13. Stripping Away Our Secret Longings
chapter thirteen
Stripping Away Our Secret Longings
I was sitting at my desk working on correspondence and phone contacts when a knock came at the door.
“Come in,” I called.
Dave, our computer department manager, poked his head in the door. “I have some information here I think you’d like to see.”
We were in the process of making a decision on a much-needed computer system for our headquarters in Texas. As I read through Dave’s figures and dates that plotted our growth in the near future, I found myself getting excited.
Wow! I thought. This is fantastic! We’re doing really well.
My mind started to project into the next 5 to 10 years, until it seemed to me that we were going to become one of the important ministries in the days to come.
But as soon as Dave left, the Lord began to speak to my heart: What is this ministry really all about? Are these plans what you are setting your hopes on? Are you standing on your own dreams and schemes?
I had done it again. Not only had I forgotten for a few moments that it was the Lord who had brought us to the place we were today, but I had been longing secretly for more acceptance, more recognition. I had to repent of these longings and think back to where I had come from.
I joined a youth missions movement in 1966 and began eight years of intensive Gospel outreach. I came as a 16-year-old boy, skinny legs poking out through my shorts, still barefoot and knowing no language other than my native tongue. I did not know much about anything, but I was certain of God’s calling on my life.
Each year the leadership of the movement gathered the entire group of missionaries together—between three and four hundred of us—for a conference. New plans were made, and we were challenged, refreshed and encouraged.
Typically one of the leaders stood up in front of us and said, “Brothers and sisters, we need to pray—we have no more food.”
I was hungry, so I prayed! It was wonderful to see how the Lord answered our prayers, meeting all our needs.
After the conference we were divided into teams of eight or nine members. Each team was assigned an area of India. We had a leader and an old, beat-up truck to carry literature. We were given a few dollars for food, our truck was filled with tracts and Gospel literature, and off we went, sitting on crates in the back of the truck as it swerved and bounced over thousands of miles of Indian roads.
We would drive as far as we could until the truck ran out of diesel. By that time our money had run out as well. Our leader would say, “Let’s pray; then we’ll go and sell our Gospel literature.” By the afternoon we would have enough money from the sale of our literature to buy a few chapatis (tortilla-like breads) for each of us, as well as fill the truck with more diesel.
“All right,” our leader would say, “one hour of rest, then we’ll be going again.”
Day in and day out, that is how we lived.
Often there were no local churches to sleep in, so we would sleep on the side of the road under the truck. One night it rained so hard that even the roadside was filled with a swirling, muddy flood. Shivering like wet rats, our clothes plastered to our skin, we all crawled into the back of the truck, where we hardly found even a place to sit. Bright and early the next morning we moved on.
Several years went by, and I became a team leader. One day in North India I was called on to preach in a meeting. At that point in my life I owned two shirts, two pairs of pants and a pair of sneakers. But North India in the wintertime is a very cold place, and that day was no exception.
The electricity had gone out, so all the windows were open for light. The winter wind blew mercilessly through the building. I was freezing. As I stood there in my thin shirt, holding my Bible, everyone waited expectantly. They were all wearing thick woolen blankets and coats. I shivered. My knees were knocking together and my teeth were chattering so hard I could no longer speak.
Lord, I said in my heart, I believe I am doing what You told me to do, but I can’t even open my mouth, much less talk. I want to talk to these people about You, but I can’t. Please help me.
Suddenly I felt as if there were a wall of fire around me. Instantly I was warm! The Lord had answered my prayer.
That day I preached on hell, and a few were saved at the end of my message. But I was warm only during the time I preached! As soon as I finished I began to shiver and chatter once again.
All the years I was with this Gospel team, we lived out some of the passages in the New Testament. We were faced continually with loss, persecution, beatings and stonings, but we never worried whether we would live or die. We had just one thought in our hearts: These people don’t know the Lord. Live or die—fine. We will preach the Gospel. If we are killed, praise the Lord—heaven is a better place anyway.
“I Consider Them Rubbish”
In the last chapter we said that it is by God’s strength alone that we accomplish anything for Him. In this chapter we examine a corresponding truth: it must be God’s agenda alone that guides us. As committed, sober-minded believers, we must identify and strip away any secret longings that we find within ourselves for acceptance, security, reputation, advancement, the approval of others, anything that is not from God. I can tell you from personal experience, it is dangerous to fall into this trap!
Just before Moses’ death, God called him to present himself, along with Joshua, in the Tabernacle. There He gave Moses a solemn look at the future:
You are going to rest with your fathers, and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them. On that day I will become angry with them and forsake them; I will hide my face from them, and they will be destroyed.
Deuteronomy 31:16–17
To avoid the same idolatry, we must look prayerfully to the Lord and continuously offer up any secret longings of our hearts. Are you worshiping any foreign gods? Make it a practice to keep surrendering to God your future, your plans, your ideas, your dreams, your hopes. Give Him the freedom to lead you wherever He chooses.
