barely making it in a work situation. Have you thought that maybe God is calling you to influence your workplace or your neighborhood or your children? Maybe you should be mentoring younger women. Jesus said that to those who are faithful, more will be given. Where are you following God’s dream now? What do you need to do about your own character and behavior so that you can be that influence—so that you can be a person whom others want to emulate? Maybe that is the first step in following that dream.
Maybe you dream of ministering to those who need it most—to the sick or the poor or the outcast. How can you begin to follow that dream? Have you gone to Vickery to minister to the refugees over there? Have you agreed to serve as a hospital visitor—to go visit those who are in need of an encouraging word and prayer?
Is your dream of a home where God is exalted? What do you need to do to make it that way, knowing that you can’t change anyone but yourself? How do you follow God in a way that speaks to the rest of your household because it changes the atmosphere of your home? What do you need to do to accept your family or roommates as they are instead of trying to manipulate them and God into changing them? How can you love them unconditionally as God does and simply provide a loving, safe home for them?
Essentially, as believers our ultimate dream is of hearing Jesus say on the other side, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” Whether anyone on earth ever recognizes what we do here or the dreams that we have, we know that He sees it all. His approval is all that we really should seek. To win that, we simply remain faithful to follow that dream for all the days of our lives. What changes can you make in your life now so that when you stand before Him, He calls you His faithful servant? How do you live for eternity now?
As you follow that dream, keep your focus on God so that your vision is not blurred by the things of this world. This is not a one time focus, ladies; we have to re-focus every day of our lives. That is why we come to a study like this, because it helps us do that and gives us others to help us when our spiritual eyes get blurry.
On the back of your handout are some questions to follow up with our study of Joshua and our lesson today in particular. Take time this week to work through them since we have completed our study of Joshua.
This will help you focus on the past by remembering God’s mighty deeds; focus on the present by revering His majestic power; and focus on the future, trusting His promise to fulfill the dreams that He has given you.
Related Topics: Curriculum
7b. Dreams Require Perseverance Lecture
Related MediaThis lecture page is designed to go after the student has followed the workbook and done the homework for Lesson 7. A powerpoint to accompany the audio lecture is available, as well as a handout.
Last year over 700,000 immigrants became U.S. citizens. To do so, they had to apply and qualify in a number of areas, including passing a civics test. Finally, they had to swear an oath to be loyal to the United States:
I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen;
- that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
- that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;
- that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law;
- that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law;
- that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and
- that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.
By taking this oath, the person promises to take on a new relationship, to be faithful to that relationship above others, and to be loyal to that relationship by fighting for it when necessary. On the flip side, the person who becomes a citizen can now freely partake of all the benefits of that new relationship.
This week we looked into the story of Joshua and the Gibeonites, which hinges on the taking of an oath, similar to the oath of citizenship. Today we are going to look at such oaths, which are called covenants. As we do, we will see that they also involve a new relationship that brings both responsibilities and benefits.
Before we turn to our story in Joshua 9, we need to understand this kind of oath, called a covenant.
What is a covenant? Covenants are agreements involving solemn vows.
Before we see how covenants affect our story, we need to look at the nature of covenants. Because of covenant, we have certain responsibilities and privileges.
We find covenants throughout the Bible. If you were here a couple of weeks ago, Shelley talked about the fact that covenants are more than business agreements or contracts because they involve relationships, not simply business deals. The first thing we see about covenants is that they actually bring the parties into a new relationship.
We just saw that the oath of citizenship means that the person is now a citizen instead of an alien. Similarly, when God brought Israel into covenant with Him, He gave them a special relationship as His own chosen people.
Look at Ex. 19:3-6, which took place just before God gave the Law, or the Old Covenant, to Israel.
Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, “Thus you will tell the house of Jacob, and declare to the people of Israel: ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt and how I lifted you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. And now, if you will diligently listen to me and keep my covenant, then you will be my special possession out of all the nations, for all the earth is mine, and you will be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you will speak to the Israelites.”
God brought Israel into this new relationship as part of His covenant with them. They were now His covenant people. Beginning in Ex. 19 God explained the covenant to the people in the Ten Commandments and other laws. In Ex. 24, the people and God ratified that covenant.
Look at Ex. 24:3-8:
Moses came and told the people all the Lord’s words and all the decisions. All the people answered together, “We are willing to do all the words that the Lord has said,” and Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. Early in the morning he built an altar at the foot of the mountain and arranged twelve standing stones – according to the twelve tribes of Israel. He sent young Israelite men, and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls for peace offerings to the Lord. Moses took half of the blood and put it in bowls, and half of the blood he splashed on the altar. He took the Book of the Covenant and read it aloud to the people, and they said, “We are willing to do and obey all that the Lord has spoken.” So Moses took the blood and splashed it on the people and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”
It is at this point that Israel became God’s special people because they entered covenant with Him. We see here some of the practices of covenant-making that were used in those days: memorial stones, sacrifices and offerings, reading the covenant agreement, and sprinkling blood.
Over and over throughout the scriptures, God reminded Israel of their special relationship, which came about because of the covenant with Him. It was the basis of their relationship and the reason that God worked with them so uniquely.
As people of God’s new covenant, we too enter into a new relationship with Him. That relationship is described in many ways in the Bible; we are called God’s people, His children, His heirs, and His own possession.
Covenants bring new relationships. What else do we need to understand about covenants before we get into our story? Covenants are built upon the reliability of the character of the parties. They make oaths and swear to one another. Then, they base their actions in faith that the other party will follow through with his promises. The oath of citizenship means little if the new citizen is lying and planning on being a traitor instead. A covenant is only good if the parties fulfill their promises.
Look at Heb. 6:13-18:
Now when God made his promise to Abraham, since he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself, saying, “Surely I will bless you greatly and multiply your descendants abundantly.” And so by persevering, Abraham inherited the promise. For people swear by something greater than themselves, and the oath serves as a confirmation to end all dispute. In the same way God wanted to demonstrate more clearly to the heirs of the promise that his purpose was unchangeable, and so he intervened with an oath, so that we who have found refuge in him may find strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us through two unchangeable things, since it is impossible for God to lie.
God didn’t really need to swear when He made promises to Abraham because God’s character is so perfect that He keeps His word without an oath. The author of Hebrews tells us that He swore only so that the people would realize that there were 2 unchangeables involved in His promise—His oath and His own character, which makes it impossible for Him to lie. We see here that an oath should be so certain that it ends all disputes. We should be able to rely upon the word of the one who swears.
However, that brings up the third point about covenants. Because they are based upon the reliability of our words, we are bound though it sometimes hurts.
You saw this in your lesson, but it is extremely important as we talk about covenants. Ps. 15:1, 4b says, “Lord, who may be a guest in your home?
Who may live on your holy hill?” [Then God explains the character of that person and we’ll look at what He said at the end of v. 4] “He makes firm commitments and does not renege on his promise.” Or I like the way that the NIV says it: “Who keeps his oath even when it hurts.” The Message puts it this way: “Keep your word even when it costs you.”
That means that we are bound to our words even when we realize it will be costly to fulfill our promises. This is true of the oaths that citizens take. They will fight, even sacrificing their lives if need be.
So we see that covenants bring new relationships, are built on the character of the parties, and bind us though it hurts. Finally, they may bring consequences from God when they are broken.
Look at Gen. 15:9-10, where God made His covenant with Abram, who was later re-named Abraham:
“The Lord said to him, “Take for me a heifer, a goat, and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.” So Abram took all these for him and then cut them in two and placed each half opposite the other, but he did not cut the birds in half.”
Now look at Gen. 15:17-21:
When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking firepot with a flaming torch passed between the animal parts. That day the Lord made a covenant with Abram: “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River –the land of . . . ” [And I won’t read all the names.]
This covenant ceremony seems quite strange to us in our culture. We have very few remnants of these ceremonies left, but similar rites were still practiced recently in isolated places around the world. The verb for making covenant in Hebrew is the word bariyth, which means “to cut”, and is based upon this ceremony. When the parties ratified their covenant, they killed some animals and cut them in halves; then, they walked between the pieces of the animals, asking God to do the same to them, that is to kill them, if they broke the covenant. The two basins of blood that were sprinkled on the Israelites when they ratified the Law represented the halves of the animals. Because a covenant was a solemn, binding agreement, God was a party to the covenant. He was the one to watch over the promises and make sure that the people were faithful to their promises and their new relationship.
We have lost the sense of the seriousness of oaths and promises today. We don’t realize that when we swear to God, we bring Him as a party into our covenant agreement. We essentially ask Him to watch us to be sure we are true. When we say “so help me God”, we call Him as a witness to the truth.
I thought about President Clinton lying under oath. I think this simply reflects a culture that has no sense of the seriousness of swearing before God. Our court system takes it seriously, but God takes it even more seriously. We have to be careful what we swear.
There is a great example of bringing God in as witness in Gen. 31:44-54 where Jacob and Laban made a covenant. I wish we had time to read the whole passage, but I hope you will do so later.
Look at Gen. 31:48 and following.
Laban said, “This pile of stones is a witness of our agreement today.” That is why it was called Galeed. It was also called Mizpah because he said, “May the Lord watch between us when we are out of sight of one another. If you mistreat my daughters or if you take wives besides my daughters, although no one else is with us, realize that God is witness to your actions.”
“Here is this pile of stones and this pillar I have set up between me and you,” Laban said to Jacob. “This pile of stones and the pillar are reminders that I will not pass beyond this pile to come to harm you and that you will not pass beyond this pile and this pillar to come to harm me. May the God of Abraham and the god of Nahor, the gods of their father, judge between us.”
There are so many elements of covenant mentioned here, but the primary one that we want to note now is that God was the witness between them. If one of them broke the covenant by coming to harm the other, God was to bring consequences.
In covenant there are responsibilities and benefits, and we are called by God to them. Our story will more clearly show us what they are.
So let’s finally look in Joshua 9. We won’t read it all since you studied it and discussed it together. You know what happened. The Gibeonites decided that they would deceive the leaders of Israel into making a covenant with them. They had heard that God had required His people to destroy all the people of the land; only those outside of the land could make peace and be saved. So they determined to pretend to live far away so that Israel would make a covenant with them—and the word in v. 15 is that word bariyth, which means to cut covenant. And the plan worked. Israel never consulted God about the situation and went right ahead and made this covenant, which brought them into a new relationship with these people.
Let’s read what happened then in Josh. 9:16-29:
Three days after they made the treaty with them, the Israelites found out they were from the local area and lived nearby. So the Israelites set out and on the third day arrived at their cities – Gibeon, Kephirah, Beeroth, and Kiriath Jearim. The Israelites did not attack them because the leaders of the community had sworn an oath to them in the name of the Lord God of Israel. The whole community criticized the leaders, but all the leaders told the whole community, “We swore an oath to them in the name of the Lord God of Israel. So now we can’t hurt them! We must let them live so we can escape the curse attached to the oath we swore to them.” The leaders then added, “Let them live.” So they became woodcutters and water carriers for the whole community, as the leaders had decided.
The next thing we read is that an alliance of kings attacked Gibeon when they heard that they were now allied with Israel, but the Gibeonites called out to Joshua and he and his army came to their aid.
So because of covenant, we see Joshua and the people of Israel act in certain ways; in fact, they parallel the ways God acted toward Israel; and they should parallel the ways we act toward God, our covenant partner, and toward our husbands who are in a covenant relationship with us.
Because of covenant, God calls us to be faithful, as He does all covenant parties. We are to keep the promises we have made to our covenant partners, even to our own hurt. We have seen that over and over in Joshua that God is always faithful to His promises. What He promises, He delivers. Because his character is faithful, He can be trusted with His words. He kept His promises to Israel and will keep His promises to the church, His covenant people.
2 Timothy 2:13 says, “If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, since he cannot deny himself.”
God will be ever faithful to us when we enter covenant with Him by believing in His Son. However, we will all be unfaithful to Him at some time in some way, but He will not use that as an excuse to be unfaithful to us.
Similarly, we have just seen in our story that the Israelites did not kill the Gibeonites although the Gibeonites had deceived them. They had sworn an oath to them, and they had to keep the oath.
I think this story is an important example, particularly for married women. So many women give themselves an out in their marriages because they feel they were deceived in some way or that they made a mistake when they married that person. Some may have chosen to marry someone out of God’s will, maybe a non-Christian; or maybe they failed to really pray about it.
But we wives have sworn though it hurts, just as Israel did with the Gibeonites who deceived them. Once we marry that man, he is God’s will for us; whatever that costs, we are to keep our promises. Jesus even told us in Mt. 5:33-37 that our word is just as much a promise as an oath. He said, “Let your word be ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no.’ More than this is from the evil one.”
Faithfulness is part of the character of God. If we are to be like Him, we must be faithful to our words and to our relationships. Covenant is very serious and requires faithfulness. What did you promise your husband? In most marriage ceremonies, you promise to love and cherish, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, forsaking all other men so long as you both shall live. Not much wiggle room, is there? Although couples often write their own vows today, these elements are usually there somewhere. And God sees a marriage covenant as a permanent union of man and woman.
I do want to add one word here, though, so there is no misunderstanding. When I say it hurts, that doesn’t mean that you don’t seek help in serious situations. If you are being physically abused, you need to remove yourself physically from the situation, but you need to work to keep the covenant. Don’t allow your husband to sin against you, but continue to be true to your covenant to him.
Well, not only are covenant parties to be faithful, they are to be loyal. Our covenants have placed us in new relationships, and they take priority over all others. Our relationship in covenant with God means that He is our God and we are to have no other. Your relationship with your husband means that he is your husband; you are to have no other love. That is why James 4:4 calls Christians adulterers when we put anything else before God.
Loyalty means that we fight with and for our covenant partners. We have seen God fight for Israel all the way through Joshua and also here when they protected the Gibeonites. Joshua 10:14 says that the Lord fought for Israel. In that same battle, Israel fought for Gibeon out of loyalty.
In the same way we are to fight for God. Ephesians 6:10-20 tells us to fight God’s enemy with the armor of God. We are to take sides and to fight when our covenant partner needs us.
How does that apply to your marriage? Your husband is your covenant partner, and you are on his side and are even one with him. That means that you stand for him, even against your family and your friends. You are to be loyal to him. Just as our citizenship means that we side with our country against all others—even our country of birth. As a wife, you side with your husband over all others, even our parents. He is your husband, and it is to him that you owe your loyalty. Sometimes that means that you say no to your parents because it is best for your husband or because of his wishes.
You are responsible to be faithful and loyal in covenant. But you also have privileges. You can boldly ask your covenant partner for help.
In our story we saw the Gibeonites boldly cry out for the Israelites to come to their defense. It was their privilege. Joshua 10:6 says, “The men of Gibeon sent this message to Joshua at the camp in Gilgal, ‘do not abandon your subjects! Rescue us! Help us! For all the Amorite kings living in the hill country are attacking us.’ ”
In the same say, Joshua cried out to God on the day of that battle. Look at Josh. 10:14: “There has not been a day like it before or since. The Lord obeyed a man, for the Lord fought for Israel!” In the Hebrew obeyed means that the Lord “listened to the voice of a man.” It was because they were in covenant. God had promised to fight for His covenant people, and Joshua boldly asked Him to do it.
We see the same boldness in Josh. 14:6-12, which you read this week. In this passage Caleb cried out for the land that God had promised him after he was faithful to God when spying out the land, more than 40 years before. Look at Josh. 14:12: “Now, assign me this hill country which the Lord promised me at that time! No doubt you heard at that time that the Anakites live there in large, fortified cities. But, assuming the Lord is with me, I will conquer them, as the Lord promised.”
Because God is a promise-keeping God, and because Caleb was in covenant relationship with Him as one of God’s chosen people, he could boldly ask God for what was his by promise.
So, too, we have the privilege of boldly asking for help from our covenant partner. God calls us as His covenant people to do the same in Heb. 4:16:
“Therefore let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace whenever we need help.” Although the context is about Jesus as our High Priest, the truth is still there. We can boldly go before God because we are part of that New Covenant where Jesus is the High Priest.
What has God promised you? You’ll find those promises in His word. Call on Him to fulfill them. Ask Him according to His faithfulness to His covenant. Just be sure you base those promises on New Covenant promises and not on those given to Israel. Read them in context to understand them. But once you do, cry out to your covenant partner to fulfill His promises—His peace, His provision, or His wisdom! I think God is pleased when we cry out to Him and call on His faithfulness to answer!
