12. Just a Handful of Dust
chapter twelve
Just a Handful of Dust
I stood up in my hotel room and hung up the phone—hard. I had just talked with our headquarters in India, and what I had heard outraged me. I wanted to do something about it, but there was nothing I could do until I got to India on my next trip. I sat down on the bed and stewed about the information I had just received.
Brother Paul, a respected national missionary, has a ministry on the pilgrimage island of Rameswaram, off the southeastern tip of India. Each year millions of devout Hindus flock to the island in hopes that their sins will be forgiven when they bathe in what they consider the sacred waters of the Indian Ocean. Brother Paul and his team are able to reach out to people from nearly every language group on the Indian Subcontinent.
Several months before, we had helped to arrange for Brother Paul to take a group of young people for a summer of practical training. I knew that if anyone could teach those students the meaning of discipleship, it would be him.
But one young man from my own village had been with Brother Paul. When I saw him I was shocked. Normally I would consider him skinny anyway, but after his time in Rameswaram he looked as if he had lost half his weight!
And now I had learned that by the end of the first month, more than 70 percent of these young people had left! One day when Brother Paul had arrived home, he had apparently discovered that the last of the deserters had sneaked out, bought a train ticket with some borrowed money and taken off. Only one or two ended up staying for the entire summer.
So I was angry. We had invested time, energy and our reputation to send these young people to learn from him. We had sent money to Brother Paul for their food and other necessities. Why on earth was he treating them so badly? And why did he let them out of the battle? These looked like lost opportunities to me.
I resolved to confront Brother Paul the next time I saw him.
Sure enough, the next time I traveled to India I met Brother Paul the very first week. Without even asking how his ministry was going, I jumped on him, venting my frustrations about this failed ministry opportunity and his manner of discipling these students. On and on I went, accusing him—justly, I felt—of what seemed to be poor judgment.
Brother Paul wears a perpetual smile on his face. If you have something to say, he listens until you are through. Then, calmly and quietly, he speaks just a few sentences. When he is finished, you do not know what else to say.
Now, in his quiet way, Brother Paul said simply, “Do you know that when 70 people come with me for training, I realize even before they arrive that only a handful will make it?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, incredulous.
“You know very well that most Bible colleges and seminaries do not teach students to be Christlike disciples. When they come to me for training, I do not ask them to do things I don’t do. Everywhere they go, I go with them. I design everything to make them count the cost. I do not want to spend three months just to find out that they will not make it. So right from the start I give them the chance to count the cost. Most of them go back.
“This is not the first time this has happened.” He finished with his little smile, “You’ve only just now come to learn what has been happening here.”
Needless to say, I was silent. There was nothing more to say. Nor could I say anything to change what Brother Paul was doing. But I determined to keep my eye on his ministry.
Rameswaram was one of the places where hundreds of thousands of refugees arrived during the civil war in Sri Lanka. Haggard and half-dead from lack of food, they had barely escaped with their lives. Each morning Brother Paul and his team of more than 20 believers rose early to go to the seashore and count the number of refugees who had come in. Then they went back to cook breakfast and prepare tea for these people. Every day was full of ministry and outreach in Rameswaram and the surrounding villages.
I do not know how many hours of sleep the team members got during those days of ministering to the refugees. But Brother Paul and his team labored seven days a week for months on end.
One of the team members who worked alongside Brother Paul came from a middle-class family. His family was upset with him, I learned, because he chose not to marry. Once again I questioned Brother Paul.
“Is this because you are brainwashing him with your radical way of living?” I asked.
“I would be happy for him to get married,” Brother Paul replied. “I would gladly help in any way. I’m married and have six children of my own. Why don’t you talk to him?”
So I did. The next time I saw the young man, I asked, “Is everything all right with you?”
“Yes, fine,” he replied.
“What about your plans to get married?” I probed.
“I want to be able to serve the Lord without being married.”
I thought if I waited until the next time I saw him, he might be willing for me to help him find a wife. (That’s how we do it in India.) But each time I asked, the young man told me firmly no.
