God's Smuggler

by Brother Andrew

‘And yet,’ she said gently, ‘God hasn’t come to a standstill.’ Suddenly she laughed. ‘I think you’re like one of your own lumps of clay, Andy. God has a plan for you, and He’s trying to get you into the centre of it, and you keep dodging and slithering away.’ She turned her dark eyes on mine. ‘How do you know? Maybe He wants to make you into something wonderful!’

The true aim of the school was a simple one: to turn out the best Christians these students were capable of being.

My ‘yes’ to God had always been a ‘yes, but’. Yes, but I’m not educated. Yes, but I’m lame.

Time and place are our own limitations, Andy; we mustn’t impose them upon God.’

Because if He were a King in name only, I would rather go back to the chocolate factory. I would remain a Christian, but I would know that my religion was only a set of principles, excellent and to be followed, but hardly demanding devotion. Suppose on the other hand that I were to discover God to be a Person, in the sense that He communicated and cared and loved and led. That was something quite different. That was the kind of King I would follow into any battle.

Throughout this time I sensed that God was playing a game with me. Perhaps He was using these experiences to teach me the difference between a Want and Need. Toothpaste tasted good, new razor blades shaved quicker – but these were luxuries, not necessities. I was certain that should a real Need ever arise, God would supply it.

What right had an ambassador to hold on to money when another of the King’s children stood in front of him saying he was hungry.

How much for granted I had always taken my right to own this Book.

If the Holy Spirit was directing people’s actions so minutely today, this was the very thing I needed to know more about.

‘That’s the excitement in obedience,’ he said. ‘Finding out later what God had in mind.’

And so, for the first of many times, I said the Prayer of God’s Smuggler: ‘Lord, in my luggage I have Scripture that I want to take to Your children across this border. When You were on earth, You made blind eyes see. Now, I pray, make seeing eyes blind. Do not let the guards see those things You do not want them to see.’

a missionary church is an alive church.

Don’t complain to yourselves that you can’t go to the mission field! Thank God for bringing the mission field to you!’

True! Mission starts at home :)

Abraham held the Bibles as he might have held a baby. He did not say thanks, but the words he did say have remained with me to this day. His blue eyes burned into mine as Petroff translated for him. ‘The front line is long, Brother. Here we must give a little, there we may advance. This day, Andrew from Holland, we have made an advance.’

it is never safe to call a church a puppet – no matter how dead, no matter how subservient and temporising, it may appear on the surface. It is called by God’s name, it has God’s eye upon it, at any moment He may sweep the surface away with the purifying wind of His Spirit.

True!

In the years of living this life of faith, I have never known God’s care to fail.

I was far too familiar with the way Christ looks after the practical side of the ministry to miss these signs. This was all His timing, and the question of the money was also in His hands. I was not worried, just fascinated to see how He was going to work it all out.

Funny how long it took us to learn the simple fact that God really is a Father, as displeased with a cramped, niggardly attitude of lack as with its opposite failing of acquisitiveness.

How faithful God is, how utterly trustworthy, how good beyond imagining! He asks for so little in order to give us so much.

Persecution is an enemy the Church has met and mastered many times. Indifference could prove to be a far more dangerous foe.

we are an organism instead, a living and spontaneous association of individuals who know one another intimately, care for each other deeply, and feel the kind of respect one for another that makes rules and bylaws unnecessary.

If a man seems to be harbouring personal resentments against a certain government, or if he has more to say about the evils of Communism than the goodness of God, then we suspect that he is a soldier poorly armed for the battle before us.

Oooh

Surely this is what God has had in mind all along, that the brave remnant of His church scattered through many lands gain strength through coming together, and lose their own fears in reaching out to help one another.

Technology, Andrew says, makes us far too accessible to the demands and pressures of the moment. ‘Our first priority should be listening in patience and silence for the voice of God.’

Wow!

Our obligation, the experience taught him, is simply to forgive, however hard, not to concern ourselves with the outcome.

It was a healing in one human heart of the wound in Christ’s Body brought about by centuries of church warfare and dissension.

Part of its appeal, he explains, is the close community support it offers. It claims to be the answer to economic and social problems. It emphasises wholesome living, drug-free, alcohol-free, prayer-centred communities that hold up the father as the responsible head of the family.

If we can’t take Christ to them by preaching, we’ll take Christ to them by living.’

Wow!

the main function of which is to keep the Holy Spirit at the heart of the work.

‘First, earn the right to get their attention; then show them Jesus – perhaps not with words but always with action.