I have some family members who are not walking with God as closely as they should be. So as I pray for them, I cry out to my covenant-keeping God and their covenant-keeping God to fulfill the promises He has given. I pray Phil. 2:12-13 asking God to give them the desire within to work out their salvation. I cry out Phil. 1:6 for God to complete the good work that He has begun in them, a work that I have seen. But I don’t give Him deadlines and I don’t give Him “how to’s”. I simply ask Him to do this work because of His relationship with them, His loyalty to them, and His faithfulness to His promises. I ask it based on His character, not because they or I deserve it. I am confident that someday I will see God’s answer to my cries!
You are in covenant with God. What a wonderful privilege! You are now in a new relationship with Him which requires you to be faithful and loyal, whatever the cost, just as the new citizens of the United States must now be loyal and faithful, even sacrificing their lives if needed! How exciting to be able to cry out to God to defend you when you are in trouble! What great responsibility to show forth the same faithfulness and loyalty to those with whom you are in covenant so that the world can see the greatness of our God!
Related Topics: Covenant, Curriculum
3B. Dreams Remembered Lecture
Related MediaThis lecture page is designed to go after the student has followed the workbook and done the homework for Lesson 3. A powerpoint to accompany the audio lecture is available, as well as a handout.
How good is your memory? I really have a bad memory, and it is getting worse with time. Years ago my husband and I attended a convention in Puerto Rico. Usually at those events, the spouses just go off and do something fun while the actual convention participants are forced to hear speakers relevant to their field. This particular time, however, the spouses were invited because the hosts felt that we would enjoy and even benefit from the main speaker, who was a memory expert.
We spent all morning one day learning this man’s method for remembering names. Basically, we were to think of a visual trigger for each person whom we met; then, when we saw them again, we should be able to visualize that image associated with the person. Of course, it seemed to me that his examples were all pretty easy to associate; his names were people like Bill Boxwood; we were told to picture him with a boxwood plant shooting out from around him while his mouth was a giant bill.
I never meet anyone with names like that. You don’t have names like that! If you did, I would remember all of your names!
Apparently, remembering is a universal and age-old problem. Over and over the Bible tells us that God’s people forgot Him; over and over God gave them triggers to help them remember His mighty acts so that they would not forget and turn from Him to other gods.
This week the book of Joshua reveals one of those times when God so wanted His people to remember His mighty acts that He gave them a memory trigger.
Look at Joshua 3:9-17.
Joshua told the Israelites, “Come here and listen to the words of the Lord your God!” Joshua continued, “This is how you will know the living God is among you and that he will truly drive out before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites. Look! The ark of the covenant of the Ruler of the whole earth is ready to enter the Jordan ahead of you. Now select for yourselves twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one per tribe. When the feet of the priests carrying the ark of the Lord, the Ruler of the whole earth, touch the water of the Jordan, the water coming downstream toward you will stop flowing and pile up.”
So when the people left their tents to cross the Jordan, the priests carrying the ark of the covenant went ahead of them. When the ones carrying the ark reached the Jordan and the feet of the priests carrying the ark touched the surface of the water – (the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest time) –the water coming downstream toward them stopped flowing. It piled up far upstream at Adam (the city near Zarethan); there was no water at all flowing to the sea of the Arabah (the Salt Sea). The people crossed the river opposite Jericho. The priests carrying the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firmly on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan. All Israel crossed over on dry ground until the entire nation was on the other side.
As we look at this story, we see that God acted on behalf of His people at the Jordan River. In this case there was an insurmountable obstacle before the people. God had given them the dream and the promise of the land; however, the flooded Jordan River blocked the way in.
But God is a God of miracles. He created the water and the land. Nothing is impossible for Him to do. The work of God in this case was stopping the flow of the river. This was a great miracle. Look again at v.16. The waters piled up in a heap upstream from their crossing position, and the effects of the miracle were seen all the way to the Sea of Arabah, which is the Salt Sea or Dead Sea because there was no water coming in. The scholars I read understand this to mean that the water heaped up at Adam, which is today identified with Damiyeh, 19 miles upstream from Jericho, and the water did not flow all the way to the Dead Sea; this would have given them a broad area of crossing.1 They didn’t cross single file, which is probably how we picture it!
This mighty act of God resulted in the people of Israel entering the Promised Land by faith. The priests believed that God would stop the water when they stepped into it because He said He would; the people believed that God had the power to continue holding back the water while they passed on dry land. And so they all stepped out in faith and entered the land of God’s dreams.
It’s amazing to think that their children and their children’s children would somehow forget this story. What a miracle! And yet, God knew their tendency to do just that. So He prepared a memory trigger.
Let’s read Joshua 4:1-7.
When the entire nation was on the other side, the Lord told Joshua, “Select for yourselves twelve men from the people, one per tribe. Instruct them, ‘Pick up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, from the very place where the priests stand firmly, and carry them over with you and put them in the place where you camp tonight.’”
Joshua summoned the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one per tribe. Joshua told them, “Go in front of the ark of the Lord your God to the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to put a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the Israelite tribes. The stones will be a reminder to you. When your children ask someday, ‘Why are these stones important to you?’ tell them how the water of the Jordan stopped flowing before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the water of the Jordan stopped flowing. These stones will be a lasting memorial for the Israelites.”
Now look down at vv. 19-24:
The people went up from the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month and camped in Gilgal on the eastern border of Jericho. Now Joshua set up in Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken from the Jordan. He told the Israelites, “When your children someday ask their fathers, ‘What do these stones represent?’ explain to your children, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan River on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the water of the Jordan before you while you crossed over. It was just like when the Lord your God dried up the Red Sea before us while we crossed it. He has done this so all the nations of the earth might recognize the Lord’s power and so you might always obey the Lord your God.”
So that the people would have a memory trigger to help them remember God’s mighty act on their behalf at the Jordan River, He had them set up a pile of stones that came from the very bed of the Jordan, picked up while it was completely dried up by God in preparation for the crossing into the land.
There is also an interesting discussion among scholars about v 9. Look at it real quick.
Verse 9 in my NET Bible says, “Joshua also set up twelve stones in the middle of the Jordan in the very place where the priests carrying the ark of the covenant stood. They remain there to this very day.” Then, v. 20 says, “Now Joshua set up in Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken from the Jordan.”
Those who translated this Bible felt that since v. 20 says he then set up the stones, that the ones he set up in v. 9 were definitely a different group of stones.
If you have an NIV, it sounds like Joshua was placing the stones that the 12 men took from the river bed. This is not actually in the Hebrew; in fact, most other translations suggest that this was a second pile of stones that Joshua placed actually in the middle of the river bed.
Back to the point—you can probably think of other times when God asked the people to make memory triggers to help them remember. The Passover, which we will quickly look at next week is one. Another trigger is still seen on observant Jews, who wear certain articles of clothing because they believe God ordained them as reminders. The phylacteries on their foreheads and the fringe on their prayer shawls are to trigger their memories of God and His law.
We are to remember the mighty acts of God throughout the ages, not only in the Old Testament but also in the New. The greatest act of God on behalf of the world came at the cross.
God did this mighty act because of an insurmountable obstacle—in this case, our sins block the way to life with God.
Look at Rom. 3:23: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Turn over 3 chapters to Rom. 6:23: “For the payoff of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Paul tells us that we are all sinners; no one can escape that truthful designation. He describes sin as falling short of the glory of God. We may feel like pretty good people when we compare our lives and our character to that of other people, but the real measure is God Himself. We fall far short of His glory and His greatness. We can never overcome that lack because Paul says that we deserve death for those sins. We can never do enough good or go to church enough or be kind enough to overcome the obstacle of sin that prevents us from life with God here and in heaven. We are blocked by our own shortcomings from reaching the life with Him that He desires for us.
Remember our story of Rahab last week? There was nothing Rahab could do to overcome her past. God had to do it. There is nothing we can do to overcome the obstacle of our own sin as we attempt to reach God and enjoy life with Him.
So God had to do it. God reached down to us to give us what we could never get for ourselves—no matter how smart, good, kind, generous, or loving we are. There is no heavenly scale on which our goodness can outweigh our badness for us to be with God. We are so short of the glory of God that no matter how much good we do or how many prayers we say or how much money we give away, God’s side of the balance outweighs us.
So God tipped the scales to our side. He gave us a gift so that the obstacle would be taken away. This was the work of God—Jesus, as God Himself, became a man, died for our sins, and rose from the dead to remove the obstacle.
Look at 1 Cor. 15:3-8.
“For I passed on to you as of first importance what I also received – that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as though to one born at the wrong time, he appeared to me also.”
What was the result?
We enter a life of promise by faith in Jesus.
Let’s read Jn. 1:1-4:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God. The Word was with God in the beginning. All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and the life was the light of mankind.”
Skip to vv. 9-14:
“The true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was created by him, but the world did not recognize him. He came to what was his own, but his own people did not receive him. But to all who have received him – those who believe in his name – he has given the right to become God’s children– children not born by human parents or by human desire or a husband’s decision, but by God.
Now the Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We saw his glory – the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, who came from the Father.”
Now turn to Jn. 3:16:
“For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”
The mighty act of God on behalf of the world at the cross meant that God Himself came to earth to die and remove the obstacle to life with Him. When we believe, not when we go to church or when we feel guilty, but when we believe that Jesus is God who came and died for us, when we trust in Him as our gift instead of relying on our own goodness, we receive Him and His life.
What an amazing gift! What an amazing God! But we have the same problem that Israel did—a memory problem. If we aren’t frequently reminded of the mighty act of God on our behalf, we forget and lose focus in life. We begin to turn to other gods to give us life—gods like beauty, husbands, children, success, and friends.
So God gave us a memory trigger, also—communion, which reminds us of Jesus’ sacrifice for the life we now have and our future with Him
Look at 1 Cor. 11:23-26:
“For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took bread, and after he had given thanks he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, he also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, every time you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For every time you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
So that we always remember this mighty act of Jesus on our behalf, we participate in eating the bread and drinking the cup. Today we will do so together.
If you have trusted in Jesus and believe in His work on your behalf, not trying to please God yourself but throwing yourself on the mercy that Jesus gives through His death, you are welcome to partake of this bread and cup if you desire. Feel free to let it pass if you are more comfortable doing so. We remember together His mighty act on our behalf. If you are still on the journey of discovering who Jesus is and what He offers you, we ask you to simply pass it on.
If you want to participate in this memorial and remembrance, follow your leader and do what she does. If you are the leader at the table, please break a piece of bread and pass the rest around. All of you who want to participate, break a piece for yourself until we all have them. Hold them in your hands, and remember Jesus’ work on your behalf in coming to earth and dying for you.
Luke described the first time Jesus told them to remember Him this way in Luke 22:
“Then he took bread, and after giving thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”’
Ladies, now take and eat the bread in remembrance of Jesus.
Now, leaders, take the cup on front of you. Hold them in your hands, ladies, and think about the death that Jesus died for you so that the obstacle of sin was removed from your relationship with God.
“And in the same way he took the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.’”
Together let’s now drink the cup, remembering the mighty work He did by pouring out His blood for you.
God calls us to remember His mighty acts, just as He called the Israelites to remember His opening the way to the Promised Land by removing the obstacle of the flooded Jordan. We are to remember Jesus’ opening the way to a promised life with God by removing the obstacle of our sins.
But there is more to remember. God is always at work on our behalf, and if you are to remember His mighty acts on your behalf day-by-day, I suggest you have a memory trigger.
What mighty act of God do you need to remember? What obstacle has He removed? What prayer has He answered? What mighty deeds has He done for you? What door has He opened?
You may need to spend some time with God for Him to show you something that you have forgotten. Or you may know right now what God has done that you need to mark by a memory trigger. I have brought each of us a small stone to use as a memory trigger. I suggest that you put it in a prominent place where it will serve to remind you of that thing that God has done for you. Put it by your sink where you see it each day; put it in your coin purse so you notice it each time you get out change; put it on your desk where you spend time working.
Throughout the Old Testament, God was called the Rock. I think it’s fitting that we look at a stone to remember what God, our Rock, has done for us.
You may want to use it to remember how much God loves you so much that Jesus came and died so that you can be totally forgiven of the old life you had, just as Rahab was. You may to use it to remind you of His faithfulness to you in an answered prayer when He healed you physically, emotionally, or spiritually. What is a Jordan River crossing in your life?
You can choose other memory triggers as God does things for you. I have on a necklace that has the name of God el roi on it. That name means “the God who sees,” and comes from a story of Hagar. Years ago there was a hard time in my life when I relied upon el roi, knowing that He saw everything that had happened to me and would bring truth to light. Later that year I had the opportunity to buy this necklace in Israel and I bought it to always remind me of God’s mighty deeds in my day-to-day life.
Remember God’s mighty acts. Do what He called Israel to do at the Jordan and prepare a memory trigger so that you always remember what He has done on your behalf.
Related Topics: Curriculum, Faith, Old Testament, Spiritual Life
7. Corrie Ten Boom—A Portrait of Forgiveness
Related MediaThis article is an edited transcript of Susie Hawkins’ audio message on Passionate Faith. Appreciation for the transcription work goes to Marilyn Fine.
We are finishing our series today called, “Passionate Faith on Display, Portraits of Significant Women in Church History. What we have wanted to do is look at women, many of whom we did not even know or know much about. We wanted to look at their lives, find out what they did, why they were important, and what their contributions were to Christian history and to the world at their time. Then we sought to draw a parallel out of Scripture, and give birth to the theme of their lives or the most important impact they made.
The visual we have been using is that we are in a museum and we are looking at an exhibition. In this exhibition, there are large portraits of these women. So, we stop every week to look at a portrait of these women. Now remember, we have talked about the whole idea of how history was recorded. Up until the time of the Reformation and the time of the printing press, unless they were in a convent, women did not know how to read or write. All we really have is what a few women who could read and write wrote. Primarily these were women in convents, or what men wrote about women. So, in the early years—the first, second, third and fourth centuries—we do not have an overabundance of information, but we do have some.
We talked about Perpetua who was a portrait in courage. She was the first young woman female martyr. She and her servant Felicity were martyred in Carthage in the arena by a wild animal. We talked about her courage. We talked about Monica, the mother of Augustine. She was the portrait of a praying mother with how she seemingly prayed that boy into the kingdom of God, literally chasing him across the Mediterranean. She believed that God was going to use him and he did turn out to be the greatest theologian of the Church to this day. We talked about the Catherine’s, portraits of compassion. Catherine of Sienna was a Medieval mystic. We talked about her life and how she worked through the Black Plague and how she worked for reform within the Church. We talked about Catherine Booth who worked with the poor in the west end of London. She brought the gospel to them. We talked about Katie Luther, really the first modern pastor’s wife, and her portrait of service and what she had to put up with. That was really a fun study, wasn’t it, because she was just so spunky and playful! Susannah Wesley was a portrait of perseverance. She had to persevere not only in difficult times with children and with the very times in which she lived, but also in a difficult marriage. She did not have a soul mate to comfort her and to walk with her. She had a difficult marriage. Lastly, we talked about Amy Carmichael, a portrait of sacrifice. Her life was typical of a number of women missionaries in that particular time such as Lottie Moon, Ann Judson, and Mary Fletcher. The whole group of them really led sacrificial lives. They gave their lives to take the gospel to heathen lands.
Today, we are talking about Corrie ten Boom, a portrait of forgiveness. There are quite a number of extraordinary women to choose from to try to narrow down a study like this to just seven women. One of the reasons I wanted to do Corrie ten Boom is that I am so afraid that her memory has been lost. How many of you in this room have never heard of Corrie ten Boom? About half of you last week had not heard of Amy Carmichael. That tells me that we are not telling these stories enough. This is a huge part of our Christian heritage and these women have made enormous contributions. We need to know who they are. Everybody needs to know who Corrie ten Boom was.
Corrie ten Boom lived during World War II. She was a devout Christian woman, a Dutch holocaust survivor. She and her family hid Jews in their home in the Netherlands in Holland, during World War II. Her story was told in a movie called, “The Hiding Place.” She wrote a book about that. You can rent that movie. I highly suggest that you rent that movie if you have never seen it. Jeannette Clift plays Corrie and Julie Harris, an English actress, plays Betsy. This tells the story of her family and of what happened to her in World War II.
We will get into her story very quickly in just a minute. First though, I want to mention that Corrie was a very prolific writer. She wrote a number of books. Her writing came on the scene as a new genre, really, of Christian writers. These were women devotional writers in the 1960-70’s. Catherine Marshall was one of those writers. Corrie was another. Anne Ortlund was one of these writers, as well as Anita Bryant. Some of you might remember these writers. This was before there was Beth Moore. This is before Anne Graham Lotts. This is when women writers and speakers were not that well known or that popular. Corrie’s thrust with all of her writing is about her experiences and how Christ can enable you to love and forgive. He can meet your needs no matter where you are in your life.