Then it began to dawn on me how Brother Paul could build a team of people willing to live a grueling lifestyle and minister the Gospel under very difficult circumstances. He did not draw these team members by compulsion or force. Rather, as he said, he gave them the chance to count the cost. A few, like him, were willing to die for the sake of the cross. Having counted the cost, they loved Jesus more than life itself.
Standing on Emptiness
I am sure that Brother Paul’s call from the Lord is unique, just as the apostle Paul’s was. But I want you to think seriously about what you have just read and what you are about to read.
From my conversations with Brother Paul, I recognized a basic principle involving our walk with the Lord and our service to Him: God wants us, in our life and ministry for Him, to stand on emptiness.
What is emptiness? It is a void, a vacuum, total nothingness. It is like holding onto something you cannot tangibly feel. Your eyes see nothing but still you follow. Your feet step out onto what looks like thin air. Standing on emptiness means we are stripped of not only tangible things but intangible as well. Everything we are, everything we trust—our own know-how, abilities, talents, strength—all are gone. Nothing we do for the Lord can ever come from our own resources.
Many people around the world strip themselves of material goods in order to seek internal peace. In India more than any other country, thousands teach and practice asceticism after the example of Buddha, the wealthy prince who left his wife and child and wandered around the country for the rest of his life meditating.
But this is not what I mean by standing on emptiness. What Buddha did, and what many do today, is only the attempt of the self to gain salvation. In biblical terms, the Lord wants us to come to a place where we are drawing on nothing but Him so that, as the apostle Paul said, “this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7). There is no way we can say, “I did that.”
Jesus told the crowds, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).
Then there was the rich young ruler who lacked only one thing to inherit eternal life. Jesus told him, “Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (Luke 18:22). The young man went away troubled because he loved his riches more than he did eternal life.
Throughout the Bible we see God drawing His people to a place where they were suspended over empty space, where they were challenged to operate out of faith and total dependence, where there was nothing tangible to cling to but Him. Let’s take a quick trip through the Old and New Testaments and look at nine examples—and nine possible excuses for not standing on emptiness.
“It’s Physically Impossible”
God promised Abraham from the very beginning that He would produce from him a great nation, but He waited to fulfill that promise until it seemed impossible to Abraham.
Finally Abraham came to the place where he could say, “Just look at me, Lord. I’m a wrinkled old man. There’s nothing left in my body that could produce a child. It’s as good as dead. And look at Sarah—she’s an old woman. Her ability to bear children ceased long ago. I’m 100 years old, Lord, and she’s 90—and You still say we’re going to have a child!”
God waited until Abraham had nothing humanly speaking to hold onto; he was totally dependent on God for the fulfillment of the promise. Abraham and Sarah knew that if they were still to have a child, it would have to be an act of God.
Then God was able to work (see Genesis 21).
“We Have an Agenda”
Some centuries later, when God led the children of Israel out of Egypt, He miraculously spared their oldest sons from the final plague. He opened the Red Sea for them to walk through on dry ground. He provided food and water for them each step of the way.
But what happened in the camp? They grumbled because God did not deliver according to their schedule. They had an agenda, perhaps something like this: “Tomorrow we’ll have breakfast, lunch and dinner at these set times. The first night we’ll have beef, the next night chicken and the next night fish. When we reach that certain spot, we’ll have water. And after three months we’ll need a change of clothing and shoes.”
Reasonable expectations, but that is not how God led them. “Whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out; but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out—until the day it lifted” (Exodus 40:36–37).
What was God trying to do? He wanted them to focus their hearts not on what they would eat the next day, or on where they would go, but on Him.
“We Need All the Help We Can Get”
Gideon had 32,000 warriors when God first led him to war against the Midianites. But God told him, “You have too many men for me to deliver Midian into their hands” (Judges 7:2). So the Lord reduced the number of the army to 10,000.
Gideon must have been thinking, Too many men? The army of the Midianites is without number—like grasshoppers camped out there in the valley. We need all the people we can get!