Jesus laid down His own desires when He was led outside of the city gate bearing the shame of the cross. We are called to follow Him: “Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore” (Hebrews 13:13). I am not saying you have to endure nakedness or crucifixion to prove your spirituality. But I cannot emphasize too strongly how vital it is to come to the place where you relinquish every longing in your heart to the Lord.
The apostle Paul did. He was obviously an intelligent man. He presents his résumé to us in Philippians 3: He was well-educated and, “as for legalistic righteousness, faultless” (verse 6). But he goes on to say,
Whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own. ...
verses 7–9
All the things we would consider benefits—background, intelligence, abilities, education, influence—Paul counted as dung. Trash. Rubbish. Toward the end of his life, when he knew his enemies were waiting for him, he said, “I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace” (Acts 20:24).
Paul did not cling to his life. There was nothing he stood on that he was afraid of falling from, no ambition he was clinging to that he was afraid of losing. He cherished only “the task the Lord Jesus has given me.”
Plans and strategies are not wrong, but we must commit ourselves only to the task He has given us and cast everything else aside.
Willing to Die
While I was on a past trip to India, a letter arrived for me. Since it was certified, I had to sign for it. I opened the envelope and found a letter wrapped around several pages from a Bible. The portions were half-burned and the edges charred. A little ash remained in the envelope.
As I unfolded the letter and began to read it, I sat down slowly. The letter was from one of the leaders of a militant anti-Christian movement. It described all the things I was involved in—missionary support, prayer meetings, a radio program, everything. The list was intended to convince me that I was being watched closely.
“We are sending you this letter as a warning,” the leader wrote. “Unless you stop these activities, you will not be alive many more days or months.”
He had signed his letter in blood.
This letter made me think.
What are we about in this ministry? I asked myself. What are we creating on the mission field? What kind of workers and leaders are we producing? What direction are we heading? What kind of life are we challenging people to live?
And I think about Isaac.
Before he was saved, Isaac was devout in his traditional religion, frequently practicing witchcraft and even sacrificing many small animals. When Isaac found Jesus, he forsook his gods and was delivered from all demonic possession. Now he travels to different areas as an evangelist, sharing the Gospel and saving souls.
But not without a price.
A short while later Isaac went to a nearby village to preach and share his testimony. While he was speaking, a gang grabbed him and told him, “Just as you used to cut the throats of small animals and shed their blood, now we will cut you and shed your blood!”
They dragged him from the village to a heavily wooded area and beat him severely. Then they tied him to a tree, pulling his hands backwards around the trunk, and left to call more people to kill him. They had selected the tree carefully: It was covered with fierce biting ants.
The ants crawled all over his body, biting him repeatedly. Isaac was in terrible pain and lapsed in and out of consciousness.
Then, in the haze of his agony, he saw an old woman, perhaps 80 years old, standing in front of him. Untying him she said, “You must leave here quickly.”
He did as he was told. But as he hurried off before his persecutors returned, he looked back for the old lady. She had vanished. Then Isaac realized God had provided a way for his escape.
Just a week later Isaac came to a local pastors conference and shared his testimony. The pastors were challenged and encouraged to hear of his faith in the Lord and his willingness to lay down his life.
So as I thought about the letter from the fanatic and about Isaac’s singlehearted commitment, the Lord impressed me that it was His task I was about. Part of this task is leaving behind my own ambitions for the ministry, my own desires to be accepted, and following the Lord’s agenda completely—just like the skinny kid in shorts who aspired to do nothing but stand and preach the Gospel to people who had never heard.
More like Jesus
How about you? Have you stripped yourself of the secret longings deep within your heart for acceptance, security and recognition? Is there something the Lord has asked you to do that you have put off because you are afraid you will lose control of the situation? Is your prayer life proof of your total dependence on the Lord? Do you ask Him to show you His plans or are you asking Him, in effect, to bless your own agenda? Can you honestly say that this world is not your home and that you are simply passing through?
If someone were to point a gun at you and say, “Deny Christ or I’ll kill you,” what would your response be? Would you say, as Paul did, “I consider my life worth nothing to me”? What has hindered you from giving unselfishly to reach the lost in our generation?
The days before us will not be easy ones—either for our brothers and sisters on the mission field or for believers in the West. I foresee major attacks, opposition, even martyrdom for many of our missionaries. And I foresee that sometime in the near future many thousands will be killed for their faith. All the signs point to this.
What does it take to live in times like these?
It takes believers who have nothing but God to cling to, because if there were something left in their lives that they counted dear, they would run off in fear.
No one can write any words that will make us something we are not. I can share examples and illustrations, but God has to do the work within us, developing our hearts and our attitudes.
The most vital thing for all of us, as we grow in our walks with the Lord and answer the call of eternity, is to become more like Jesus.