Corrie was born in 1892 in Holland. She worked with her father, her two sisters and her brother in a watchmaker shop. She was the first licensed woman watchmaker in Holland. Her brother, Willem, was a pastor. Even before the Resistance Movement hit the scene in Holland he was writing papers against the German Nazi Gestapo and the whole idea of the final solution in Germany. He was working with Jews in Germany. He was the one who taught Corrie, Betsy and their father the system of hiding people. There was a very elaborate system on how to do this.
They were a very devout family, Dutch reformed. Betsy and Corrie never married. They were very, very close as sisters. They held Bible classes every week for children and they also did a lot of work with mentally-challenged children. She called them the feeble-minded children. Of course, there were not any state programs for these kinds of children or families at this time. So, they did a lot of ministry in that area.
Casper ten Boom, their father, was very, very devout student of the Old Testament and he strongly believed that the Jews were God’s chosen people. The first time a Jewish person came frightened to their house, needing a place to hide, he said to this elderly woman—who was literally trembling—that God’s people are always welcome in this house. Through that experience, a woman was sent to them and that began the hiding place. That is the name of our story and, of course, it is literal. The hiding place was the room where they hid Jewish people, but it is also metaphorical, of course, in that Christ was her hiding place as she went through much difficulty.
As persecution began to increase, they began to take in more and more people into their home. They had carpenters come and build a little hideaway. Corrie tells the story of the difficulties, for example, of even feeding these people. There are so many stories to tell that it is very hard to just stick with one. She tells the story where right away she realizes they would need more food. She knew a man who worked for the government who was in charge of the food rationing cards. He had a child who was mentally challenged and was in one of her classes which ministered to this family. One night she went unannounced to his house, just basically to beg him for some ration cards. At his house, she says she opened her mouth. He just looked at her and seemed to know what she wanted. He asked how many do you want? She opened her mouth to say five and she said, “I want a hundred.” She said I do not know where that came from as he was so surprised but he did not bat an eye. He just counted out a hundred, handed them to her and from that point on she would just go to him, no words were spoken, and he would give her the ration cards. That was what her life was like. They observed the Sabbath with their Jewish prisoners who were there and they were also able to share their faith with them.
When Corrie was eventually turned in by a person who came to them saying that they had an elderly Jewish woman who needed hiding, she said of course she would help and made arrangements. They then were turned in and sent to prison.
She tells a story, and you may see it on “The Hiding Place,” that when she and Betsy were taken into the prison they were stripped and going through what we would call security now. She had her little Bible and she wanted to take in her little Bible with her. So she just asked God that she could somehow get that little Bible in. She did not need anything else, but she needed that little Bible she was holding. The people were lined up and they were being searched. This is such a striking story. Her heart was beating so fast! Then the woman in front of her caused a commotion and was pulled out of line. Corrie then slipped on through. So, she had her Bible with her!
They were first in a couple of other cells but then she and her sister went to the dorm in Ravensbruck. It was a horrible, horrible situation. It was a place built for 200 women but which now had over 1,200 women. They were all jammed together and scrambling for beds and for straw. She said the barracks was filled with so much lice that even the guards would not come in there because they were so bad. Becuase the guards did not come in, Betsy pointed out to her one day, they could have as many Bible studies as they wanted. So we praise God for the lice! Betsy was really the angel in the whole ordeal. Corrie struggled a little more with ordinary human emotions. It is a beautiful story of how they ministered and brought the love of God to a very, very, very dark place.
In one of her stories, she talks about coming out on a freezing cold morning for roll call. Some of the women were so weak they would fall. They could not stand up and, of course, they were beaten, which would really help them stand up! (sarcastic) She said you just do not know the darkness. That day Betsy was weak, saying to her, “Corrie, we are in hell. We are in hell.” The despair and the darkness of the morning and the weeping and crying, it was horrible. But, they heard a bird and she looked up and circling around the women was a skylark. It was singing. She said for about the next month every time they went outside for roll call that skylark would circle around them singing. She said it was as if God was saying, “My mercy is in the heavens. Look up. I am still here.” Just a skylark. That in itself strengthened her and strengthened Betsy and the other Christians in the group to take their minds off the sufferings of this time and to look up. One of her famous sayings is, “There is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still.”
She was released from prison after several years on a clerical error. She found out later it was a mistake. The next week all the women her age were exterminated. When she got out, all she wanted to do was go home and try to begin to tell her story. So, she went home. She was 50 something years old when her ministry began. A single woman, an older woman, with some health problems, but she began to tell her story, her testimony, about love and forgiveness and how God can carry you through these kinds of situations. She spoke here in Dallas at First Baptist I think in the 70s. I want you to hear a story about forgiveness that she is famous for, but I want her to tell it herself.
I was not at peace with men. Sometime ago I was in Berlin and after a meeting there came a man to me and said, “Don’t you know me?” Suddenly, I saw that man that was one of the most cruel guards of whole Ravensbruck. My dying sister had suffered through him, but he said, “I am so happy that I can tell you I am a child of God. I have a Bible at home. I have asked Jesus to come into my heart. I have brought Him my sins. All my cruel sins that I have done and now I have prayed God: Give me the grace that I can ask one of my very victim’s forgiveness. That is why I am here. Fraulein ten Boom, I want to be forgiven. And he would shake hands with me and I could not. I thought of how my dying sister had suffered through his cruelties, but I knew from the Bible that Jesus had said if we do not forgive, the Heavenly Father will not forgive us our sins. I know from the Bible that hatred means murder in God’s eyes, but I also know from the Bible what to do with my murder. I said, “Oh, Father, forgive me in Jesus’ name my hatred. Then I can claimed my text Romans 5:5 Thank you, Jesus, that You have brought into my heart God’s love through the Holy Spirit which was given to me and thank you, Father, that Your love in me is stronger than my hatred. That same moment I could shake hands with that man. And it was as if I felt God’s love stream through my arm and I said, “Brother, I forgive you everything.” You’ll never touch so the ocean of God’s love as that you love your enemies.
Have you difficulty with forgiveness? Can you forgive that woman that has stolen the love of your husband? Can you forgive the man that have stolen the love of your wife? You cannot but He can. Claim Romans 5:5 and you will have forgiveness and love for these persons and then you are free. For forgiveness is such a great joy and liberation and it is possible for every one of us. Some of you have not such very great things to forgive, but you know, I had difficulty with a little, no, not a trivial of thing but was not so terrible. Christian friends with whom I worked had done something very mean against me and there was resentment in my heart. I said, “Lord, You have given me the grace that I could forgive the murderers of my beloved. Now, it is not difficult, Lord, to forgive these Christian friends who have done these mean things. It was not difficult and was all right, but at 2 o’clock in the morning, midst of the night, I awoke and I thought “my how in the world is that possible when I think, ‘my friends.’ What have I done for them and they have…?” I said, “Lord, there it is again! You must help me. Take away my resentment. Help me to forgive and love them.” And, the Lord did and I slept well. The whole day was good. But the next night, again at 2 o’clock, I awoke and I thought, “My, now in the world when I think of ‘my friends, my friends’—Christian friends—what they have done!” I said, “Lord, there it is again. Help me to overcome that resentment.” And the Lord did and it was all right. But believe it or not a third night, again in the midst of the night, I awoke and I thought “what have my friends…” I was a little bit in despair and that day I met an old minister. He said, “Corrie, when I have…I’m a minister in a little town and on Sunday morning I myself ring the church bell, “ding dong” and then everyone knows the church door is open. But, when I ring the church bell, there comes a moment that I stop. After I stop, always there come “ding/dongs, ding, ding and ding-dong.” It doesn’t matter if they do not belong to the rest. Now have you brought your resentment to the Lord? If it comes again the feeling of resentment, then you just say, “Lord, that is a ding-dong that do not belong to the rest.” My, that helped me. That really helped me.
I hope you could understand her, with the “ding-dongs.” Could you understand her? The church, the man, the little preacher would ring. The pastor would ring the bell at the church and then he would stop ringing the bell, but it would continue to slow down. That is the ding-dong. Then, she is saying that even after you forgive and you really mean it and you ask God to help you do that, there are still some ding-dongs. Right, isn’t that true? There are still memories and there are still times when you say, Hey, wait a minute. I wanted to use this particular example of Corrie’s because I do not believe that she could have been as used as she was in God’s work were it not for her forgiveness. She could be a portrait of every one of these qualities we have talked about. It is really all summed up in her life. You could go a million different ways with her story, but that is what I want to emphasize.
The scriptures tell us that if we want God to forgive us, we must forgive others. I appreciate her honesty in this area. She goes on later to tell a little bit more about her story. She was writing “The Hiding Place” with John and Elizabeth Sherrill and they were talking to her years later after all of that. John Sherrill said to her I know your story about the Christian friend. Is that not true how a person, a guard, that was one thing to forgive, but your Christian friends was another? Cannot you see that this is so typical as that it would be much more difficult to forgive. So, he said, “Corrie, did those friends ever think and would they ever come to you and ask for forgiveness? Did they ever ask you about it?” She said, “No, they never did. They never thought they did anything wrong.” He said, “Really, are you sure?” She replied, “Yes, I have it in their letters in my file cabinet in black and white. I can show you exactly what they said and what they did.” He said to her, “Corrie ten Boom, are you not the one who talked about forgiveness?” She talked about how John and Elizabeth Sherrill stayed with her until she found those papers. She tore them up in little pieces and threw them in her coal stove in her house to burn, to complete the forgiveness. She is famous for saying that when God forgives us, He casts them into the deepest ocean. He then puts a sign which says no fishing allowed. That is the saying the John Sherrill brought back to her and said what about that sign. You are fishing. She admitted that was right.
Corrie’s ministry lasted over 30 years. She spoke in more than 60 countries. Her gospel message was the saving power of Christ and His forgiveness. Corrie was not recognized for the longest time. Basically, Christians who worked in the Resistance Movement did not receive a lot of recognition immediately after the war. But, Corrie was honored by the State of Israel. If any of you have been to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, there is a garden area called the “Garden of Righteous Gentiles.” There are trees planted for the families of Gentiles who helped hide the Jews in the underground across Europe.
I want to tell you something really interesting. She died on her 91st birthday, which was 1983. She had a tree planted with a sign on it, “Ten Boom Family, from Amsterdam, Holland.” We happened to have a group there. It was 1992 and it was the year of her 100th birthday. We were touring Yad Vashem, which we rarely have time to do, but we were there. The tour guide said the strangest thing happened. There was a terrible, terrible thunder and lightning storm over Yad Vashem a few weeks ago. A tree was struck by lightning and it was Corrie ten Boom’s tree. The storm happened on her 100th birthday. I would not have believed that. I would have just thought that was a preacher’s story. I promise you I would not have believed it for one minute, but I saw it with my own eyes. When we were there a couple of years ago, her tree is much smaller than anybody elses in the Garden of the Righteous Gentiles because it had to be replanted. I am not putting any meaning to that, but it is just Corrie ten Boom and that is why you need to know who she is.
So, her message, her portrait speaks to forgiveness. In Greek the word forgiveness means to send away. That is why her illustration of sending your sins into the deepest ocean is so appropriate.
This week we talked about Passover and the Passover celebration that Christ was celebrating. You may remember in the Temple worship what one of the rituals was that the Jewish people would go through. The priest would take a goat and symbolically place all the sins of the people on that goat. The goat then would be sent away in the wilderness. Do you remember what that goat was called? The scape goat. It was sent away. That is the literal picture that God gave His people of their sins being forgiven. They were sent away.
Scripture tells us that we must forgive if we want Christ to forgive us. I am going to ask Dr. Bingham about that next week. I have some questions about that. Yet that is what the scripture says over and over and over again. I do not know about you, but I wish to have as much forgiveness as I can possibly get, right? That tells me then that I do not have the right to hold sins against people. If I want Christ to forgive me, I must forgive.
Secondly, we must ask as long as we are asked to forgive. I thought about this in this way for the first time when I was working on this lesson. You know when Jesus said you have to forgive seventy times seven, which, of course, we know was a way of speaking saying we have to always give forgiveness. After I listened to Corrie’s story about the ding-dongs, I thought maybe Jesus is talking there not so much about that many offenses, but maybe you have to forgive 490 times the same thing. You follow me, the dings and dongs? It comes back to you and you have to say the word, “I forgave that. I gave that up to You.” Do it over and over. Again, it is a process. It really is. That is one thing I appreciate about her and her honesty in that way. That does not mean when you give forgiveness to a person like that that you do not retain some boundaries and some standards yourself. There are healthy ways to do that. The verse she quoted in Romans 5:5 is so key, “The Holy Spirit is given to us that the love of God will be shed abroad in our hearts.” Listen, that is the only way we can do it. It is the reason we have the Holy Spirit—to enable us to do things that we cannot do ourselves. She could not forgive that guard. Could you forgive someone who beat your dying sister? They took her body and threw it into a room. Corrie had to go later and identify the body in a corner which was filled with a mass of limbs and naked women’s bodies. That is how she saw her sister for the last time. Now, that takes some forgiveness. Why could she do it? Because she realized the love of God, given by the Holy Spirit, was in her heart and could be extended to this man.
The last thing I want to say about forgiveness is this: that we cannot wait for repentance from the party that has offended us until we forgive. That is usually what most of us do. When they come to us and ask us for forgiveness and to tell us they are sorry, then we will forgive. Well, you know, sorry to say, my friends, that is not biblical. What did Jesus say? “Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.” Our attitudes toward others is to be an attitude of forgiveness, an attitude of forgiveness. That is one of the marks of a true believer. A true follower of Christ. Maybe repentance comes and maybe a relationship can be restored to a degree—depending upon the event. Maybe it never can be. Maybe that person has died. Maybe that person like her friends never does see anything they did wrong. That is not our business. Our business is to be sure that we do not have unforgiveness, hatred or resentment in our hearts. I think Corrie of all the qualities she had, her portrait of forgiveness is the message of her life. She said this, “Forgiveness is the key which unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred. It breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness. The forgiveness of Jesus not only takes away our sins, it makes them as if they had never been.”
Related Topics: Character Study, Forgiveness, Messages, Spiritual Life, Suffering, Trials, Persecution
5. Susanna Wesley—A Portrait of Perseverance
Related MediaThis article is an edited transcript of Susie Hawkins’ audio message on Passionate Faith. Appreciation for the transcription work goes to Marilyn Fine.
Today we are continuing in our study, Passionate Faith on Display, walking through the metaphoric gallery of “Portraits of Women in Church History.” I have gotten a lot of feedback about how much everybody loved Katie Luther from last week. She is quite the loveable person. I know everybody enjoyed her, with her playfulness, her exuberance, and her personality. I love reading and studying about her.
Well, today we are looking at another pastor’s wife. She really is someone you have to study if you are going to study women who have been important in church history. This woman is Susanna Wesley, mother of John and Charles Wesley. If you could pick one quality in her life to emphasize, I believe it would be perseverance or endurance. Just the fact that I said that, what does that tell you about her life? She needed perseverance; she needed endurance. So, as we look at her life we are going to see how important endurance, perseverance, and patience is and how to depend on God to give you that perseverance to walk through circumstances like this woman, Susanna Wesley.
Now, endurance or perseverance or patience these are often words that are used interchangeably in the New Testament’s interpretation. It simply means to hold up under. It’s the word, “hupomone.” It simply means: “hupo” means “under;” “mone” means “to abide or hold up.” The idea is that there is some resistance. For example, the word picture is somebody who has bent over and carrying something on their back, right? So, it is perseverance. It is endurance to carry this load. But, it also carries with it the idea of resistance. Before we even begin I want to make that clear that when we talk about perseverance and endurance as a believer we are not talking about resignation. There is a difference between endurance/perseverance and resignation. Do you follow me? We are not talking about resignation, or giving up. That would be the “I quit; this is what has happened, and I cannot help it” attitude. No, we are talking about some resistance involved in that we continue to believe, continue to trust, continue to do the right thing despite the difficulties of that particular time we are in. So, I want you to keep that in mind as we talk about Susanna Wesley.
