by John Piper
FIVE INSPIRING WIVES
In our own time, it is difficult to overstate the impact that the martyrdom of Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Pete Fleming, and Roger Youderian has had on generations of students.14 The word that appeared again and again in the testimonies of those who heard the Huaorani15 story was “dedication.”
But more than is often realized, it was the strength of the wives of these men that made many of us feel a surge of desire to be dedicated like that.
Barbara Youderian, the wife of Roger, wrote in her diary that night in January 1956:
Tonight the Captain told us of his finding four bodies in the river. One had tee-shirt and blue-jeans. Roj was the only one who wore them. . . . God gave me this verse two days ago, Psalm 48:14, “For this God is our God for ever and ever; He will be our Guide even unto death.” As I came face to face with the news of Roj’s death, my heart was filled with praise. He was worthy of his homegoing. Help me, Lord, to be both mummy and daddy.16
It is not difficult to feel the biblical point Paul was making. The suffering of the servants of God, borne with faith and even praise, is a shattering experience to apathetic saints whose lives are empty in the midst of countless comforts.
APPLICATIONS DOUBLED AT HIS DEATH
The execution of Wycliffe missionary Chet Bitterman by the Colombian guerrilla group M-19 on March 6, 1981, unleashed an amazing zeal for the cause of Christ. Chet had been in captivity for seven weeks while his wife, Brenda, and little daughters, Anna and Esther, waited in Bogotá. The demand of M-19 was that Wycliffe get out of Colombia.
They shot him just before dawn—a single bullet to the chest. Police found his body in the bus where he died, in a parking lot in the south of town. He was clean and shaven, his face relaxed. A guerrilla banner wrapped his remains. There were no signs of torture.
In the year following Chet’s death, “applications for overseas service with Wycliffe Bible Translators doubled. This trend was continued.”17 It is not the kind of missionary mobilization that any of us would choose. But it is God’s way. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).
4. Suffering Fills Up What Is Lacking in Christ’s Afflictions
The suffering of Christ’s messengers ministers to those they are trying to reach and may open them to the gospel. This was one of the ways Paul brought the gospel to bear on the people in Thessalonica. “You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit” (1 Thess. 1:5–6). The Thessalonians had imitated Paul by enduring much affliction with joy. And that is the kind of man Paul had proven to be among them. So it was his suffering that moved them and drew them to his authentic love and truth.
This is the kind of ministry Paul had in mind when he said, “As we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation” (2 Cor. 1:5–6). His sufferings were the means God was using to bring salvation to the Corinthian church. They could see the suffering love of Christ in Paul. He was actually sharing in Christ’s sufferings and making them real for the church.
This is part of what Paul meant in that amazing statement in Colossians 1:24: “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” Christ’s afflictions are not lacking in their atoning sufficiency. They are lacking in that they are not known and felt by people who were not at the cross. Paul dedicates himself not only to carry the message of those sufferings to the nations but also to suffer with Christ and for Christ in such a way so that what people see are “Christ’s sufferings.” In this way he follows the pattern of Christ by laying down his life for the life of the church. “I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2:10).
“WHEN WE SAW YOUR BLISTERED FEET”
In 1992, I had an opportunity to hear J. Oswald Sanders speak. His message touched deeply on suffering. He was eighty-nine years old at the time and still traveled and spoke around the world. He had written a book a year since turning seventy! I mention that only to exult in the utter dedication of a life poured out for the gospel without thought of coasting in self-indulgence from sixty-five to the grave.18
He told the story of an indigenous missionary who walked barefoot from village to village preaching the gospel in India. After a long day of many miles and much discouragement, he came to a certain village and tried to speak the gospel but was spurned. So he went to the edge of the village dejected and lay down under a tree and slept from exhaustion.
When he awoke, the whole town was gathered to hear him. The head man of the village explained that they had looked him over while he was sleeping. When they saw his blistered feet, they concluded that he must be a holy man and that they had been evil to reject him. They were sorry and wanted to hear the message for which he was willing to suffer so much to bring them.
AT THE THIRD BEATING THE WOMEN WEPT
One of the unlikeliest men to attend the Itinerant Evangelists’ Conference in Amsterdam sponsored by the Billy Graham Association was a Masai Warrior named Joseph. But his story won him a hearing with Dr. Graham himself. The story is told by Michael Card.
One day Joseph, who was walking along one of these hot, dirty African roads, met someone who shared the gospel of Jesus Christ with him. Then and there he accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior. The power of the Spirit began transforming his life; he was filled with such excitement and joy that the first thing he wanted to do was return to his own village and share that same Good News with the members of his local tribe.
Joseph began going from door-to-door, telling everyone he met about the Cross of Jesus and the salvation it offered, expecting to see their faces light up the way his had. To his amazement the villagers not only didn’t care, they became violent. The men of the village seized him and held him to the ground while the women beat him with strands of barbed wire. He was dragged from the village and left to die alone in the bush.
