Tramp for the Lord (22 page)

Mark 12:42–44

W
e arrived at her apartment by night in order to escape detection. We were in Russia (in the region of Lithuania, on the Baltic Sea). Ellen and I had climbed the steep stairs, coming through a small back door into the one-room apartment. It was jammed with furniture, evidence that the old couple had once lived in a much larger and much finer house.

The old woman was lying on a small sofa, propped up by pillows. Her body was bent and twisted almost beyond recognition by the dread disease of multiple sclerosis. Her aged husband spent all his time caring for her since she was unable to move off the sofa.

I walked across the room and kissed her wrinkled cheek. She tried to look up but the muscles in her neck were atrophied so she could only roll her eyes upward and smile. She raised her right hand, slowly, in jerks. It was the only part of her body she could control and with her gnarled and deformed knuckles she caressed my face. I reached over and kissed the index finger of that hand, for it was with this one finger that she had so long glorified God.

Beside her couch was a vintage typewriter. Each morning her faithful husband would rise, praising the Lord. After caring for his wife’s needs and feeding her a simple breakfast, he would prop her into a sitting position on the couch, placing pillows all around her so she wouldn’t topple over. Then he would move that ancient black typewriter in front of her on a small table. From an old cupboard he would remove a stack of cheap yellow paper. Then, with that blessed one finger, she would begin to type.

All day and far into the night she would type. She translated Christian books into Russian, Latvian and the language of her people. Always using just that one finger—peck … peck … peck—she typed out the pages. Portions of the Bible, the books of Billy Graham, Watchman Nee and Corrie ten Boom—all came from her typewriter. That was why I was there—to thank her.

She was hungry to hear news about these men of God she had never met, yet whose books she had so faithful ly translated. We talked about Watchman Nee, who was then in a prison in China, and I told her all I knew of his life and ministry. I also told her of the wonderful ministry of Billy Graham and of the many people who were giving their lives to the Lord.

“Not only does she translate their books,” her husband said as he hovered close by during our conversation, “but she prays for these men every day while she types. Sometimes it takes a long time for her finger to hit the key, or for her to get the paper in the machine, but all the time she is praying for those whose books she is working on.”

I looked at her wasted form on the sofa, her head pulled down and her feet curled back under her body.
Oh, Lord, why don’t You heal her?
I cried inwardly.

Her husband, sensing my anguish of soul, gave the answer. “God has a purpose in her sickness. Every other Christian in the city is watched by the secret police. But because she has been sick so long, no one ever looks in on her. They leave us alone, and she is the only person in all the city who can type quietly, undetected by the police.”

I looked around at the tiny room, so jammed full of furniture from better days. In one corner was the kitchen. Beside the cupboard was her husband’s “office,” a battered desk where he sorted the pages that came from her typewriter to pass them on to the Christians. I thought of Jesus sitting over against the treasury, and my heart leaped for joy as I heard Jesus bless this sick old woman who, like the widow, had given all she had. What a warrior!

When she enters the beautiful city

And the saved all around her appear,

Many people around will tell her:

It was you that invited me here.

(author unknown)

Ellen and I returned to Holland where we were able to obtain a new typewriter and have it shipped to her. Now she could make carbon copies of her translations.

Today we got a letter from her husband. In the early morning hours last week, she left to be with the Lord. But, he said, she had worked up until midnight that same night, typing with that one finger to the glory of God.

Haven’t you yet learned that your body is the home of the Holy Spirit God gave you, and that he lives within you? Your own body does not belong to you. For God has bought you with a great price. So use every part of your body to give glory back to God, because he owns it
.

1 Corinthians 6:19–20,
LB

I
n Holland we have many churches with belfries. The bells in the steeples are rung by hand, with a rope that is pulled from the vestibule of the church.

One day a young Flemish girl, who had repented and received deliverance from lust and impurity, came to me while I was speaking in one of these churches.

“Even though I have been delivered,” she said, “at night I still keep dreaming of my old way of life. I am afraid I will slip back into Satan’s grasp.”

“Up in that church tower,” I said, nodding toward the belfry, is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding, then dong, slower and slower, until there’s a final dong and it stops.

“I believe the same thing is true of deliverance. When the demons are cast out in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, or when sin is confessed and renounced, then Satan’s hand is removed from the rope. But if we worry about our past bondage, Satan will use this opportunity to keep the echoes ringing in our minds.”

A sweet light spread across the girl’s face. “You mean even though I sometimes have temptations, that I am still free, that Satan is no longer pulling the rope which controls my life?”

“The purity of your life is evidence of your deliverance,” I said. “You should not worry about the dings and the dongs, they are nothing but echoes.”