Then the Lord reduced the number further. He told Gideon to choose only the men who, drinking from the water, lapped from their hands to their mouths and did not put their mouths directly to the water. Only 300 drank in this way.
What was God’s purpose in this selection process? To show that it would be His victory alone, and to weed out those who did not put their trust wholly in the Lord. The remaining 300 men were not stupid; they knew the enemy they were about to fight, and that it was impossible, from a human standpoint, to win. Yet they were willing to go into battle regardless of the outcome because they realized the victory did not depend on them. They were willing to stand on emptiness. God would fight for them.
“We Want Someone More Predictable”
Do you remember when Israel clamored for a king? They told Samuel, “Appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have” (l Samuel 8:5).
Have you ever wondered why these people longed for someone to rule over them? They wanted to be sure what would happen tomorrow. They wanted to be confident that things would work out a certain way. They wanted that secure feeling of knowing that the storehouses were full and that if something disastrous happened, a king would be there to take care of them and defend them with his army.
Humanly speaking their request made sense. But God wanted them to come to a place where they were standing on emptiness, where they would say, “We don’t know about tomorrow, but the Lord is our tomorrow. He is all we need.” So God told the prophet Samuel, “It is not you they have rejected as their king, but me” (see verse 7).
Samuel went back and warned the people how a king would oppress them. A king would take their sons and daughters, fields and vineyards, donkeys and sheep, and themselves to be his servants.
But the Israelites wanted a king. God was so unpredictable! They failed Him and He walked away. They went to fight and many were killed. Later He told them it happened because they sinned and that they had better repent. Couldn’t He help them out when they were in a tight spot and tell them later about their sins? No, they wanted an earthly king.
The Israelites were no different from us. And in the end, of course, God gave them what they wanted.
“There’s Strength in Numbers”
Move forward through the years to when Israel’s second king, David, commanded his captain to take a census of the army of Israel. Joab and the army commanders protested: God was the One who had given David the fighting men; it did not matter how many there were.
But “the king’s word ... overruled Joab” (2 Samuel 24:4) and 70,000 Israelites were wiped out as a result of David’s disobedience to God.
This does not seem reasonable to us. After all, David was the king. Didn’t he have every right to know what he had in terms of strength, just in case another army rose up against Israel? Isn’t it logical to take inventory?
But even before God’s judgment, David knew he had sinned. He had forgotten the times when he was a young boy watching the sheep and had to face wild animals, the time he had confronted Goliath. Who had given David these victories? All he had had to count on then was God. God was all he needed.
The problem in this story was David’s inner attitude. He had come to a place in his life where he no longer wanted to stand on emptiness; he wanted certainty and knowledge. And his pride led to immediate, terrible destruction.
“Look What I’ve Accomplished”
Uzziah, who began his reign at the age of 16, was one of the kings of Judah who followed the Lord. We learn from 2 Chronicles 26 that Uzziah accomplished an incredible number of tasks while he was king: “He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD. ... As long as he sought the LORD, God gave him success” (verses 4–5). Verse 7 adds, “God helped him.” Remember, we are talking about a 16-year-old boy!
But Uzziah’s life did not end as well as it had begun. “After Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall” (verse 16). He was no longer an unsure, awkward adolescent. Now he knew his way around. He had a reputation. He could negotiate and wheel and deal. Uzziah was a self-made man. He knew the correct protocol for every situation and had an air of dignity about him.
Do you see what can happen when you trust in your own strength? Your heart becomes lifted up to your own destruction. The attitude of the heart which we must continually guard against is the attitude of thinking we have it made.
“Is There Something Else We Can Cling To?”
The story of Job offers a fascinating contrast. In order to prove that Job was not righteous and godly but would curse God to His face, Satan stripped him of everything— house, land, herds, children. Finally Job found himself on a heap of ashes, his body covered with boils, scraping himself with a piece of pottery.
At least I have my wife to stand by me, Job might have said to himself. She’s lived with me for many years, slept with me, borne my children. She knows my thoughts, sees my life. She’ll understand.
But his wife turned to him and said, “Why are you suffering like this? Curse God so you can at least die and get out of your misery.”