Joseph somehow managed to crawl to a waterhole, and there, after days of passing in and out of consciousness, found the strength to get up. He wondered about the hostile reception he had received from people he had known all his life. He decided he must have left something out or told the story of Jesus incorrectly. After rehearsing the message he had first heard, he decided to go back and share his faith once more.
Joseph limped into the circle of huts and began to proclaim Jesus. “He died for you, so that you might find forgiveness and come to know the living God,” he pleaded. Again he was grabbed by the men of the village and held while the women beat him, reopening wounds that had just begun to heal. Once more they dragged him unconscious from the village and left him to die.
To have survived the first beating was truly remarkable. To live through the second was a miracle. Again, days later, Joseph awoke in the wilderness, bruised, scarred—and determined to go back.
He returned to the small village and this time, they attacked him before he had a chance to open his mouth. As they flogged him for the third and probably the last time, he again spoke to them of Jesus Christ, the Lord. Before he passed out, the last thing he saw was that the women who were beating him began to weep.
This time he awoke in his own bed. The ones who had so severely beaten him were now trying to save his life and nurse him back to health. The entire village had come to Christ.19
Surely this is something of what Paul meant when he said, “I fill up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body” (Col. 1:24).
5. Suffering Enforces the Missionary Command to Go
The suffering of the church is used by God to reposition the missionary troops in places they might not
have otherwise gone. This is clearly the effect that Luke wants us to see in the story of the martyrdom of Stephen and the persecution that came after it. God spurs the church into missionary service by the suffering she endures. Therefore, we must not judge too quickly the apparent setbacks and tactical defeats of the church. If you see things with the eyes of God, the Master strategist, what you see in every setback is the positioning of troops for a greater advance and a greater display of his wisdom, power, and love.
Acts 8:1 charts the divine strategy for the persecution: “There arose on that day [the day of Stephen’s murder] a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.” Up until now no one had moved out to Judea and Samaria in spite of what Jesus had said in Acts 1:8: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria.” It is no accident that these were the very two regions to which the persecution sent the church. What obedience will not achieve, persecution will.
To confirm this divine missionary purpose of the persecution, Luke refers to it in Acts 11:19: “Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews.” But in Antioch some spoke to Greeks also. In other words, the persecution sent the church not only to Judea and Samaria (Acts 8:1) but also beyond to the nations (Acts 11:19).
THE INERTIA OF EASE, THE APATHY OF ABUNDA NCE
The lesson here is not just that God is sovereign and turns setbacks into triumphs. The lesson is also that comfort and ease and affluence and prosperity and safety and freedom often cause a tremendous inertia in the church. The very things that we think would produce personnel, energy, and creative investment of time and money for the missionary cause instead produce the exact opposite: weakness, apathy, lethargy, self-centeredness, preoccupation with security.
Studies have shown that the richer we are the smaller the percentage of our income we give to the church and its mission. The poorest fifth of the church gives 3.4 percent of its income to the church, and the richest fifth gives 1.6 percent—half as much as the poorer church members.20 It is a strange principle that probably goes right to the heart of our sinfulness and Christ’s sufficiency: Hard times, like persecution, often produce more personnel, more prayer, more power, and more open purses than do easy times.
It is difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, Jesus said (Matt. 19:23). It is also difficult for rich people to help others enter. Jesus said as much in the parable of the soils. “The cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful” (Mark 4:19)—unfruitful for missions and most every other good work.
Persecution can have harmful effects on the church, but prosperity it seems is even more devastating to the mission God calls us to. My point here is not that we should seek persecution. That would be presumption—like jumping off the temple. The point is that we should be wary of prosperity, excessive ease, comfort, and affluence. And we should not be disheartened but filled with hope if we are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, because the point of Acts 8:1 is that God makes persecution serve the mission of the church.
We must not be glib about this. The price of missionary advance is immense. Stephen paid for it with his life. And Stephen was one of the brightest stars in the Jerusalem sky. His enemies “could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking” (Acts 6:10). Surely he was more valuable alive than dead, we would all reason. He was needed! There was no one like Stephen! But God saw it another way.
HOW JOSEPH STALIN SERVED THE CAUSE
The way God brought entire Uzbek villages to Christ in the twentieth century is a great illustration of God’s strange use of upheaval and displacement. Bill and Amy Stearns tell the story in their hope-filled book, Catch the Vision 2000.21 The key player was Joseph Stalin.
Thousands of Koreans fled what is now North Korea in the 30s as the Japanese invaded. Many of these settled around Vladivostok. When Stalin in the late 30s and early 40s began developing Vladivostok as a weapons manufacturing center, he deemed the Koreans a security risk. So he relocated them in five areas around the Soviet Union. One of those areas was Tashkent, hub of the staunchly Muslim people called the Uzbeks. Twenty million strong, the Uzbeks had for hundreds of years violently resisted any Western efforts to introduce Christianity.