Why was Susanna Wesley so important? She, as I mentioned, is the mother of two of the most important men in church history, John Wesley and Charles Wesley. They were big. They began “Methodist-ism”-- the Methodist movement which came out of the Anglican Church of England. They were the ones who began that denomination. In church history, if you are going to do matching and you are going to match up something with the name “Wesley” you are going to match it up with “revival” because during the times of the first great awakening they were so significant in bringing revival. This was the case not only in England but in the American colonies as well. It is hard to overstate the importance.
Charles Wesley, you may know, is the hymn writer. He wrote over 3,000 hymns. If you read through some of the words of his hymns, they are so theological and rich. Of course, I had a number of the most famous all written down but can I think of one right now? No, of course not. They are so rich and so strong and so aggressive. His hymns are packed with theology.
The interesting thing about these two men is that the primary spiritual influence in their lives up until her death was their mother. She was the one who even toward the end of her life, when she was elderly and in bed, they would go and sit and she would pray with them. She would counsel with them. They would discuss difficult passages of the Bible. They could not say enough about her and her spiritual walk with Christ, about her counsel, and about her example. In a way, it reminds me of Monica, Augustine’s mother, in that Susanna had a profound influence over these young men. They, in turn, had such a profound influence on Christianity.
Now, Susanna lived in the post-Reformation times. So, it is after the Reformation, 17th century. She lived in England. Let’s give a little context of her time. “Protestantism” continued to splinter after the Reformation. You remember what happened. Martin Luther and all these men broke with the Catholic church and then they broke up and then they broke up. It continued to splinter or fragment across the continent and across Europe. Really, you could say that the spirit of the Reformation could not be contained to one place. This was very different than the past because Christianity had been centered in Rome or in Istanbul, right? You have the Eastern Empire and you have the Western empire, Byzantine Empire. So, Christianity was very centralized. Now, you have all these difference movements. Within the mainstream of Christianity, there was some crazy stuff going on. There was the sense that this new understanding and this freedom that they found and this openness of people, that they just could not contain it all. They were just overcome with all this new truth and new application. The new time they lived in was changing so much. It was uncontainable and it was uncontrollable.
So, as the Reformation spread through Europe, eventually it spread to England. Now, just think in your mind of a little map of Europe and think of where central Europe is and then think where England is. It is way up to the northwest. Catholicism and the Pope had had kind of a rough go in England anyway. They were a long way away geographically. The English, I don’t know, they were not so crazy about the Pope having jurisdiction over them anyway. They never were really happy Catholics in that sense. They had never really been very comfortable with the Pope. So, you know the story. Henry the VIII was married to Katharine and she had only produced a female heir and he wanted a male heir, of course, and so he decided he needed to divorce her because little Anne Boleyn had caught his eye. So, he wanted the Pope to annul the marriage. Well, the Pope would not do it so he said fine he would do it himself. The Reformation in England primarily was political so he could break away from the Roman Catholic Church, establish the reigning monarch in England as the head of the Church as opposed to the Pope. The Church practices and theology, basically stay the same except for that one thing. Now, what is interesting, though, that as that changed in England, the spirit of the Reformation, although Henry VIII did not have that, eventually made it to England. There were people who began to question and preach. John Wycliffe was an Englishman who had made a lot of inroads translating the Bible into English in the 14th century. After his death, his body was exhumed and burned. Yet people began to read some of his writings. They began to go into their history and look at their own heritage. Eventually, this Reformation’s spirit came to England.
Just so we know our terms, let’s review. You have the Anglicans-- that is the Church of England. Then you had the Reformers or the Puritans. The Puritans wanted to stay in the Church but purify it. Then, you have the Separatists and those were the ones who said it is hopeless. There is no purpose in trying to stay in the Church. It cannot be changed. We will separate. They were often also called nonconformists. That is where the Pilgrims came from.
Now, let us talk about where Susanna fits in this. After the Reformation came the Enlightenment. This was the Age of Reason which came on the scene. What had really happened by the time Susanna Wesley came along, was that the revival spirit of the Reformation had kind of died down. Many people were off to believing in Deism. Deists believe in the Creator, but they believed He has withdrawn from his creation. He was disinterested. He created and He said, “I’m leaving.” So, He left. There was a very, very weak and cold spiritual climate at the time Susanna Wesley and her husband began their ministry. There was a great need for revival. During John Wesley’s time is when many spiritual giants burst on the scene: George Whitfield, preached in England and in America; Jonathan Edwards, many of you probably have heard of him; Charles and John Wesley and others. There were some great spiritual giants during this time of the first great awakening.
The Methodist movement that developed at this time was born out of Charles and John Wesley. When they were in college, they began to meet with a group of young men. They prayed together. They fasted together. They would minister to the poor together. Basically, what they were was an accountability group. They were a small group. They were a small group Bible study. We all have those and know what that is. That is what they had. Out of that was birthed the Methodist movement and it comes from “method.” They had their methods of doing things. They had their spiritual disciplines. They had their ways of evangelizing. That is where the whole thing came from – having a “method.” They were also very, very big in the social gospel as far as doing things for people and ministering to the poor. In fact, if I may just take one minute, this is why we have some good Methodist women in here today who come from that tradition of lots of social action and it is from the Methodist women. Hillary Clinton is very proud of being a Methodist. She talks about how her faith has impacted her political views. Why? Her social action. It comes straight from the Methodist church. They have a strong tradition of that, a very admirable strong tradition of that, may I say. I have relatives who are very active in the Methodist church and that is how they are, too. So, they come by that tradition naturally. It goes all the way back to the Wesley brothers, even to the English Church.
So, let us look at Susanna. Everybody knows Susanna because we know she had 19 children. Did everybody here know that? Oh, yes, that is why people talk about her. She had nineteen kids. Yes, and you think you feel sorry for her now, but you just wait! There are always stories about how she would in her kitchen put her apron over her head to have her quiet time. Try that next time with your kids. See how that works. She must have had some great concentration skills that she could have her quiet time and do that. She was known for a million different things, with that being one of the most famous things.
Well, let us talk about the real story of Susanna Wesley. She was the 25th child and the youngest child of her parents. Can I just say parenthetically that the females in this family must have had eggs bursting out. I have never heard of so many fertile women. All right, her father was a London pastor and he was in the Church. He was a Puritan. He stayed within the Church and he worked very, very hard. He was a writer. He was very bright. He supported the Book of Common Prayer and he was very, very, very active in the Puritan movement as a pastor within the Anglican Church. So, he gave his children excellent education. She received an excellent education in the classics, especially in reading and writing. She was a very gifted writer. As time progresses with these women, we know more and more about them because they could write and because they could read. There was a lot of correspondence. We have lots and lots of her correspondence which gives us the picture of her. She was very strong. She was very independent. At age 13, she studied the doctrines of the Anglican Church and decided that her parents were wrong. Now is that a classic 13-year-old or what? She broke with her parents who were Puritans and thought the Puritans were wrong and she went back to the established Anglican Church because she thought her parents did not know what they were talking about. That is where she met Samuel, her future husband who was a pastor in the Anglican Church and they were married a short time later (when she was 19).
Susanna was like Katie Luther in the sense that she was strong and independent. She was very bright, but she had a sharp tongue. I am not sure she had the playfulness of Katie Luther. She did not have anything to play with. She had a hard life. Samuel was a very difficult man.
As a pastor he was very rigid. He was very moralistic. I would call him a hard preacher. That is what I call people like that. Do you know what I mean? There is not much grace. Just a hard preacher. He was not popular with his parishioners. They did not like him. They did not like his sermons. So, we are getting a picture here of Susanna and why she needed endurance. He loved to involve himself in controversies. He loved to go to pastors’ convocations and go to the things where they would talk theology for days and days and days on end. He would write about these things which nobody cared about. He just was not a good people person. He was a horrible money manager. We will see that he got them in terrible debt more than once, but he was a nonconformist. Now, the thing is she converted him back to her position. They kind of went back and forth through their lives, but the point is that once she married him, she adapted to his theological view. They were not in the Church, the official Church. There was not an official salary. They had to go to parishes and villages where they would be paid by people who were not in the church. You can imagine that was not a very financially secure position to be in. They first lived in small villages.
She had seven children in seven years and then they moved to an area called Epworth. During that time, she birthed 19 children. Ten of them lived to maturity. Nine died in infancy. Of course, this was a time when many, many, many children died in infancy. It was not uncommon that two-thirds of babies who were birthed would die in a family. It was not unusual at all. Of course, this is way before penicillin, way before modern medicine. So, this was not uncommon. When I was typing my notes I was thinking that nine children died. I stopped and I thought, “do you think just because a lot of them died it was any less painful for her than if it was one?” No. Right there, girls, is that not enough to tell you. There are two sad stories. I am not going to even tell you because it would make you too sad. The stories of many times the way these babies died and the suffering of disease was so horrible. It was a hard time. A very hard time to live. But, she birthed 19 children. Of the ten who lived, they were very bright and articulate. She was a serious mother. She homeschooled these children, of course. She taught them theology, and French. They knew math. She had a very rigid schedule. Would you not have to have if you had them all there at home. They got up at a time. They ate at a certain time. On her child-raising, she said that children were put to bed. Nobody sits by them and holds their hands. They go to sleep. One of her writings says that children are not allowed to cry loudly. They have to cry softly if they cry. Now, I would really like to know how she did that. I do not know if I believe that. I do not know how you do that. But anyway, who knows. She was something else. Maybe one look from her and they shaped up. I do not know. She was very, very invested in her children. She had 10 which lived to maturity.
However, her marriage was where we see Susanna as a woman who had to persevere and endure. In one of the examples and one of the famous stories about them is that they were praying one night together, Susanna and Samuel. Susanna was a strong supporter of the Stuart Line of the Kings. We cannot even go into English history. It is just too complicated and I still do not understand it to this day. They had been usurped – this king. King James had been overthrown and replaced by William from another family line. So, during the family prayers when Samuel prayed for King William, Susanna refused to say “amen” because she thought he was an illegitimate king. She would not say “amen.” It just made him crazy. He got so angry with her and he called her to their room. He said, “We will have to separate for if we have two kings, we have two beds. He said, “You need to apologize.” She said that she would apologize if she was wrong, but she was not. So, to apologize would be a lie and that would be a sin. Do you love her logic, or what! She later wrote about this and said, in her words, “Samuel immediately kneeled down and prayed and implicated the divine vengeance upon himself and all his posterity if ever he touched me one more time or came into a bed with me before I had begged God’s pardon and his for not saying amen to the prayer for the king.” Well, he left. Easy for us to say, but he left her with all the children. Do you think he took them with him? Oh, no. Do they ever? No, of course not. So, he left for five months. He conveniently found some convocation in London to attend. She wrote him several letters during that time saying that he basically abandoned the children. If we cannot resolve the two king thing, would you please come back and help me with the kids. In this letter she said, and here is really a summary, a sad summary of their marriage. She said, “I am more easy in the thoughts of parting because I think we are not likely to be happy together.”
Her daughter, Amelia, later wrote about her growing up in this home. She said that the situation in the home was best described as intolerable, want and affliction. Not only was there animosity between the two of them--andI am sure she was at fault as well as he was-- but there was extreme poverty. There was a saying at that time, and I am not so sure it is not still true. “When poverty comes in the door, love flies out the window.” You know how difficult poverty and want and affliction and no money what it brings to a relationship. It never helped. It always makes things more stressful.
Later, about that whole incident she said, “I have unsuccessfully represented to him the unlawfulness and unreasonableness of his oath, that the man in that case has no more power over his own body than the woman over hers. I am willing to let him enjoy his opinions. He ought not to deprive me of my little liberty of conscience.” Here is what I like about her. She supported him; she stayed faithful to him. I mean in that day and age what are you going to do? Women had no choice. But, she continued to be a wife to him even though clearly he wronged her. Clearly, he did not treat her as he should have treated her. This is what makes her all the more admirable is that while she supported him in his ministry, yet she was still able to express herself here. She was not beaten down, you follow me? You still see some rational thought in her, which is that since God gave me a brain and the freedom to have a liberty of conscience, then I have the right to not like the king. That does not mean I have the right (this is all private) to publicly disagree with my husband or publicly challenge him on things, but God gave me that right. This is the line she walked. This is what I admire about her as I have studied about her is that she somehow was able to keep her own sense of who she was and what she thought God had led her to believe along with honoring her husband as her husband and as the father of her children.
King William suddenly died. Samuel returned home and John Wesley was born nine months later. So, we guess everything worked out. The practical and philosophical differences between Samuel and Susanna continued throughout their married life. One of the times John had written to them after graduating from school he said, “I really feel like I want to go into gospel ministry and begin preaching at churches.” His father said, “No, you need more study. It is too early.” His mother said, and I will not give you the exact quote, but she said, “You have had enough education. How much can a person need to learn? Get out there and get busy.” They totally disagreed on how to advise their children.
Another interesting thing is that she was very popular with the church members. They did not like Samuel which, of course, made him jealous of her. If anybody in here is married to a pastor and you think it is hard when people criticize your husband because they do not like how he preached, oh, go read about Susanna. At that particular time if they did not like the sermon, they maybe would burn your barn down or steal your cow-- the milk for your kids. It is unbelievable what would happen to these people. So, they all disagreed with Samuel. All the parishioners disagreed with his political views. They all did not like his sermons. He was mean and rigid, so they were unhappy all the time which just made things that much more difficult for Susanna. He also got them into debt. He finally gave the money to her. Typical in that time, if one got into debt then what would logic tell you to do? You put the person in prison! Now, how in the world are they ever going to repay? Susanna worked with the constable in the village and found a way to finagle to get him out of prison so they could begin to repay their debt.
Later on, their house burned down which was also not unusual in that day and time. It really makes your heart beat so fast to read this account of this house burning and how they all barely got out. They thought John Wesley was still in the house. He was six years old at the time. They all began to cry and weep and a neighbor told them to look. There in the second story window was a little boy standing, holding his arms out. The neighbors went over and made like a ladder with a man on top of each other. They got him out. Literally, one second later the entire roof collapsed. So, he lived with a sense of his mother and his father saying, “God has delivered you for something. You have something to live for. You have a ministry. You have a calling.”
Another thing which happened to her (gosh our time goes fast with these women!). Samuel’s health had deteriorated and a visiting preacher came to preach. Well, do you think the people liked him? No, they did not like him either. She did not like him either. So, she began to have afternoon services in her house. Well, they all let her. She was famous for her Sunday afternoon services when they would just come into the kitchen. People would stand around the outside of the house and would sing, sing Psalms. She would read scripture and then she would read one of the sermons, one of her father’s sermons or one of Samuel’s sermons. The visiting preacher, do you think he liked that? No, he sent word to stop it and she said, “I don’t have to stop it.” So, he sent word to Samuel and told him he should tell her to stop it. That did not go over too well either. She said, “They are needy. They are spiritually needy. I am not doing anything wrong. I am reading sermons that a man wrote.” Here again, I want to remind you I am not saying right or wrong about any of this. That is what she did. She seemed to have an innate sense of what people needed. They needed encouragement. They needed warm spiritual nurturing. They needed blessing. Those meetings in her kitchen really were what John and Charles Wesley saw as a foundation of the strong work of God. He was very, very big later in the revival movement for having women prayer groups. He was another one who used women. He had no qualms about using women, especially to pray and to support the work of the revival ministry. He had no hesitation. Where did he see that work? In his mother’s kitchen, in his mother’s kitchen.
Now, when she finally died, she had had heartbreak all through her life. All her children married poorly. Are you surprised? Is not that interesting? Her daughters, I am sure, to escape poverty married badly. Some of them died early. John Wesley had a horrible marriage. He had a very, very, very difficult marriage, as did Charles. That’s a sad chapter in that story, but, nevertheless, after Samuel died she lived with John in an area called the Foundry in a revival center in London and there she would minister to people. They would send people with physical needs and spiritual needs to their mother so that she would pray for them. So, if you read her life’s story, you see a woman who endured just about everything. If you just think about what she endured, she endured such tribulation. Being pregnant 19 times, is that enough? Nine children dying. Hunger. Extreme poverty. Losing her house. When she lost her house, she lost all the family records, her father’s sermons. She lost everything. Loss of house and possessions, wayward children, seeing her children suffer in poor marriage. More than that, it is such a contrast with Katie and Luther, Katie and Martin Luther. Susannah did not have a man who was her soul mate, her love. You know, with the Luther’s with all the suffering they also had each other. Susannah did not have that. She had Jesus. She had Jesus.