Well, I have my friends to support me, Job may have thought. Even if all is lost, even if I’m sick for many years to come, they’re here. They can’t heal me or do anything to change my situation, but at least they understand me and can offer some inner courage to help me through these struggles.
But his friends spent nearly the rest of the book misunderstanding and accusing him. He could hardly open his mouth before they used what he said against him.
Everything Job had was gone. He was left with nothing to stand on. But that was all right; he recognized something more real than everything else. In the middle of it all, despite the accusations mounted against him, Job said, “I know that my Redeemer lives” (Job 19:25).
In the end Job came through the test, pure and approved.
“Is There Someone Else We Can Turn To?”
Some think Jesus had only 12 disciples, but we read in the Gospels that He had many more than that. At one point in His ministry, at least 82 men followed Jesus.
Everything was going wonderfully for them. They were fed and taken care of, thousands were coming to see Jesus and spectacular miracles were being performed. It was a great life!
Then one day Jesus began to tell them the other side of the story. He told them that He was going to die.
This was new information for them. He explained more about His suffering and coming death on the cross by telling them that He must give them His body and blood in order for them to have life. On hearing this, many of his disciples just walked away. In the end, only a few remained.
“You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
John 6:67–68
Most saw the cross as a means of loss, discouragement and death. Only a few saw the life and hope that the cross had to offer.
Walking with Jesus is always like this. A huge crowd may start out, just as in a marathon, but only a few make it to the end.
“What About My Rights?”
Jesus told a parable of a servant who worked all day in the fields, plowing and watching the sheep. At the end of the day, when his master arrived home, the servant prepared his supper and waited on him while he ate. Afterward the servant cleaned up. And not until late into the evening did the servant sit down to eat his own supper.
What does Jesus say this servant’s response—and ours—should be? “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty” (Luke 17:10).
This is exactly where the Lord wants us to be. After all we have done, we are still unworthy servants. Nothing I am and nothing I have done gives me even one square inch to stand on and say, “I’ve done a good job. I deserve some commendation.”
As the lines in the familiar hymn “Rock of Ages” put it,
Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling.
The Lesson of the Dollar Bills
Clinging only to God and nothing else is a lesson I have to keep remembering.
One day Margaret, our bookkeeper for our Texas office, brought me an envelope and showed me what was inside. Four dollar bills—very special ones. I had written on each of them in red and given them to her to keep, but I had forgotten they were there.
A few years before, Gisela and I had sat at our dinner table with Terry, another member of our staff, and reminisced about the years we each had spent with an evangelistic youth mission. We remembered “the good old days” when we walked from village to village, and how our ministry had changed dramatically when we were able to use a truck or van to get from place to place. Then we had been able to move out full steam ahead to penetrate unreached areas with the Gospel.
How wonderful it would be, we thought now around the dining room table, to purchase vehicles for our national missionaries! We could equip them with Gospel literature, a generator, a projector and an Indian-made film on the life of Christ. Then we could send teams to remote areas to spread the Gospel.
Purchasing and equipping even one van was an ordeal. At $12,000 each, we did not come by them easily. But the more we talked, the more convinced we became that van teams could be a major force in reaching pioneer areas for Christ.
As we sat at the table, I took a dollar bill from my wallet and wrote on it in big red letters, “The first dollar down payment, by faith, toward the purchase of 100 vehicles.” I took another dollar bill and wrote, “The first dollar down payment toward the purchase of 100 projectors.” In a few moments four bills sat on the table representing our faith in the Lord to provide for this goal.
To date we have received enough funds to purchase hundreds of vans and equip them to reach pioneer areas that have never heard the good news of the Gospel! This means that on each van team, five missionaries can travel all over South Asia, going to thousands of villages and sharing the love of Jesus. This is the first time the majority of these simple village people have ever heard the name of Jesus.
So when Margaret showed me those four dollar bills in the envelope, I was reminded that nothing we had done had made this come to pass. It was God and God alone who did it.
