BUT A POOR REFLECTION: Talking about Open Doors

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Talking about Open Doors

"You need to feel the power of the persecuted church, because they are God's means to show us the way of Christ. Following Christ always involves suffering, as we have to cast self aside and embrace His cross. It is a way of joy and pain (...) It takes someone to stand in the gap between their experience and ours, someone who has the experience of both and can connect the two worlds." (Brother Andrew in the Introduction of Faith that Endures - by Ronald Boyd-MacMillan).

Last week I had an appointment at the Dutch office of Open Doors. I was talking with some people from Marketing Communications about our publishing projects when all of a sudden somebody entered the room. I recognized Al Janssen, co-author of Light Force, a book about the church in the Middle East, written by him and Anne van der Bijl (better known outside our country as Brother Andrew).

Guess what, I peered through the open door (how appropriate!) and saw a friendly elderly man smiling back at me. Yes, this was Brother Andrew - a.k.a. God's smuggler. He didn't want to interrupt our conversation and waited patiently in the hall until his co-writer came back to join him again.

I've met brother Andrew before because we've published the Dutch edition of Light Force and I assisted him during press conferences and even visited him at his house once; but it was such a privilege to meet this living legend face to face again. Please don't get me wrong - I am not idolizing human beings - I just have a soft spot for people like Corrie ten Boom, Henri Nouwen and Anne van der Bijl. I think all three of them are great examples as radical followers of Christ.

I just want to share this experience with you. Brother Andrew is such a humble man and I have so much respect for him. Even at his age (God willing he will celebrate his 79th birthday on May 11, 2007) he is still actively travelling to dangerous areas in this world to support and encourage persecuted Christians and to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with all people who want to listen. And if you talk to him about this, he will only say that he is doing what all Christians should be doing. Yes, he's right. Let's all be humble, friendly, dedicated and radial followers of Jesus Christ!

I can only advice you to read brother Andrew's books and support the work of organisations such as Open Doors who are doing so many good things for persecuted Christians around the globe.

1 comments:

Rev Phil said...: Great to hear That Bro Andrew is still going so well. I last heard him speak in Australia around 5 years ago and found him just as inspiring as I did when I read God's Smuggler as a young man.
Thanks for continuing to tell people about OD still one of my favourite organisations
PHIL; 5/01/2007 7:08 am

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God loves us

Have you ever wondered why God gives so much? We could exist on far less. He could have left the world flat and grey; we wouldn’t have known the difference. But he didn’t. He splashed orange in the sunrise and cast the sky in blue. And if you love to see geese as they gather, chances are you’ll see that too. Did he have to make the squirrel’s tail furry? Was he obliged to make the birds sing? And the funny way that chickens scurry or the majesty of thunder when it rings? Why give a flower fragrance? Why give food its taste? Could it be he loves to see that look upon your face?

Max Lucado - He Chose the Nails

Sadhu Sundar Singh

I do not condemn theologians wholesale, but it is unfortunately the fashion in Western thinking to doubt and deny everything. I protest this tendency. I never advise anyone to consult theologians, because all too often they have completely lost all sense of spiritual reality. They can explain Greek words and all that, but they spend too much time among their books and not enough time with the Master in prayer. It is not that I oppose all education, but education without life is certainly dangerous. You must stop examining spiritual truths like dry bones! You must break open the bones and take in the life-giving marrow.

Oswald Chambers

In the Bible clouds are always associated with God. Clouds are the sorrows, sufferings, or providential circumstances, within or without our personal lives, which actually seem to contradict the sovereignty of God. Yet it is through these very clouds that the Spirit of God is teaching us how to walk by faith. If there were never any clouds in our lives, we would have no faith. "The clouds are the dust of His feet" (Nahum 1:3). They are a sign that God is there. What a revelation it is to know that sorrow, bereavement, and suffering are actually the clouds that come along with God! God cannot come near us without clouds— He does not come in clear-shining brightness. (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, July 29th)