Demons seldom leave without leaving behind their vibrations —dings and dongs. It is as though they give the clapper one big swing on the way out, scaring us into thinking they are still there. They know that even though they have to flee at the name of Jesus, if we grow fearful over the remaining echoes, other demons can come in and take their place.

The same is true of forgiveness. When we forgive someone, we take our hand off the rope. But if we’ve been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn’t be surprised when the old angry thoughts keep coming up for a while. They’re just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down.

The Bible promises that after we confess and denounce our sins, God cleanses us from them by the blood of Jesus. Indeed, He says, “Your sins and iniquities will I remember no more” (see Heb. 8:12). However, we can do something God cannot do. We can remember our old sins. These are the dings and the dongs of our past life. When we hear them, we need to remember that through Jesus’ sacrifice on Calvary, Satan can no longer pull the rope in our life.

We may be tempted. We may even fall back occasionally. But we have been delivered from the bondage of sin. Even though the vibrations may still sound in our lives, they will grow less and less, and eventually stop completely.

Once Satan has been cast out of the house of your life, he cannot return as long as you walk in obedience. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. However, that does not prevent him (or his demons) from standing outside the house and shouting through the windows, saying, “We’re still here!”

But, hallelujah, we know Satan for who he is—the prince of liars. He is
not
still here—he has been cast out. So whenever you hear one of those old echoes in your life—one of the dings or dongs—you need to stop right then and say, “Thank You, Jesus. You have bought me with Your blood and sin has no right to sound off in my life.”

And when you stand praying, if you have a grievance against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you the wrongs you have done
.

Mark 11:25,
NEB

I
wish I could say that after a long and fruitful life, traveling the world, I had learned to forgive all my enemies. I wish I could say that merciful and charitable thoughts just naturally flowed from me and on to others. But they don’t. If there is one thing I’ve learned since I’ve passed my eightieth birthday, it’s that I can’t store up good feelings and behavior—but only draw them fresh from God each day.

Maybe I’m glad it’s that way, for every time I go to Him, He teaches me something else. I recall the time (and I was almost seventy) when some Christian friends whom I loved and trusted did something which hurt me. You would have thought that, having been able to forgive the guards in Ravensbruck, forgiving Christian friends would be child’s play. It wasn’t.

For weeks I seethed inside. But at last I asked God again to work His miracle in me. And again it happened: first the coldblooded decision, then the flood of joy and peace. I had forgiven my friends; I was restored to my Father.

Then why was I suddenly awake in the middle of the night, rehashing the whole affair again?
My friends!I
thought.
People I loved
. If it had been strangers, I wouldn’t have minded so.

I sat up and switched on the light. “Father, I thought it was all forgiven. Please help me do it.”

But the next night I woke up again.
They’d talked so sweetly too! Never a hint of what they were planning
. “Father!” I cried in alarm. “Help me!”

Then it was that another secret of forgiveness became evident. It is not enough to simply say, “I forgive you.” I must also begin to live it out. And in my case that meant acting as though their sins, like mine, were buried in the depths of the deepest sea. If God could remember them no more—and He had said, “[Your] sins and iniquities will I remember no more” (Heb. 10:17)—then neither should I. And the reason the thoughts kept coming back to me was that I kept turning their sin over in my mind.

And so I discovered another of God’s principles: We can trust God not only for our emotions but also for our thoughts. As I asked Him to renew my mind, He also took away my thoughts.

He still had more to teach me, however, even from this single episode. Many years later, after I had passed my eightieth birthday, an American friend came to visit me in Holland. As we sat in my little apartment in Baarn, he asked me about those people from long ago who had taken advantage of me.

“It is nothing,” I said a little smugly. “It is all forgiven.”

“By you, yes,” he said. “But what about them? Have they accepted your forgiveness?”

“They say there is nothing to forgive! They deny it ever happened. No matter what they say, though, I can prove they were wrong.” I went eagerly to my desk. “See, I have it in black and white! I saved all their letters, and I can show you where …”

“Corrie!” My friend slipped his arm through mine and gently closed the drawer. “Aren’t you the one whose sins are at the bottom of the sea? Yet are the sins of your friends etched in black and white?”

For an astonishing moment I could not find my voice. “Lord Jesus,” I whispered at last, “who takes all my sins away, forgive me for preserving all these years the evidence against others! Give me grace to burn all the blacks and whites as a sweet-smelling sacrifice to Your glory.”

I did not go to sleep that night until I had gone through my desk and pulled out those letters—curling now with age—and fed them all into my little coal-burning grate. As the flames leaped and glowed, so did my heart.

“Forgive us our trespasses,” Jesus taught us to pray, “as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In the ashes of those letters, I was seeing yet another facet of His mercy. What more He would teach me about forgiveness in the days ahead I didn’t know, but tonight’s was good news enough.

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.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus
.