As the Koreans settled around Tashkent, the Uzbeks welcomed their industry and kindness. Within a few decades, the Koreans were included in nearly every facet of Uzbek cultural life.
As usual in God’s orchestration of global events, He had planted within the relocated Koreans strong pockets of believers. Little did Stalin suspect that these Koreans would not only begin enjoying a wildfire revival among their own people, they would also begin bringing their Muslim, Uzbek and Kazak friends to Christ.
The first public sign of the Korean revival and its breakthrough effects on the Uzbeks and Kazaks came on June 2, 1990, when in the first open air Christian meeting in the history of Soviet Central Asia, a young Korean from America preached to a swelling crowd in the streets of Alma-Ata, capital of Kazakhstan.
The result of these roundabout, decade-long maneuverings by God to position his people in inaccessible places is that Muslims, who would not receive missionaries, are confessing that Isa (Jesus) is the way, the truth, and the life. This was a costly strategy for many believers. Being uprooted from their homeland in Korea, and then again from their new home near Vladivostok, must have been a severe test of the Koreans’ faith that God is good and had a loving plan for their lives. The truth was that God did have a loving plan, and not only for them but also for many unreached Muslims among the Uzbek and Kazak peoples.
GOING FORWA RD BY GETTING ARRESTED
God’s strange ways of guiding the missionary enterprise are also seen in the way Jesus told the disciples to expect arrest and imprisonment as God’s deployment tactic to put them with people they would never otherwise reach. “They will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. This will be your opportunity to bear witness” (Luke 21:12–13; cf. Mark 13:9).
The June/July 1989 issue of Mission Frontiers carried an article signed with the pseudonym Frank Marshall. This missionary in a politically sensitive Latin American country told the story of his recent imprisonment. He and his coworkers had been beaten numerous times and thrown in jail before. This time federal agents accused him of fraud and bribery because they assumed he could not have gotten his official documents without lying. They did not believe that he had been born in the country.
In prison, the Lord spared him from sexual assault by a huge man wrapped in a towel with four gold chains around his neck and a ring on every finger. When put in the cell with this man, Frank began sharing the gospel with him and praying in his heart, “Lord, deliver me from this evil.” The man changed color, shouted at Frank to shut up, and told him to leave him alone.
Frank began to tell others about Christ when the men had free time in the courtyard. One Muslim named Satawa confessed Christ within the first week and invited Frank to answer questions from a group of fifteen other Muslims. In two weeks, Frank finally was able to get a lawyer. He also asked for a box of Bibles. The next Sunday forty-five men gathered in the courtyard to hear Frank preach. He spoke about how difficult it was for him to be away from his family and about how much God loved his Son and yet gave him up for sinners so that we could believe and live. Thirty of these men stayed afterward to pray and ask the Lord to lead them and forgive them. Frank was soon released and deported to the United States, but he now knows firsthand the meaning of Jesus’ words, “This will be your opportunity to bear witness.”
MIRACLES IN MOZAMBIQUE
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sp; During the 1960s, the Lord raised up an indigenous leader named Martinho Campos in the church in Mozambique. The story of his ministry, Life out of Death in Mozambique, is a remarkable testimony to God’s strange ways of missionary blessing.
Martinho was leading a series of meetings in the administrative area of Gurue sixty miles from his own area of Nauela. The police arrested him and put him in jail without a trial. The police chief, a European, assumed that the gatherings were related to the emerging guerrilla group Frelimo. But even when the Catholic priest told him that these men were just “a gathering of heretics,” he took no concern for justice, though he wondered why the common people brought so much food to the prisoner, as though he were someone important.
One night he was driving his truck with half a dozen prisoners in it and saw “what appeared to be a man in gleaming white, standing in the road, facing him.” He swerved so sharply that the truck rolled over, and he was trapped underneath. The prisoners themselves lifted the truck so that the police chief could get out.
After brief treatment in the hospital, he returned to talk to Martinho because he knew there was some connection between this vision and the prisoner. He entered Martinho’s cell and asked for forgiveness. Martinho told him about his need for God’s forgiveness and how to have it. The police chief said humbly, “Please pray for me.” Immediately the chief called for hot water so that the prisoner could wash, took him out of solitary confinement, and saw to it that a fair trial was held. Martinho was released.
But the most remarkable thing was what followed: “Not only did the Chief of Police make plain his respect for what Martinho stood for, but granted him official permission to travel throughout the whole area under his jurisdiction, in order to preach and hold evangelical services.”22 Such permission would never have been given through the ordinary channels.
But God had made a way through suffering. The imprisonment was for the advancement of the gospel.