Category: Odds & Ends

“God, the Father, takes ordinary people and births them into a relationship with Himself through the blood of Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit. And as He speaks to and enables them, and as they hear and obey His voice, He does great exploits in and through their lives, to the glory of His great name.”

Excerpt from: But the People Who Know Their God

“Faith is only real when there is obedience, never without it,
and faith only becomes faith in the act of obedience.”

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

“Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than
about courageously and actively doing God’s will.”

If anyone tells you, a believer, that you don’t have to obey
God, that you can disobey Him, sin, and “you will not surely
die,” they are being used as a mouthpiece for the devil!

Genesis 3:2 “And the woman said to the serpent, “We
may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden;
3 but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the
garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you
touch it, lest you die.’
4 Then the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not
surely die.’”

What happened to Adam and Eve when they believed the
serpents lie and disobeyed God and ate of the forbidden
tree?

They died spiritually that day and eventually they died
physically! And all their descendants, which is all of us,
were born spiritually dead and we will all die physically
someday.

Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as through one man sin
entered the world, and death through sin, and thus
death spread to all men…”

Excerpt from: But the People Who Know Their God…

“It was in a church in Munich that I saw him—a balding, heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear. It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.”

“It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favorite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander’s mind, I liked to think that that’s where forgiven sins were thrown. ‘When we confess our sins,’ I said, ‘God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever.’”

“The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence, in silence collected their wraps, in silence left the room.”

“And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights; the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor; the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!”

[Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbrück concentration camp where we were sent.]

“Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: ‘A fine message, Fräulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!’”

“And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course—how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?”

“But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. I was face-to-face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.

“‘You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk,’ he was saying, ‘I was a guard there.’ No, he did not remember me.”

“‘But since that time,’ he went on, ‘I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein,’ again the hand came out—’will you forgive me?’”

“And I stood there—I whose sins had again and again been forgiven—and could not forgive. Betsie had died in that place—could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?”

“It could not have been many seconds that he stood there—hand held out—but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.”

“For I had to do it—I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. ‘If you do not forgive men their trespasses,’ Jesus says, ‘neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.’”

“I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality. Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that.”

“And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion—I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. ‘… Help!’ I prayed silently. ‘I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.’”

“And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.

“‘I forgive you, brother!’ I cried. ‘With all my heart! I forgive you.’

“For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely, as I did then, in that moment.”