As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my
God. Psalm 42:1
Ron Boyd-MacMillan writes in his epic volume, Faith That
Endures:
I remember interviewing a former Muslim extremist in Egypt. He had converted
to Christ in his early twenties and led a Church for Muslim converts. This is
illegal in Egypt, and the fellowship was betrayed to the police. Soon this young
man found himself in prison. He was tortured. An electric cattle prod was pushed
into his mouth. He was whipped and hung from the ceiling with his hands tied
behind his back. But all this paled into insignificance compared to what other
prisoners called “the experience.” He was pushed into a stone box, a cube about
five feet square. No light. No latrine. And he was left there for a month, food
being passed through a grate every few days. Most prisoners went mad as a result
of “the experience”—but not him.
He found Christ there, and the words he used to describe his experience are
still the most brilliant description of the process of how persecution actually
delivers more of God:
“In great suffering you discover a different Jesus than you do in normal
life. Normally we are able to hide from ourselves who we really are and what we
are really like. The ego is well defended. But pain changes all that. Pain and
suffering bring up to the surface all the weak points of your personality. You
are too weak to mount the usual defences, and you just have to gaze at what you
are really like. I was a wreck in that cell. I was reduced to tears all the
time. Crying, weeping, sobbing, and wailing in the never-changing utter
darkness.
“I came face-to-face with how awful I really was. I saw all the horrible
things I had done, all the horrible things I was. I kept seeing myself again and
again. But just as I was about to collapse into complete despair and
self-loathing—and probably die—an incredible realisation burst into the cell
like an exploding star. It was this: Jesus loved me even right then, as I sat in
my own filth, weak, helpless and broken, empty and sinful. Even in that state,
He loved me, and Christ rushed in and filled me, and the filling was so great
because I was so empty.”[1]
RESPONSE: Today I realize that God can use persecution to draw people
closer to Himself.
PRAYER: Thank You Lord that You fill us when we are truly empty. Help me
not to hide my real condition from myself and before You.
1. Ron Boyd-MacMillan, Faith That Endures (Grand Rapids: Fleming
Revell, 2006), p. 319-320.
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