Now, when I was thinking about perseverance, thinking about her, I really looked for a scripture that I thought would describe her. There are a number of scriptures on perseverance and endurance. You can read it in your Bible. We all need that. The writer of Hebrews said (Heb. 10:36), “For you have needed endurance. You have need of endurance for after you have done the will of God, you will receive the promise.” I think Romans 5:1-5, especially 3-5, says it best: “Knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance.” Tribulation brings about perseverance and perseverance brings about character, proven character. Not just character. You have lived it. You have proven it. Proven character and proven character brings hope and hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. So, this patience, this endurance interestingly enough in Paul’s letters is always associated with hope. I love that. That is why I said at the very beginning, we are not talking about resignation. Persevering, enduring. The writer of Hebrews said, “Once you have endured, you will receive the promise.” (Heb. 10:36) I believe that is what kept women like Susanna Wesley. There are probably thousands of women like her. What kept them going is that they persevered. They endured. They walked with God because their love of Him, knowing that someday they will receive the promise. They will receive their reward. They had been faithful. They had walked with endurance and perseverance. They have carried that load on their back and they resisted it. They have not let it get the best of them.
I think that is the message that we have from Susanna Wesley. I Thessalonians 1:3 says, “I am constantly bearing in mind your work of faith, your labor of love, and the endurance of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. So, what I want to say to you today, for those of you who are enduring, and everybody does at some point or another, everybody has to learn perseverance and endurance, but you do it with hope. I love that about Susanna that she just did not go jump out of the window one day and say I cannot take it any more. She endured. She endured to the end. Someday, as I think I have said before, when she gets her reward at the Judgment Seat of Christ, can we all cheer just a little bit louder for her and give her her reward? What an example she is – in patience, endurance and perseverance, a woman who learned the meaning of that endurance and truly lived it out.
Related Topics: Messages, Mothers, Parenting, Spiritual Life
4. Katie Luther—A Portrait of Service
Related MediaThis article is an edited transcript of Susie Hawkins’ audio message on Passionate Faith. Appreciation for the transcription work goes to Marilyn Fine.
We are continuing today in our series that we are doing on “Passionate Faith on Display, Portraits of Significant Women in Church History.” For those of you who are new, we are looking at the lives of women—not biblical women, not women in the Old or New Testament, but women who lived after the New Testament times on up to our current time. I have chosen some specific women, but let me tell you, it is not easy to choose which women to talk about. We have an amazing heritage of Christian women who have paved the way for us and modeled for us what it means to walk with Christ.
The song that we using, which is my current obsession, is a song called, “Give Me One True and Holy Passion.” I love that song. It is such a great prayer to pray that in our life God would give us this passion for living for Him and walking with Him. Each one of these women that we are talking about during this series I believe will trace that passion in her life and in her time. Her times are very important—the historical context of her time, what the world was like when each one of these women lived, what the culture that she had to work within, and how she lived out her faith in that particular time.
We have talked about Perpetua who was a portrait of martyrdom, a portrait of courage. We have talked about Monica who prayed for her son, Augustine, as a portrait of a praying mother. Remember how we talked about her and how she literally chased her son across the Mediterranean and prayed him into the Kingdom of God. Then, we talked about a portrait last week of the Catherine’s—Catherine of Siena and Catherine Booth. These women were known for their great compassion. How they lived out their faith by ministering to people around them and really living out the compassion of Christ. So, today we are talking about our fourth portrait in the series.
Today, we are going to talk about one of the most interesting women. There is a lot written about her and all these women. These are very well known women in Church history. We are going to talk about Katie Luther, a portrait of service. One of the most interesting of these women is the story of Katie Luther. She was what we would call today the first modern pastor’s wife, a ministry wife, which is a term I prefer to use. She was a pioneer in ministry from her home. She did this by moving the center of Christian service, from the monastery, the convent, (or the cloister, you could call it, which would include both of them) from the cloister to the home. She was a very, very unique woman. Why is she so important? She represented the new spirit of the Reformation. We are going to talk about that a little bit today.
Now, I know that when we talk about some of these things we are going to have to do a little history lesson. Does anybody in here just love world history? Did everybody sleep through it like I did? Well, actually, I went back to school later, a lot later, in my life when I really wanted to learn. That is a good time to go to school. You actually want to learn. When you are in college, you do not want to learn. You know, you just want to get out. So, you may have been like me and slept through most of that. But, it is important to understand the times in which they lived. Katie Luther was a spunky, feisty, energetic young woman who found herself, through a strange turn in the road of her life, married to one of the most influential men in the last millennium, Martin Luther.
Through her life and through her ministry, we learn some very, very important principles of service— like learning to serve God in the place where He puts you. I like the term “life assignment.” This is one of my favorite new terms. I like that. It is very clear. Each one of us has a life assignment, a place God puts us. He puts us in a country. He puts us in a city. He puts us in a workplace. He puts us in a family. Within that place of our life, we have an assignment of living out our faith. Katie certainly did that well.
Now, if we are going to understand a little bit about her we have to go back and just remind ourselves of a few historical things, of what was happening in the world at the time she lived. This is the sixteenth century, 1517 was when “officially” the Reformation started. Now, you may remember that from New Testament times all the way up until this time in the sixteenth century the Church had preserved the classic culture of western civilization. The Church had become very wealthy. It considered itself the authority over spiritual affairs and civic affairs. Remember, up until after the Reformation, actually, there was no concept of the separation of Church and state. There were some people, you could call them streams of dissenters. From New Testament times up until Reformation time, there were always some that had that idea and had a clear idea of scriptural authority and what it meant to walk with God—truly, being a believer in the sense of biblical faith. They were minimized, we could put it that way. They were considered to be heretics. The Roman Catholic Church believed that only the Church could interpret scripture, that the Church had the right to rule ascetic life, to govern, and that all authority was with the Church.
Now, there were some people, as I said, who had made attempts at reform. John Wycliffe, for example, was a man with whom you may be familiar. In the fourteenth century he was a preacher and a priest at Oxford. He translated the Bible into English from Latin, which horrified the Church. He was a major “heretic” for that whose body was exhumed and destroyed. He had a huge influence on a few other early reformers. He ended up being a big influence on Martin Luther.
At the time this started happening, European culture was in an upheaval. It was the time of the Renaissance. You remember the Renaissance. It was a time of “new thought coming out of the Dark Ages.” People associate Italy with the birth of the Renaissance. If you have ever been to Italy, you might remember noticing how many of the arts came from Italy. I remember walking through the square in Florence, Italy, and looking at all these statues of people and noting everything beautiful from Italy. Opera, art, fashion, music, you name it—they produced such beauty. That was the birthplace of the Renaissance. It spread like wildfire through Europe. It was questioning the old ways. New interest in the humanities, and I do not mean humanism in the sense we know it, but in arts and language and music and doubting old suppositions and questioning the new ways. Also, there was a tendency to an interest in local governments rather than simply having one holy Roman emperor like Charles V. There came the idea that local provinces would have the right to govern themselves.
Likewise, there was a dissatisfaction with the Church. You remember this very well that there was such blatant perversion within the Roman Catholic Church at that time. Priests were having illegitimate children. There were indulgences which you may remember was when they would say people go to purgatory, which has no biblical basis, and the only way to get your loved ones out of purgatory was what—you remember, give some money! If you have ever seen the film, “Luther,” it is a wonderful film which describes some of the issues occurring. Simony, which was the selling of church offices, was common. If you wanted your nephew to be a high-ranking Church official, just offer the priest a certain amount of money and it was just amazing what could happen. Thus all over there was just a time of new thinking and questioning. A new spirit had come upon Europe.
It is so interesting that Luther, of course, would bring this whole idea of questioning the authority of the Church and the practices of the Catholic Church at a time when the conditions were ripe for something to happen. It is also important to remember that the printing press had been invented about 50 years before and this was probably, some historians say the most important development of the second millennium. Because of the invention of the printing press people were learning to read and there was a way to spread information. So, all of this happened at once. The time came for the Reformation.
Now, when Luther began this movement he did not intend to begin a movement. He wanted to have a debate about some of these issues. He did not get a debate; he got a Reformation. Out of this whole movement, you may remember the five solas of the Reformation where the reformers came to reestablish their faith, a biblical faith, that it was grace alone. By grace alone are we saved through faith. Scripture alone is our authority. Faith alone is the justification. Christ alone is our way of salvation. Sola Deo Gloria, everything exists for the glory of God. These five solas, Latin for “only,” came out of the Reformation and really took the Church and set it back on a biblical path because it had veered off.
Now, let us get down to Luther and Katie. Luther was a monk in Germany who was going into law. There are all kinds of stuff written about him. You can read his story anywhere you want to. It is everywhere. He became a priest, but he was tormented by his own lack of commitment, his lack of security. He was just consumed with his sin. He thought he could never get to heaven by his own righteousness. He just was a tormented soul. Really, you read these things about him. He just tormented himself with his questions and his doubts. He ended up having a very deep spiritual experience where through the book of Romans he realized, he came to understand, the Holy Spirit so gracefully imparted understanding to him. In the book of Romans, the Bible talks about the righteousness of God. That Christ’s righteousness is imparted to us. It does not mean that we have to be perfect. It means that when God looks at us, once we have given our life to Jesus, he sees Christ. It is a passive righteousness, if you want to call it that. Once he got that in his mind that changed everything for him. So, he began to really study scripture. He was the pastor at a little church in Wittenberg, Germany. One day, he had some questions he had, things he wanted to debate within the Church. So he posted his 95 Theses, his 95 questions, on the door of the church—which was the bulletin board. That was kind of like the bulletin board of the church. So he posted it there. Little did he know that he would never quite get around to these debates. He would have many more significant arguments that would come his way.
Well, in keeping with our story of Katie, let me just narrow this down. One of Luther’s questions, one of his arguments with the Church, was celibacy. He began to look at scripture and he began to question the doctrine of celibacy. Did you ever see that old cartoon where it shows the little joke about the monk in the basement of the library? He is leaning over a book and he is sobbing. The older priest comes in and says, “What is wrong? What is the matter?” He looked up and he said, “It doesn’t say celibate. It says celebrate. We have misread it all these years.” That is kind of what Martin Luther did. He started looking at scripture and questioning the whole doctrine of celibacy.
Now, to be fair, in I Corinthians 7, I believe it is, you know Paul talks about that it is better to marry than to burn with lust. He talks about the advantages of being single and not having a family so you can preach and travel and all of that. Well, the Church had pulled that specific advice out of scripture and made it more or less a required doctrine of the Church. Now, in the early centuries of the Church there were men and women who were married—pastors, monks, priests who were married. Yet, of course, we do not know anything about their wives lives because usually they died about age 30 having babies and they could not read or write anyway so we do not know much about their lives. By the twelfth century, one of the Church councils, the second letter in council, outlawed marriage for priests.
There were plenty of places though, where there were exceptions. We know there were plenty of illegitimate children running around Europe and this was a difficult doctrine to enforce. So, Luther began to question this whole presupposition that sexual activity, or bodily functions even, were sinful in some ways. You can read this back even in the time of Augustine. There was this idea that sexual activity, even within marriage, was less than desirable. It was not holy. It was not sanctified by God. It was a necessary evil that you had to do in order to have children. I am not sure all men felt that way, but, some of them wrote about it anyway as a necessary evil. He began to challenge this. That was one of the many, many things he challenged in the Catholic Church. He began to challenge the whole idea of celibacy. He challenged all of these different points of that Church. Well, his writings of course, you can imagine, spread like wildfire. You know what? They did not have the internet, but I will tell you what. You can be sure it spread everywhere within every convent, every monastery. People were getting papers stuck under their door, you know, with information about Luther, about his challenges. Some people thought he was the most refreshing voice which had come along; other people thought he was, of course, Satan himself.
Well, there was this Cistercian convent in the Torgau area where Katie Luther was from. “Katherina von Bora” (as her name was then) was in this convent, and it was a very, very secluded monastery under the local province of a man who was an enemy of the Reformation. That is how Europe was. It was divided into provinces and districts ruled by a local ruler. They were either friendly to the Reformation or they were dead-set against it.
Nevertheless, all these writings of Luther got into this convent and so Katherina von Bora and 11 of her friends decided that they thought this guy had something. He was right on. They wanted to leave the convent, but it was against the law. So, she wrote him a letter and she said that we cannot go along with any more of this church doctrine and we want to follow Christ and we want to hear more about your teaching. We want to get out of here. So, they came up with a plan.
A man who was delivering fish in 12 barrels came in late one night to the convent, unloaded the fish and then loaded the nuns in the barrels. Now, don’t you know they smelled good! That’s the story. This is in the film, “Luther,” also. The wagon rolls up and these bedraggled women, smelling like we do not even want to think about, get off the wagon, right there on the steps of the church. Luther is there to meet them. He says, and, of course, there were a lot of his words recorded, that he looked at them. He said that he felt so sorry for them. They were such a wretched little bunch and they had problems because most girls were married at age 15 and 16. These girls were well past their prime. What was going to happen to them? Three went back to their family so that was one possible option. They could also go to a convent which was a little more friendlier to the Reformation, or they could get married.
Now, I do not know that you and I can possibly understand what a revolutionary idea that this was that these priests, who had left the church and left their vows because they no longer believed what the Catholic Church was teaching, and that these nuns, who had done the same, might get together. This was shocking. This was appalling to some people, but the men were saying, “Why not? We do not think there is anything wrong with marriage. This is a holy calling just like to the priesthood or to the ministry. Marriage is a holy calling. It is sanctioned by God. It is a gift of God. What is wrong with it?” So, of course, they would get together.
Martin Luther started looking for husbands out of his reformers. There is so much written about reformer wives. They were unbelievable. They were theological. They were literate. They joined their husbands as partners in this work. They had to house refugees all across Europe that were running from authority. That is a whole other topic. These women were strong, strong committed Christians. So Martin started pairing them up and he got everybody married off but Katherine. She had picked somebody out, but he did not want her. He said she was too feisty. Well, then he chose somebody for her and she turned her nose up and said he was too sanctimonious. He is holier than thou and she did not like him.
Well, he got really irritated with her because she did not like who he had picked out for her. The one she was initially interested in sure did not want her. So, she just pursued through the proper channel and said, “Well, I will just marry you.” So, he thought about that. He thought he would remain single, and he thought that she was awfully arrogant and picky. But, he consented and, honestly and truly, it is the truth. The Catholics, those who were against the Reformation, when they heard that Martin Luther was marrying a former nun, thought their offspring would be the Anti-Christ. They really thought Revelation was coming into play right here.
He was 42 and she was 26. They were married 21 years. It is really one of the most enjoyable reads you will ever have in reading about their marriage. He was gruff, stern, a thinker, a worker, and given to melancholy and bad moods as, you know, those tortured souls like those really smart people are. I never had the problem myself. I can pretty much go to the mall and I will be okay. He was everything—a lecturer, a teacher, he challenged civil laws, he wrote hymns, and he reformed the society he lived in. Many unjust and unfair laws he effected, which we will get to in a minute. Their marriage is one of the great stories. Their home was marked by tenderness, sacrificial love and respect for one another. It is a great story.
Katie had learned how to read and write, and how to study scripture in the convent. She had worked part-time in a home. As part of her service, she had learned homemaking skills. She had learned how to farm. She had learned how to fish. When they married, Martin Luther was given a cloister in a monastery that was never a home. The monstary had been closed down. Everybody had left. So, the government just gave it to him. It was called the “Black Cloister.” Does that not sound appealing! It sounds awful – a dark, gray, place in Germany called the “Black Cloister.”
Well, we can only imagine what it looked like. You know, in my mind I can see him bringing Katie home from their honeymoon and her walking in that door. By his own admission, his bed was straw. He had lain on the same straw for about two years. A dump even. You know…we will not even go into that. You all have had a nice lunch. Can you imagine? I can just imagine any of these women, but Katie for sure, throwing open the door of this place and saying, “We are fumigating this place and we are planting flowers. That is the first thing we are doing.” She just took over and managed his household and his ministry in such a way that it is a little bit like L’Abri with the Schaeffer’s. Who, in the 20th century, had that place in Switzerland where thinkers, young writers, and others would come and they would just have dinners together and talk and share and argue and debate. It was like that, although she had a lot of work to do!