Whenever I remember David’s prayer in Psalm 19, my heart is sobered: “Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me” (Psalm 19:13 KJV). We must not take the goodness of the Lord for granted or indulge the slightest sense of pride or self-congratulation. And we must never entertain thoughts like, Based on my past actions, I have it made or We can do it ourselves—all we need is some ingenious planning.
Where we have strengths that God can use, let us say honestly to Him, “I acknowledge that I am strong in these areas, but they are gifts from You, and I surrender them to You to use as You see fit.” Nothing we do for the Lord ever comes from our own resources.
Our opportunities are unlimited. But beyond the challenge to spread the Gospel into developing nations, something else is far more pressing: We are totally dependent on God. If we do not look to Him but rather to ourselves to meet our needs, only disaster can result.
Something wonderful happens, on the other hand, when we regard ourselves as helplessly dependent on the Lord. In our hearts and attitudes, we must remain as children before Him. If we are enabled to accomplish anything, it is because of the Lord and His grace. The secret of His blessing on any work, large or small, is that all the glory goes to Him.
Serving Our Generation
But we are self-willed individuals who live in flesh-and-blood bodies and strive naturally for personal praise. How can we regard ourselves as helplessly dependent on the Lord and give Him all the glory? Look at Psalm 103:14: “He knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” This verse assures me that the Lord knows the stuff I am made of. The question is, Am I able to remember it? Will I daily recognize that all I am made of is a little handful of dust?
The Lord rescues us repeatedly from our tendency to stop depending on Him and start depending on ourselves. He often keeps us from doing things in our own flesh instead of in His strength. Sometimes, in His mercy, He even causes those things to fail.
Because when all is said and done, when history is sealed up and time runs out, God will make sure that nothing that is a product of the flesh will last for eternity. He has never accepted a work of our flesh and He never will, however good it might look to us. Nothing, not preaching thousands of sermons, not even seeming to turn the world upside-down, will enter eternity if it has been a product of our flesh. Anything lasting for eternity will have been done by Him and Him alone.
We must heed the warning of God to the children of Israel as they were about to pass over the Jordan River into the Promised Land:
When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. ... Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God. ... You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.”
Deuteronomy 8:10, 12–14, 17
We are no different than the children of Israel. Take a look around you at the people and ministries you know God has called to do His heart’s desire. Often flesh gets in the way. People become arrogant and take the glory for themselves. When the Lord uses people for His purposes, He often has to strip away dependence on intelligence, education, abilities, strengths. He has to make them nothing before He can build them back up again for His service.
It is refreshing to see how God carries along a person or ministry that acknowledges dependence on Him. Some things we plan never take place. Other things we never expect may happen in a mighty way. This helps us know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God has accomplished these things.
We read this about a great man of God: “When David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep” (Acts 13:36). After doing all the things we know we should do, we have not gained any credit. It is God’s purpose and in His strength that we are serving.
I pray that we will no longer trust our own resources or understanding. Whatever God has called you to do, you can accomplish it when the Lord is doing it and not you. He is looking not for Bible knowledge, impeccable theology, great zeal, missions conferences or computer information networks. He is looking for surrender—men and women at home who are willing to say, “My life no longer belongs to me; I have given it as a sacrifice.” He is looking for men and women on the mission field who are willing to say, “I came to this place with a one-way ticket. They can kill me if they want, but I am here to preach the Gospel.”
How can we be sure we will be able to accomplish the task of world evangelism? Can we handle the work? Isn’t the plan to evangelize the world a little ambitious?
All I can say is that the Lord is with us. Have you seen how the wind comes and carries off the dry leaves from beneath a tree? That is the best way for me to explain what I mean. Let the wind of God blow you away and carry you wherever He wishes.
And then what? Don’t we need to know more than that?
No. I do not know where the Lord will have you or me go tomorrow or next year. All I know is that I am standing on emptiness and declaring total dependence on the Lord. I am but a handful of dust. I have nothing in myself that I can cling to, no strength of my own to carry me. It is He who leads me, whether that means having everything or having nothing. All that matters is Him.