One of the things that was so appealing about Katie is that she had such good humor. She was not afraid. She had great respect for Martin, but there all kinds of stories about their interaction. For several days, he had been in a really foul mood. He had been grumpy and gruff. Nothing was happening right and he was discouraged. He would not talk and just stomped around. So, she did not say anything. Then, the next morning she got up and sat on a stool in the middle of their living room. She put on black clothing and put a black veil over her head and just sat there. He came through the room and stopped. He asked, “What is wrong with you. What are you doing, woman?” She replied, “Oh, dear, it is just terrible. The Lord in Heaven is dead.” He asked what she was talking about that the Lord in Heaven is dead? “God is not dead!” She said, while looking at her veil, “Oh really, well the way you have been acting I thought that is what had had happened.” He laughed. She had a way of bringing him out of his moods. Another time, he went into one of these moods and locked himself in his office. Now, she had little children and guests and people coming in to talk with him. He just could not be doing that. So, she just kept going about her work and hired a workman from the village to come in. He just took the door off the hinges. Martin is sitting there and the door comes off and there is Katie and the kids. You know, faith. It is just really delightful.
They had such a complementary relationship. She loved to talk and ask questions. He would tease her about this. While she was doing needlework at night and he was studying, she would sit there and talk about such things like who the duke of Prussia was related to and then she would say, “Why does David brag so much about having humility? When he is bragging about it, how could he have it?” She asked him questions like that and he would sigh and roll his eyes, but their conversation was energetic and lively and there was this great complementary love of husband and wife.
He said this after being married, that marriage brought so many things to a church. It brought so many things to families. Up until that time, honestly, this is the truth, marriage was considered a secondary calling. The first calling was to the convent or to the monastery. That was seen as the highest calling. Martin Luther and Katie reestablished the priority of marriage as being one of the highest callings you can have, one of the greatest blessings. You could serve God just as well being married as you could in a monastery or a convent. He said, “Let the wife make her husband glad to come home and let him make her sorry to see him leave.” It is a great statement.
I think what she introduced was the whole concept of being a partner in ministry. Paul talks about this in his letters. Remember just about at the end of every one of his epistles he says give greetings to these people, my co-laborers in Christ, my partners. These are the people who worked with me. That is what Katie would be. She worked with him in running the household, raising the children, ministering to the guests. This cloister was huge and there were a lot of empty rooms. So she had cots put in there for the homeless and for refugees. It housed people, sick people. She just did everything.
Really, the best way to look at her life is to go to Proverbs 31. If you look at some of the things about that woman in Proverbs 31 we see them in Katie’s life. Verse 11 of Proverbs 31 says, “The heart of her husband trusts safely in her.” Katie enhanced his ministry. He trusted her in raising the children, teaching them, educating them. She participated in theological discussions.
When he died, he left everything to her. Now, talk about safely trusting your wife. This is one of the things that was not normal in that day and time. When a man died, he left his inheritance to his children and then they, in turn, would provide for their mother of if their mother was dead the step-mother. This is not a good thing, right. Martin worked hard to overturn that law and left her his inheritance. In the note he said to give it to Katie because he trusted her totally to do what was right with his resources and to provide for the children. She worked willingly with her hands. Women in that day had to work crops, fish, and farm. She bought a little farm where she could raise cows and milk and all that kind of stuff.
“She rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household.” She mothered six children. She also cared for six other children who were orphans of Luther’s family—nieces and nephews, a nephew and a great-nephew. Of course, she had household help to manage. She had to manage all the servants and, you are going to love this, like all good pastor’s wives you know what she did better than anybody? She brewed her own beer. Don’t you love that! A good German. She brewed her own beer and everybody loved it. I love that. It is hilarious.
“She considered the fields and buys it.” She was a farmer. She planted vineyards. “She strengthened her arms.” She was energetic and strong and just busy doing everything. I love this. The Proverbs 31 woman “stretches out her hands to the poor” and Katie did that. She ministered to refugees. Her door was always open to the poor and to the sick. Some people called her as she ministered their own Catherine of Siena. Do you remember her? Catherine of Siena we had last week who ministered to people in the Black Plague when even the slightest touch would cause you to die of this plague. Catherine of Siena was unafraid to walk into illness and sickness and minister to people and hold their hands and their heads while they were dying. That is what she did. In fact, one of her sons, Paul, became a doctor and he said later in life that he was inspired to become a doctor by watching his mother minister to the sick. He said to this day, no matter how much training I have I can never be the doctor my mother was.
“She opens her mouth with wisdom and on her tongue is the law of kindness.” She had a wonderful reputation for kindness to other people. She had wisdom. At night, they would have, you can read these and there are lots of written records which they called “table talk,” which was Martin Luther’s theological debate at the dinner table. Students would come in. You can imagine how students and young pastors would want to come and have dinner there. It was called “table talk.” Many times, Katie if she could would join in the discussions and she would debate. I do not have time to go into some of the things they would debate about. He would tease her. He said on more than one occasion that Katie understands the Bible better than any pope had ever understood it.
So, “her children rise up and call her blessed” and they did. They loved their children. They had a daughter who died in her first year. Then, the grief of their life was when their 13-year-old daughter, Magdalena, died in Martin Luther’s arms. By all stories of his life, this was the great grief of his life and sorrow. He loved this girl, this daughter. They clung to each other for support.
Upon his death, she wrote that the only thing she could cling to was Psalm 31, “In Thee, Oh Lord, do I put my trust. Deliver me in Thy righteousness. Be my strong rock.” He left his resources to her. Her life went on and took many turns. A war came. They had to flee the cloister. They came back and everything was destroyed. She had to rebuild. She contracted some kind of bronchial infection and finally died. Her last prayer was this. She had one of her children write it out. “Lord, my Savior, Thou standest at the door and must enter in. Oh, come, Thou beloved guest, for I desire to depart and be with Thee. Let my children be committed to Thy mercy. Lord, look down upon in mercy on my church. May the pure doctrine, which God has sent through my husband, be handed down unadulterated to posterity. Dear Lord, I thank Thee for all the trials through which Thou didst lead me and by which Thou does prepare me to behold Thy glory. Thou hast never forsaken or forgotten me. Thou hast ever more caused Thy face to shine upon me when I called upon Thee. Like Jacob, I will not let Thee go unless Thou bless me. I will cling to Thee forever.” Thus Katie died. She lived a rich, full life serving the Lord beside her husband. What a portrait of service.
Now, quickly, what can we learn from Katie Luther? She lived in a very different time than we live. She, a former nun, was married to a reformer. There are some things, nevertheless, that we can learn from her life. First of all, often our life’s assignment takes a different turn than we expected. Is there anybody in here whose life has gone exactly like you expected it to? Life always takes unexpected turns in the road. This was true of her. Learn to accept it. She learned to accept it as God’s plan for her. Now, some of these things are difficult. Some are wonderful. I love this quote. I just read this last year in Oswald Chambers’ “My Utmost.” I have read that book for years and years and I do not remember seeing this sentence before. I love this and wrote it in the back of my Bible as soon as I read it. “If God has made your cup sweet, drink it with grace. If God has made your cup bitter, drink it in communion with Him.” I love that. It is so good! If your life’s assignment is sweet right now, take it with grace and accept it with joy. If right now you are in an assignment that is difficult, you are going through a hard place, a hard time, you just remember your suffering is a part of the sufferings of Christ. Drink it in communion with Him. He suffered as well. He knows that road of suffering better than you do and can minister to you and strengthen you and walk with you along that road. Drink it in communion with Him. I love that.
Secondly, it is a good thing to be reminded that we can find God’s presence and His joy and serve Him in the ordinary days and weeks and moments of life. Sometimes the holiest moments do not always feel holy, right? Now, I feel holy at certain times in church or praising God or whatever. You can feel holy. But, there are other times when you do not feel holy, but you need to be aware that it is a holy moment. That is in the sacredness of the ordinary day. There is a big contrast between Katie Luther’s life and Catherine of Siena who would be alone for days on end. That is quite different than Katie Luther who was out farming and milking cows and birthing babies in the afternoon and being back to work the day, same thing the next day. This calling is holy and sacred. Sometimes I think we forget that. I do, don’t you, in just the housework and keeping the house going and work, your vocation, taking care of parents, taking care of kids, whatever you are doing? Sometimes it does not always feel holy, but it is. Where is God? Oh, He is in the kitchen with the pots and pans. He is not always on top of the mountaintop. He is there, too, but He is also with those doing the ordinary acts of service.
I was thinking about this about Mary and Martha. You know the story of Bethany of how Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet and Martha was so busy preparing a meal because 13 men had dropped in for lunch. She was irritable and she asked Jesus why won’t Mary come and help me? You know the story. He said “Martha, you have forgotten the most important thing.” Martha’s error there was not that she was busy doing work. It was not wrong of her to prepare food. They were waiting to eat. Somebody had to fix it. It was not that she was preparing food, that she was working in the kitchen, that she was taking care of the servants. Her problem was that she got so busy in the distractions of ordinary work that she forgot to see Jesus right there. That is what can happen to us. I just want to remind you that when you go back to your office and you do your emails and clean out your purse and you do some things you know you have to do this afternoon and on your way home you stop by the grocery store and the cleaners and you do all that kind of stuff. Ordinary acts of service are just as pleasing to God as praise and worship on Sunday morning if you do them unto Him.
There is a great statement that says the true calling of a Christian is not to be doing extraordinary things but to do ordinary things in an ordinary way. I remind you to think about that this week. We have three grandchildren, 5, 4 and 3, and then we have a six-month-old and we have another one coming. We have group A and now we have group B coming. I feel quite sure there will not be a group C because of the way group A acts. It is crazy at our house when they come over. We have a basketball player who has the basketball going inside with the Christian hip/hop music going because that is what the Mavs practice to. So he is making baskets, throwing the basketball in the places where you should not be throwing a basketball. But, what are your going to do? It is just the cutest little kid you have ever seen. You are going to let him do what he wants to. Then, we have two girls who have babies and strollers and they put on shows and they pull out all the chairs and all the…you just cannot imagine what our house looks like. OS and I just look at each other and say, whose life is this? What has happened to us? I always stop, I try to really anyway. The other day I stopped and I looked and within two minutes all the disaster, the mess, the food, the drinks, the music, the everything, the shows that were going on with all the babies and I thought, “I need to remember this is a holy moment.” These are sacred moments. These are sacred moments to hear a child laugh, even to hear him cry. The joy of life. It is life, even the busyness.
Last night working on my income tax I tried to say to myself, “this is a good moment. Somewhere in this is a good moment. I have an income. I can pay taxes. I live in America.” We are so blessed to live in America. There are holy moments in everything we do. That is what I think Katie found and that is what I want us to be reminded of today. Find the sacred in these everyday things of life. Colossians 3:23 says, “Whatever you do, do it heartily as unto the Lord and not unto man.” That will enable you to find the sacred as you serve the Lord. Wherever you are, whatever calling you have, you can serve Him in that same way.
3. The Catherines — Portraits of Compassion
Related MediaThis article is an edited transcript of Susie Hawkins’ audio message on Passionate Faith. Appreciation for the transcription work goes to Deborah Jones.
Introduction
Maybe you saw the news, about a young woman named Cyd who works with a humanitarian group in Afghanistan. She was just taken hostage a couple of weeks ago in Afghanistan. I saw it in the Sunday paper. She is a Christian. She works with a humanitarian group there in Afghanistan. I have been following that story. There was an interesting news release which said that last week, in the city where she was, 500 women fully clothed in their burkas protested her kidnapping with signs and with songs! That is pretty amazing in Afghanistan. For women to take to the street and protest the kidnapping of this woman— who they considered to be someone there just to help them in working with the people of Afghanistan—is quite extraordinary. So if you would, pray for her. Her name is Cyd, and I am sure if you go to, ‘Voice of the Martyrs’ website (I am not saying she is a martyr, and I hope she’s not going to be one!) but they may have information on her if you want to keep up and pray for her.
This brings us to our topic today, as we talk about, “Passionate Faith on Display.” Let me remind you where we were. We are in our minds, visiting an art gallery, and the visiting exhibit is called, “Passionate Faith on Display”, and we are walking through the hallway of this art gallery. We are looking at portraits of significant women, whose lives, ministries, and contributions to the church legacy and to Christian history, have made a difference and a significant impact in our own story, in who we are. There are so many of these women to choose from. We have such a heritage. I grieve over the fact that I think in many free churches or traditional Bible churches we do not emphasize these people. We do not know who they are, and so we do not know anything about them. But, they are our spiritual mentors from afar. They teach us something. They show us the way. They have a testimony, a witness to give to us, and show us something through their lives.
So we are looking at these women, what they did, what was so important, and what was their significant contribution. Then we are looking at Christ, what he did, and seeing what the New Testament tells us that we need to likewise do as we follow those examples. So today I’m talking about two women, and I’m going to have to talk really fast, because I could not decide between the two. So, you know how it is, you cannot really decide between two dresses at Dillard’s, so what do you do? You buy both! So that is what I’m doing. I know you understand that reasoning.
So, I’m doing the Catherine’s today. Two women that lived about 500 years apart, but who were so similar in their lives and their calling. The first one is Catherine of Sienna, the second one Catherine Booth. Now the Catherine’s were portraits in compassion. They were noted for their compassionate work among the poor, the lowly, the oppressed, and the uneducated. They were taking their time, their ministries, risking their health—as we will see— to minister to the helpless, to those who could give nothing back to them. I think it’s interesting that when we look at the lives of these women, we see that people were so drawn to them. And I was reading over their stories, it reminded me of why people were so drawn to Jesus. Why? Because of his compassion, and his empathy, and he would stop and talk to the lowest of persons. The most insignificant person that had no ranking in that culture of that day, he would stop and talk to and listen. He was known for his compassion. So, I want us to think today about compassion.
Compassion
Now usually when we think about compassion, we think of when they would have all those commercials on television about feed the children. They would show the babies with the big stomachs and the flies on their faces. You remember that. It’s just so awful to look at, and you want to look away, because it just so awful. It would bring feelings of pity and sorrow, and then they would have the number for you to call. But, compassion is more than just empathy. The best definition that I read says that it is more than feeling sorrow or pity for someone, it is empathy in action. It is feelings of sorrow and grief, and pity, but then that results in action. It is not just saying “that is so awful,” and turning around and walking off. When you think about Jesus, isn’t that what He did every time? I challenge you, if do not believe me, to look in your concordance under compassion. I found 5 or 6 instances where Jesus, the scripture says, was moved with compassion. He felt compassion. He saw them and he felt compassion. And every time he felt compassion, something happened. He did something. He preached a message to them. He performed a miracle. He stopped and ministered to them in some way. His feelings of compassion did just not end there with “oh, that’s so sad.” His feelings of compassion ended with some kind of action. That is what we see in the Catherine’s today, and I think that is our challenge.
Now compassion doesn’t come easily to everyone. You know, not everyone has just the “bleeding heart,” as we say. I have two daughters, and the older one is very black and white, get to the point, bossy, you know, just not emotional. The second one is just big hearted, soft hearted, you know, just feel sorry for everybody and everything. Well I remember one day, years ago, sitting at the table. I was telling them a story of a friend of mine whose daughter had gotten into bad, bad trouble with drugs and the wrong crowd. It was really a heart breaking story. I was sitting there telling this story. My younger daughter, she had these big brown eyes, and she had these tears just spilling out. She said, “what are we going to do? What are we going to do? How can we help her?” I look over at my other daughter, who was sitting stolidly. She said. “it is her own fault. She has no one to blame but herself. I do not know why I have to do something.” So we had a little lecture on compassion. So, I do recognize that compassion doesn’t come easily to everybody. Yet I want to tell you that it is a sign of the Christ-life. So if you do not naturally have it you need to cultivate it. You need to work on that in your life, because it is characteristic that Christ had. These women had it, and it is part of seeing people as God sees people. I think that is a good definition of compassion also: seeing others as God see them. Not with presuppositions, or prejudices, or biases, or “it is their own fault”— but seeing them for their own condition.
Catherine of Sienna
Now, these two women were known for their work among the poor. Catherine of Sienna was born in Tuscany Italy in 1347. She was the 24th child out of 25 children. Yes, people think about that for a while! She was born into the middle class, during a time when there was a transition from a feudal society to an “economic democracy” so to speak. It was a time of a lot of social upheaval. Let me say something about these women, and really all the women we talk about. I think when you study historical figures like this, you find some odd things that they did. You know, some things that are very much out of our tradition that we do not understand. Especially Catherine of Sienna, she had some weird stuff, she was a mystic. She was a medieval mystic. These people that had vision and raptures and going into ecstasy. They would always want to identify with the sufferings of Christ. They would focus on self denial and self deprivation to an extent you and I could not imagine. But my point is that I just want to tell you what they did. This is what their life was like. This is what they did within the context of their time. She was a real mystic. When she was age 7, she felt that she had a visitation from the Holy Spirit, and she announced her determination to have a religious life. She did not want to marry or have children. Her parents tried to persuade her differently, but she would not do it. She had this familiar image you will often see of medieval mystics: going into raptures or ecstasy during prayer and seeing visions of Christ. She would write a lot of these experiences down. She wrote a book called ‘Dialogues,’ in which she recorded a lot of her mystical visions.
Editor’s Note: It should be noted Scripture gives the standard by which to examine all things. Anything that contradicts Scripture will lead one astray from truth. This we may— and need to— be discerning about.
But the interesting thing about Catherine, is that even though she would live alone in a little house, and deprive herself of food and sleep and all of these other things, that is not all she did. She did not just devote her life to contemplation or to activity— but to both. So she would have these experiences, but they always led her to service. That is one reason I like her. She did not just stay by herself for 25 years, and not have anything to do with anybody. All of her experiences drove her to minister to the poor and the sick. She had her theology, basically, had 3 points. Her big thing was truth, virtue and love. This is what she preached and taught wherever she went, serving the poor.
She took the 3rd way. You did not really go into a convent. There were form orders. But you could preach to people and you could perform services. She directed at home, and she learned to read and write with another priest, who taught her to read and write. For four years, the first four years that she did this, she dedicated her life to serving the poor and the oppressed.
Now, four years later Europe was hit by the black death, or the bubonic plague. This you may remember from world history was one of the worst scourges of the earth. One third of the population of the world was killed, from Iceland to India. It started with a flea that was probably on the back of a rat that came into port in Italy, and it just spread like wild fire. Because you are eating lunch, I am not going to tell you all the details, but the symptoms were: headaches, aches, rapid pulse, slurring of speech, fatigue, apathy, swelling of lymph nodes, tissues would swell causing hemorrhaging, collapse of the nervous system, terrible pain, and then in the last stage your skin would blacken. That is why it was called black death. This quote was given by a historian: “People went to bed healthy and would be found dead in the morning.”
Priest and doctors who came to care for the sick would contact the plague with a single touch and die sooner than the person they had come to help! Because of that you can see why people were so hesitant to visit. Would you not be as well? Yes. They did not know what to do, because even the slightest contact was so contagious. But Catherine miraculously was able to—truly miraculously—avoid this illness. For several years she worked among the poor and the dying of the black plague. She said, “I built myself an inner cell in my soul, where I would minister from that place, and somehow God gave me the grace to not see the awful physical condition and the smell.” Somehow she was able to hold peoples’ hands while they were dying. There was one account that said, that she would just go all day long just holding peoples’ hands or heads in her hands until they died. She would then put them down, cover their face and go to the next one. Somehow she did this while eighty thousand people died in that outbreak of the plague. There were other outbreaks. She lost her sister, brother, and eight nieces and nephews. She would go without food, drink, and sleep for days to minister in the smallest way to the sick and dying. She would be praying over them and holding their hands until they died.
But interestingly enough her concern for the physical and emotional well-being of people was not just limited to the physical but of course to the spiritual. She understood, that while it was so important to alleviate suffering here in the world, what was more important was a person’s spiritual destiny. That was more important than even their physical needs. So her love for others, her compassion for their poverty of spirit, for their sick and poverty stricken lives, drove her to serve in a way of preaching. She would go on crusades, and that’s what they called them. Just remember in the terminology of the day, the middle ages, crusades were very accepted. That was a very accepted term to go and “preach a crusade.” She was given permission by the priest in her local area to go. She went on a crusade to Pisa Italy. She would go to places and crowds would gather because they had heard of her. She would talk about Christ and presented the plan of salvation. She was unafraid of that bold witness.
Not only that, but she was also known for her reforms, pushing for reforms in the church. Now this was just prior to the reformation. There had been a big schism in the Catholic church where there were actually two capitols, two Vatican’s, if you want to call it that. The French government got involved—there was no separation of state and church, remember. So they had moved “Rome,” or the head of the Catholic church to France. So there was about 40 years where you had these two sides warring. You had Rome and France arguing. This is Catholic history, and I do not understand it.... Except that she just went off on this, and she would write these letters. You should read these letters. She is saying, these people are poor and dying yet you are taxing them to death! You are taking money for indulgences, and they do not have money to feed their children. She just was relentless. These men would write her letters back and say, basically, “shut up, you are a woman, go away”, and she would not do it. She just kept on, and there are records of her. You can read her letters and her writings challenging the Pope, saying “What are you doing up there in France? Get back down here! We got things to do besides your petty little power plays and your arguments.” She criticized the churches expenditures for luxuries that were paid by the taxation of the poor. She condemned the vices of all the immorality that was going on. She prayed and worked for justice. She was criticized for meddling in church affairs, and she was criticized for promoting missions. She told them you need to get home and instead of having your arguments about that, we need to start a work over in this area of the city where no one is ministering to the poor. We need to do this. She was a ball of fire. She was known as a reformer as well as a women. Why could she say all that, and why did people listen to her? Because she had gained her credibility by ministering to the poor. She was not too important to minister in this way. I love that. I love, love, love that. Her service was the platform for her ministry for spiritual needs. It was the platform for ministering to the spiritual needs of people around her.
I want to read you one of her prayers that she prayed in her journal. It is just one of her daily prayers of her quiet time. And tell me if you could not pray this yourself today.
“Oh Holy Spirit come into my heart, drawn by thy power to thee, true God. Grant me love with fear of thee. Guard me from evil thought. Warm me and enflame me with thy love. Holy my father and sweet my Lord. Help me now in all my labors. Christ you are loved, Christ you are loved.”
That’s Catherine of Sienna, really an amazing woman, who had compassion not only on peoples physical needs but their spiritual as well.
Catherine Booth
Now about 500 years later another Catherine came on the scene, Catherine Booth. Who is known as the mother of the Salvation Army. She was born in 1829 in England. She had Christian parents, and married William Booth who was a preacher. They established the Salvation Army. They felt the calling to the poor. He was a pastor, and they would go out to teach, preach, and pray among the poor and lowly. Then they would invite them into the church. There is this story about one day when he was preaching at the church. One of the church leaders got up to him and said, “We need to stop these undesirable from coming into our church, it is a very nice church and we just do not need those people.” William started to answer, but Catherine was on the front row of the balcony. She stood up and she held her fist up and said, “Never, never, never will we ever deny anyone access into the church of Jesus Christ because they are undesirable!” And she said to one of her friends sitting next to her, “the more I see of fashionable religion, the more I despise it.” Oh, I love that woman! She was strong. After a few years William decided he would not mess with the church. They never did come around to understanding his ministry. They wanted to start an itinerate ministry which concerned her on how they were going to live. They had eight children. Eight children who all went into the ministry.
God provided and they worked together to establish the Salvation Army. I wish you all could read these stories about Catherine Booth, and these women of the temperance movement. This is around the temperance movement time too. They would just go into these bars. And remember this was London, and there were no child labor laws. There were no Labor Unions. Women would work 12 hours a day. Children would work. Conditions were horrible. There was such a peasant poor class. Alcoholism was rampant because of the misery of their lives.
These women like Catherine Booth, her women of the Salvation Army and these other women of the Temperance movement would walk into bars with their Bibles. They would stand in front of the table, as if God had come right there, and read the scriptures to these drunk men. And, say “You bums, you’ve got a wives, you’ve got children, they’re poor, they’re hungry!” They had no fear. You want to talk about not afraid to offend. They were not afraid to offend.
William Booth came up with, as some people have called it, a social reconstruction plan for a nation. England was just burdened with alcoholism, unemployment, poverty, and families that were split and uneducated. This man was a visionary like few other men. Catherine was the intellectual one. She was trained in theology and philosophy. She gave the movement its theological and philosophical basis. They liked the army terms. Here again that is not something we would use today, but that was big in their day. The had military terms, like the “Salvation Army,” the General, and the Captain. They had crusades. They had drills. All of their organization was structured around those terms.
One of her interest was reclaiming the lives of women from lives of prostitution. Over a period of something like 10 years, they gathered over 350,000 signatures on a petition to the British Parliament to outlaw prostitution and the slave trade for these poor girls. Just like today these girls had no future. They are taken and sold into slavery. She worked tirelessly to end the white slave trade. She worked for labor laws for women. There were factories where women did the same amount of work, but were paid half the amount of men. Imagine such a thing.
One of the big things for all the poor people were match factories that would make matches. They would work with phosphorous . Apparently you’d dip the end of the match in phosphorous. Well it is very, very, very poisonous and lethal. These people that worked in these factories would contract these horrible diseases, I am telling you, it sounds worst than the black plague. I do not even want to tell you, it is so awful. The cancer, and the illness, the distortion of the neck and the face, and bones, that would happen to these people. She and William decided. We can think of something better than that! They came up with an alternative way to make matches. They started their own factory. Somehow they managed to pay the women as much as they did the men, and they did not use phosphorous. Not only that, but they advertised about how detrimental the phosphorous was to the health of the women. They put the old match factory out of business. Do you not just love it? It is so great. They had no fear and no end to the means they would go to, to alleviate the suffering of others.
Interestingly enough, that the Salvation Army was one of the few large institutions that welcomed women preachers. I have to say that, just because I think it so interesting. They would separate on Sunday morning. William Booth would go one way, she would go the other. They would gather crowds and they would preach the gospel.
When they came to America, William Booth chose seven women. He called them his splendid seven. Seven women that he thought could bring, and they did, the Salvation Army to America to get it organized. When they were getting on the ship to go over he prayed, “Lord, these ladies are going to America to preach the gospel. If they have fully given their lives to thee, be with them and bless them and grant them success. If they are not going to be faithful, just drown them.” (Laughter) I do not know how those ladies felt about that prayer! Hmm, better catch up on my quiet time. He said my best men are women. He was unafraid, he saw no difference there.
Conclusion: Amos, the Law, the Good Samaritan and Us
Here is the thing I loved about these women. Both of them married compassion for the poor with compassion for spiritual darkness. They did both. What a testimony. They had no fear ministering to the poor and no fear in proclaiming the gospel and the truth of the word of God. They cared for physical needs and spiritual needs.
Now what does the Bible tell us. I am sure you know, the Bible set such a precedence on this, as far as compassion. In the Old Testament, Amos was a minor prophet. He was just a farmer. He was a nobody. Yet God chose him to be a prophet at a time when Israel was at its lowest ebb. There was terrible sexual idolatry and sin. There was exploitation of the poor. There was extreme taxation. It was truly one of the darkest times in Israel’s history. Amos’ message was justice and compassion. That was his message. We do not have time to read some of the scriptures. However, on some of the things he was quite hard on. To people that would exploit the needy, he bluntly said, “You oppress the poor and you crush the needy.”
In Hebrew law, we see compassion in the law in Leviticus. The Hebrew word, “chesed” which we translate usually loving-kindness, mercy, or compassion has this idea. Translators say there is so much in that word it hard to find one English word that describes it. Mercy, loving kindness, compassion, all is tied up in that word, “chesed.” Remember in Leviticus, (I am sure you all quite caught up on your civil laws in Leviticus…). But if you remember there were always laws for the poor. When people would glean in their fields, you leave a little for the poor. When you would pick the grapes from the vineyard, you leave a little bit for the poor. You know the interesting thing I noticed in these laws was that there was simply “this is what you do to care for the poor.” There was never any statement about “did they deserve it or not?” There is never any statement on whether they deserved it or not. It is just, the poor you will always have with you, and it is our job to care for them— whether they deserve it or not.
Jesus all through the gospel was moved with compassion. He even taught the story of the Good Samaritan. Remember the rich young ruler who came to him? The man who said, “who is my neighbor?” Jesus said, let me tell you a story. Then He tells the story of the Good Samaritan. He was saying this is the neighbor: a neighbor is anyone nearby. It is someone who is right there in front of you. In contrast, they were thinking, “We are the people. So the ones I need to help are the people that look like me.”
I read an interesting story last night. I wish I had time to do it today, but it was on a contemporary telling of the good Samaritan. Basically it went like this. We all understand that story and think, “we cannot believe the Priest and the Levite went by the man who was beat up and about to die on the side of the road!” Then a Samaritan came by and took care of him. But to them it is as if I tell a story for us and I say. A man was dying on the side of the road, and a Baptist preacher and a professor from an evangelical seminary walked by him and said, “I have a meeting to go to.” Then an atheist stopped, and got out of the car and said, “:somebody’s got to do something!” Then shepherds him and puts him in his car and takes him to the local emergency room. Now would that get your attention? Yeah, that is what Jesus was saying. He was saying it is our job to care for those who are near us, our neighbor. It is this command we have. James tells us:
“Pure and undefiled religion before God and the father, is to visit the orphans and widows of this world in their trouble, and keep oneself unspotted from the world.” (James 1:27)
Remember this. He goes on to say, If a brother or sister is naked or hungry, do not just pat them on the back and say, “Well, bless you! Have a good day!” No. It is pity plus action. Give them something to eat. Give them something to wear.
Let me tell you this as we conclude. You cannot meet every physical need of people. There is no way. Of all the Christian charities there are in the world, we cannot even begin to meet all the needs. But I would challenge you to ask yourself, ask the Lord to show you if you are not involved in any kind of ministry like that. What can you do, a little, just right now. You personally.
I’ve found a great outlet for that in World Vision. I just went to an exhibit last week on AIDS, children with AIDS, whose parents have died of AIDS. Whether it is that, or whether it is a church benevolence ministry, let us find something.
I have a friend that we travel with sometime, and he would always stop and give beggars on the road some money, a dollar, no matter what. People in our group would say, “Do not give that to them. You know, they are alcoholics.” But, he would wait until everybody was not looking. After a few times, he was kind of rebuked. I would notice him lagging behind. He would hand them some money. So, I told him I will be your beggar alert. I will see the beggars, and I will alert you so you can get your money out. This last year we went to Israel, we did that. Just thinking about him, that was a good example to me. I do not know why they are poor and they are beggars. Maybe they are sick and alcoholic. I do not know, but you know that is not my job to fix them. All I know is that they are hungry and they need money, and God knows. You know what? God knows.
However, I think our challenge is also to realize. It is not just enough to minister and have pity on their poverty or their needs, but also on their spiritual needs. Sometimes compassion is not just to the poor of the world that are dying and uneducated and all of that. It might just be the person in the cubicle next to you, who needs some compassion. They need somebody to extend a little grace, a little understanding, a little kindness their way. Compassion is not just reserved for the poor and the needy. Sometimes I think we can romanticize that. There is something we can do with the people that are nearby, our neighbors.
Related Topics: Comfort, Messages, Suffering, Trials, Persecution
2. Monica, the Mother of St. Augustine—A Portrait of a Praying Mother
Related MediaThis article is an edited transcript of Susie Hawkins’ audio message on Passionate Faith. Appreciation for the transcription work goes to Marilyn Fine.
We are continuing in our series which we started last week called, “Passionate Faith on Display.” If you remember last week we talked a little bit about the heritage that we have in Christian women who have gone before us in history. Remember we said that we often do not know a lot about these women because they did not have time to journal. Not to mention, many did not know how to read and write—which makes a difference. Men who recorded history at that time did not see any particular need for recording about things that women did or thought or felt. So, we do not have a great deal of information by these women, especially the further back we go in history. What we do know I claim is enough. It is enough to help us give some perspective. These women served as mentors, as models. Sometimes you have a mentor who is a personal mentor, but I think also you can have mentors who have already gone before you. They lived many, many years ago and who still mentor you through their writings, through their actions, through what they did. They serve as examples and models for us.
I want to talk about one of these women today. Her name is Monica. She was the mother of Augustine. I found out as I was researching her that Santa Monica, California, is named for Monica. So, next time you go to California and you are in Santa Monica…what is that song, “I Just Want to Have Fun When the Sun Comes Out on the Santa Monica Boulevard”? Well, think about St. Monica. Think about the mother of Augustine because she had an unbelievable effect on one of the greatest men who ever lived.
The thing that we are learning from Monica today is an example of a praying mother. I do not know many things that unite women as motherhood does. Even women who do not have children relate to the nurturing instinct, do they not? They need to nurture. They recognize the power of that maternal love. Everybody who has that instinct or has that feeling certainly knows what I am talking about when I talk about the angst of mothers. When my daughters were both pregnant with their first children, I told them individually (not together as I wanted to break it to them gently) that I will tell you the truth: I might as well tell you now your life is ruined! You will never have another carefree moment ever, ever, EVER. Yes, I told them that a little bluntly, a little too soon. I might have broken that to them a little gentler which might have been better. They are experiencing what I talked about. Oftentimes a mother is only as happy as her least happy child. Now, is that true or what? Well, that is true of Monica. She had two other children who were committed Christians and did great, but could she relax and enjoy them? No. She totally obsessed with the one son. This is why I love her.
But, you know, maternal love is so intense that even God used it as a metaphor for His love. I think it is the most powerful love that humans can observe or experience, the maternal love. Remember in Isaiah 49, He was talking to His people and He was saying how much He loved His people. He says, “Could a mother forget her nursing child.” Of course, that is a rhetorical question with the obvious answer being, of course, not. He said, “Neither could I forget you.” I always think back on that scripture as a testimony of the power of maternal love. How many mothers have prayed for their children? How many mothers in this room are praying especially for adult children? It is one thing to pray for your younger children who are home. You still have some degree of control, or you think you do anyway! You can have boundaries of allowing them to do this or that and activities and all that. Monica experienced, I think, one of the most difficult tests of all. That is praying for an adult child who was on his own, making his own decisions and going the wrong way. Well, let us talk about this a minute and see why she is so important. I am sure there have been thousands and thousands of mothers like her whose children have finally come to Christ. We have her as our example in history.
Let me say before I forget that Ruth Bell Graham, Billy Graham’s wife, wrote a book about this, “The Prodigal and Those Who Love Them.” Their son, Franklin Graham, was a prodigal. He was in rebellion for quite a few years against the Lord. Of course, he returned. I always recommend that book to anybody who is struggling in this department.
Why is it so important that she was the mother of Augustine, Augustine of Hippo? Hippo was a city in North Africa. This is around the fourth century. North Africa was a center of Christianity—Carthage, North Africa, which is Tunis in Tunisia today. It was a city of learning. It was a major world city, second only to Rome. Theology, universities, the arts, and wild and crazy living were all present. Augustine grew up in this part of the world. Augustine today is considered a Church father. That simply refers to a group of theologians who lived in the first five centuries of Christianity. They wrestled with many heresies and tried to faithfully interpret Scriptures to expound the doctrines of the Church. There were the Greek fathers, the Cappadocian fathers, the Latin fathers, and the desert fathers. You would have heard of some of these, Basil, Tertullian, Origen (some of you maybe have not heard of them). Whether you are Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox they are all considered to be the Church fathers. Augustine was one of the greatest of the Church fathers. He was so far ahead of his time. He is considered by secular writers as one of the pillars of Western civilization. He expounded doctrine. He could articulate philosophy and literature. He was just so unbelievably bright. But, he also combined the spiritual mindset of a believer with the education of the day. He is still considered one of the most influential and most important early theologians of the Church. You might see him often referred to if you read anything about Christianity in magazine and books. You will usually see his name credited. He probably wrote the first autobiography in the Western world. He wrote a book called, “Confessions,” which was the testimony of his salvation. He wrote another book, a classic, called, “City of God,” which defended Christianity against the paganism of the Roman Empire. The Reformers referred to him all the time. Trust me when I tell you that there is nobody bigger than Augustine.
That is why Monica is so important. Her persistence and her perseverance in not giving up praying for him “brought” one of the greatest minds into Christianity and into the Christian world. Interestingly enough, most of the things we know about her were from his pen. He wrote in his testimony about her prayers for him, testifying of Christ’s work in his life.
Let’s talk about Monica for just a minute. She is an example of service to God through motherhood. She was born not far from Carthage in a Christian home. She was raised in a Christian home. She was married to an older man who, apparently, had a violent temper. According to her children, she had a very calm and quiet manner and managed to live with him fairly peacefully. He eventually did become a believer. She attended church every day. She had three children and she poured biblical teaching into her children. When Augustine was about 16, he was going to school and was wild and crazy like 16-year-old boys are. His mother sat him down one day and had this long talk with him. She told him he did not need to be involved in immorality. Of course, he laughed it off like most 16-year-old boys would, I am sure. By his own testimony, he lived a life of wildness and lust. At 17, he left home for his “university” studies. If I were writing this chapter in Monica’s life, I would entitle it, “A Mother’s Worst Nightmare.” Your kid, who is already wild, is going off to the wildest place in the world, like Los Angeles or something. She was just so concerned about him. He joined a heretical religion called the Manichaeism, which is kind of a gnostic, new age-type thing. This is as far from Christianity as you can be. He tells about this in his “Confessions.” His soul became more and more mired in darkness and blindness to spiritual things. He said that his mother, “who wept on my behalf, wept more than most mothers weep when their children die.” He said, “For she saw that was dead by faith and spirit, which she had from Thee [he was in a prayer to God] and Thou heardest her, Lord. Thou heardest her and despised not her tears from pouring down. They watered the earth under her eyes in every place where she prayed. You heard her.”
During this time, Monica had a dream. You will find that this is pretty common in women at this time. Men, too, who would have visions and dreams. She had a dream. She was praying and she saw herself standing on a wooden rule, which symbolized the rule of faith. A young man was coming toward her. He was all joyful and smiling. She was greeting this young man who asked why she was so sorrowful. She said she was lamenting her son’s destruction. Then, she looked up and saw his face. She thought it was Augustine. The young man said, “Where you are, there I will be also.” So, she told Augustine about this dream. He said that “just meant that you will become a Manichaean, like I am.” Is that not just like a kid to say that! She said, “No, it does not because the dream said I was standing here and you came to me. I did not go to you. So, that is not what it means.” For nine more years, he continued this lifestyle. She went a couple of times to the bishop. It is really very gratifying. There were two men, one bishop in Carthage and one later on in the line, Ambrose, who really prayed with her about her son. She asked them to pray for him. She sought out prayer partners in these men of God. This bishop in Carthage essentially said to her, “Leave him alone. Just pray to God for him and he will of himself discover his error.” She kept begging, but the bishops said “No, no, leave him alone and you just pray.”
Now, at this time he had gotten a position in Rome, an elite teaching position. Monica was just beside herself about that because she thought it was getting worse. He is running away from the only good influence he has and now he is leaving to go to Rome. God only knows what will happen in Rome. She told him that she was going to come with him. So, he told her there was a ship leaving for Rome, but he said he was not going to go to Rome. He had changed his mind about that, but he was going to go down to the ship and say goodbye to some friends of his who were leaving on that voyage. What he did not tell her is that he, himself, was also going. So he got on the ship and left. Basically, he ran away from home without his mother knowing. Of course, this distressed her greatly. However, while he was in Rome she heard news that he had renounced this cult that he had become a part of. Now, while he was not a believer yet, to Monica it was a step out of darkness—hopefully into the right way. By her testimony, she prayed and prayed scripture.
Monica was reminded of the story of Jesus and the widow of Naaman. Remember that story? Her son had died and this widow was walking out in the funeral procession and Jesus was walking into the city. He saw the funeral procession and He immediately went over to the coffin and to the mother. He said, “Young man, I say to you rise.” The boy rose from the dead. Monica used those words in prayer that, although he was dead in his spirit, this young man would rise. She prayed over and over and over again these words of scripture.
He then went to Milan where she eventually caught up with him. He began attending services at a church to hear the bishop, Ambrose, who was supposedly the greatest preacher of all time, not so much for his theology but for his rhetoric. If you remember, the Roman Empire was quite focused on having an elite skill in your oratory ability to speak. So, he began going to hear Ambrose. Ambrose became her prayer partner also for Augustine. She began meeting with him and they began praying together for Augustine. He wrote of her commitment that every child should be so blessed to have a mother who prayed so diligently for their sons. Incidentally, one thing I found out when I was doing this that she said to him on another topic the fasting rules here in Milan are different than they are in Rome so should I go by the rules of my church in Milan or do I go by my other church. Which one do I go by? He was the one who really in so many words came up with the statement, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” So he essentially said, “When in Milan, do as the Milanese.” Keep that in case you ever need that on Jeopardy.
Augustine was still struggling with his flesh and was getting more and more despondent with his life and the life of direction. He had had a mistress. He had a son with this mistress, but he did not want to get married. He thought that would hurt his social standing. You may be familiar with this story. One day he was in a garden and he was praying, saying, “Lord, how long, oh God, wherever you are, how long will I live in despair and despondency?” The more educated he got, the less happy he was. The more he traveled it was like he was running away. He could not find a spot. He could not find any joy. He was so restless. So, he prayed. He was despondent about his own lack of self-discipline. He said, “Lord, how long will I have to continue in this unclean life? Will I just live this way forever?” He heard the voice of a child in the garden over the fence in a sing-song voice saying, “Take up and read. Take up and read.” He immediately went into the house, picked up a Bible, opened it up and it fell open to Romans 13:13, “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in strife and envy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provisions for the flesh.” He said he read no further until all of the doubt vanished away. Augustine, reading the scriptures, hearing that child’s voice, had truth revealed to him and he became a believer in that instant.
So, of course, and this will make you happy, what do you think the first thing he did was? He ran to tell his mother. Now, oh, happy for her! On Easter in 387 AD, he and his son were baptized by Bishop Ambrose. Throughout all his writings, he is so expressive in his appreciation in love to his mother for her perseverance in prayer and bringing him to Christ. Now, eventually they decided to return to Africa. She became ill on the voyage on the way. They stopped at a city in North Africa, almost home, and she died at age 56. She said on her death bed, “There was indeed one thing for which I wish to tarry a little bit in this life and that was that I might see you a Christian before I died. My God has exceeded this abundantly.” On her death, he said in “Confessions,” that he wept for over an hour—with it on his mind that it was so little in comparison to all the tears she had wept for him.
He returned to Hippo and became a bishop. He raised his son in the faith. He began his prolific writing career. He died on his deathbed as the vandals were attacking Rome and burning Rome at the end of the Roman Empire as he knew it.
This great man came to Christ because of the prayers of his mother. So, I think this is so important because I want it to be an encouragement to any of us who pray for adult children. Even if your adult child is a believer, you know they struggle so many times, do they not? Not everybody has their act together automatically. That is an understatement to say that. Just because you turn 21…and they need prayer. As a mother, and maybe you do not have children, but as an aunt, as a good friend, it is part of our responsibility as the older generation to pray for those who are coming after us. I believe this so strongly.
Let me say a couple of things and then there is a passage of scripture that I think shows us some things about Monica. God seems to prefer answering prayer in accomplishing His will for His people. He just does. This is the mystery of prayer and free will. The sovereignty of God and free will. Would Augustine have become a believer if Monica had not prayed for him? I think somebody else would have prayed for him, but for some reason God uses the prayers of His people to accomplish His purposes. God seems to prefer to use people to accomplish His purposes. That would be those who are willing to pray. God gives people the room to say yes or no to Him. There again, this is the mystery of God’s sovereignty. I know so many people in this metroplex who have raised children according to God’s plan. They do everything they need to do to raise that child right. Yet, when that child became older, they decided they did not want to be in church, they did not want to be a believer, and they rejected that. Believe me, I almost think there are sometimes more of those people than the other ones. All I can tell you about that is that you just cannot discount human nature. Oswald Chambers said, “We all have one right and that is the right to ourselves and God gives us that.” So, sometimes people temporarily, hopefully, choose to go their own way and I think they have to learn the hard way. You hate that when it is your own child. You do not want them to do that, but some choose to do that. That should not be a reflection on you necessarily. I am not one who points a finger to bad parenting when a child does that because I have seen too many times that the child deliberately chooses to go against a parent. God gives them that freedom to do so. We will get to that in a minute before we finish.
You cannot make your child a Christian. You cannot convince anybody by logic and apologetics and arguing to make them a Christian. You cannot do it. Please, if you hear anything, hear this. A person becomes a follower, a believer in Christ, because the Spirit reveals it to them, just like Augustine in the garden. The Spirit revealed Himself. Spiritual truth is revealed to a person and they become a believer. So, in a way I love this because it takes some of the pressure off…we do not have to convince somebody. You do not have to convince your child, your daughter, your son that your way is the right way or that this is what. You do not have to convince them of that because God will reveal that to them. That is not our job. It is something that happens in the spirit.
Another thing I loved about the story of Monica is that she sought prayer support of other people, of the bishop. There is no telling how many of her other friends and church members, but she was not ashamed to go to her community to find prayer support. I cannot encourage you enough to do that if you are praying for a child, an adult child. Find somebody who will pray with you and hold your arms up and support you and encourage you like the bishop did for her. He also gave her a little more objective advice. It is very, very important.
Then, I think from this story we see something else. Monica never apologized for her faith. There is an account in Augustine’s book, “Confessions,” that they had had an argument. He said to if you would just renounce your faith and quit being so obnoxious about being a Christian, we would get along just fine. Basically what she did was kick him out of the house for a while. She said she would never do that. I will never do that. Do not be ashamed to live your faith and do not apologize for your prayers or your faith. He commented all the time on her virtuous life, her commitment to prayer, her honorable marriage with his father who was difficult to live with, how she loved him and treated him respectfully. He could not say enough about his mother’s character. So, do not be ashamed. Do not think you have to apologize for your faith or apologize for your prayers. You do not. God will use that hopefully to bring that person to Christ.
In the prodigal son, we have some similarities, do we not? You know the story about the prodigal son in Luke 15. You can read it later because we do not have time. This is about the father who had all his riches. His younger son wanted his share of the possessions and he gave it to him. He demanded it. He ran off into a very far country and spent it all. He ended up feeding pigs and finally the scripture says he came to himself. He said he was going home because even at my father’s house, even if I am a servant, it is better than this. You know the story. He went home and his father was waiting for him. When he saw him coming, he jumped off the porch, ran and embraced him and, of course, they had a huge celebration. There are a couple of things about that story that should encourage us if we are praying for adult children. First of all, the prodigal son, like Augustine, was far, far away in a very far country. Sometimes that seems discouraging, does it not? I can imagine how she felt when he joined a cult who did not even believe there was a supreme being. They did not even believe there was a god. He was in a far country, just like the prodigal son was. He was not just in another denomination. He just was not wrong of some things of doctrine. He was in a far country, far, far away from God. Yet, he came home.
The second thing of interest is that as he was in that far country the scripture says that no one gave him anything. You know how easy it is for parents, especially mothers, to want to rescue children, adult children, is it not? It is so in us to rescue them, but the father, for whatever reason, did not rescue him. He gave him nothing. He let him live in his space. He did not try to make him feel better or comfort him. Nobody gave him anything. It reminded me of the bishop in Carthage who said to leave him alone. Then, he came to himself. He came to the realization of what he was missing and what he could have on his own. Just like Augustine did in the garden in total despair when the Holy Spirit really got ahold of him.
Now, Monica lived to see her son converted. I am so grateful she did. I know if she had died and was in heaven, she would still know it. I believe that. But not everybody gets to do that. I am sure there are elderly people who died before they get to see their prayers answered when it comes to their children or their grandchildren. You know what, it is almost like prayers go into heaven’s bank. They are a deposit. That may not always be cashed during our lifetime, but I believe it can be during each lifetime.
I just read recently the story of Dr. Dobson whose great-grandfather prayed before Dr. Dobson was even born that every person in the next four generations of his family would serve Christ in ministry. He tells the story of how the daughters married ministers and how the sons did all through the generations. His father was in ministry and prayed that he would have a son who would go into ministry. Dr. Dobson did not go into preaching ministry, but he went into family ministry and has had such an impact on the lives of so many Christians. He makes this point. This man prayed for me before I was ever born, before I ever was, before I was ever born he prayed. That is how prayer works in the kingdom of God. Although much later on, Monica got to see her son converted.
So, I pray that we, too, would have that privilege for those of you who are praying that prayer. Ephesians 1:17 is a wonderful prayer to pray if you are praying scripture, “May the Father of glory give (we will say Augustine) the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. That the eyes of his understanding may be enlightened that you might know the hope of His calling.” This is something I pray for my adult children that the eyes of their understanding would be open and that they would be enlightened. I was reading some things about this, praying for adult children, and I came across a prayer which will be put on the screen. I tweaked it a little bit because I did not like part of it so I changed some of it. I think this prayer releases us from guilt and bondage of “what we should have done” or “it is our fault that they are not living according to God’s ways.” It releases us from guilt and puts it all back on God, trusting Him with our future. It is this: “God, let me live my life in the joys that You have offered on this earth. Let me live to the fullest of my potential and, Lord, may I always be faithful to pray for my child that they learn to live their lives in Your joy also. I cannot save them from themselves, but I can ask that You give them revelation that they might come to themselves and find salvation and restoration in You.” It is not our job. All we can do is bring them before God, bring them before the throne and He takes it from there.
Related Topics: Christian Home, Messages, Mothers, Parenting, Prayer