One burning heart



Brainerd's book--atop an old Bible

 What chances would you give a boy whose father died when he was nine, and his mother when he was fourteen—and he was the third of nine children? Bear in mind there was no government welfare; this was the early 1700s in colonial Connecticut.

            Add to those a heart that truly sought after God, believed Him for the impossible, and pursued God’s calling with diligence and earnest prayer. After a stint of farming, college and ministry, he died at 29 of tuberculosis. A few months later the same disease took his betrothed, Jerusha, daughter of famed New England preacher Jonathan Edwards.

            Yet this man’s diaries inspired Henry Martyn, missionary to India and Persia. William Carey, who went to India. Adoniram Judson, who left his mark in Burma. And, within more recent times, Jim Elliot, who gave his life for a small tribe in Ecuador (then known as the Aucas).

            His name: David Brainerd. He lived 1718-1747.

            I recently read a thin volume of his diary excerpts that’s been in our church library for more than half a century. The cover is an ordinary gray, but the pages glow with the passion of a man who lived his all for God. Brainerd didn’t stay stuck in grief, thinking his life didn’t matter. It did matter, for many Native Americans in Delaware whose language he learned so he could preach and translate scriptures. He led many to faith in Christ, all while living under primitive conditions.

            It’s a convicting book. Repeatedly he tells of fasting and praying, of self-examination, and of finding “unspeakable sweetness and delight in God.” One entry after extended prayer: “There appeared to be nothing of any importance to me but holiness of heart and life, and the conversion of the heathen to God.” A few sentences later: “I cared not where or how I lived, or what hardships I went through so that I could gain souls to Christ.”



The article telling Anna's story

         I decided to check out Brainerd’s diary after reading a feature article in the Autumn 2012 Wheaton alumni magazine about student Anna O’Connor. When barely 17, Anna was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a rare form of cancer that develops in nerve tissue. After nearly a year of treatment, the cancer wasn’t responding. Doctors expected her to die within the year.

            She lived nine more years. “But the real miracle,” the article about her said, “took place within, as she began to see ‘God’s clear purpose’ for her life.” In a chapel message, she encouraged students to “learn what it means to be fully alive to the presence of God.”

            In reading that, I flashed back to Brainerd’s diary, and this description of his conversion: “My soul was so captivated and delighted with the excellency, loveliness, greatness, and other perfections of God, that I was even swallowed up in Him…Thus God brought me to a hearty disposition to exalt Him, and set Him on the throne as King of the universe.”

            Anna didn’t sit back and “be sick.” She established a non-profit organization, hosted a music festival, finished her master’s in psychology (professors hand-delivered her master’s diploma to her in the hospital), and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for cancer research. She connected with people, comforting and counseling. Even when sent home from the hospital on hospice care, she continued to lead a small group of young women.

            When she died at 26, some 1,700 people attended her service in Wheaton’s Edman Chapel.

            Wheaton, by the way, is also the alma mater of Jim Elliot, 1956 missionary martyr who was influenced by Brainerd.

             Try this: list  what was important to you as a twenty-something. What would you have changed in obedience and love of God? If He's nudging you to go deeper spiritually, pray about that.Then pray for the spiritual journey of a young adult you know.

The Secret to Connections

Talk about “connections”—I couldn’t even begin to count the silks woven atop a shrub in front of my home. My, those spiders had been busy! I’d been thinking about the end of the book of Romans and found, yes, a symbolic “connection” with truths about “connecting” in the body of Christ. Call it “friendship,” or “belonging,” or “feeling fulfilled”—it’s all the same basic picture of believers weaving together their skills and compassion.

Most people recall Romans as a Grand Canyon of theology. It goes from the depths of man’s depravity, through the layers of Jewish history, to the heights of salvation by faith in the risen Jesus Christ. But at the end Paul seems to let out a big “whew” and say, “Hey, greet my church friends there at Rome, especially these.”

But here’s the catch: Paul had never been to Rome when he wrote the Roman church! Most Bible scholars place him writing this about A.D. 56 at Corinth, where he lived about three months before being chased away by plots against him.

So how did he know so many people in Rome? Possibly some were converted at Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, and met Paul a few years later after his conversion. Others he may have met during his own missionary trips. Somehow, sometime, they’d moved to Rome and started or connected with the church there. Paul wouldn’t get to Rome himself until around A.D. 60, and then as a prisoner.

Name after name fill Chapter 16. Others are counted as being parts of house churches. But when Paul pauses to say a little more about someone, he often commends their service for the Lord.

Phoebe was a “great help to many people” including the apostle.

Priscilla and Aquila, also hard workers for Christ, even risked their lives in ministry. We know from Acts that they had a church in their house and had discipled the talented speaker, Apollos.

Mary worked “very hard.”

Others were commended as “fellow workers,” “tested and approved,” “women who work hard in the Lord,” those who “worked very hard in the Lord. The mother of Rufus was praised as being a like mother to Paul, too.

Spiritual gifts are woven all through this list. People served others. They taught and led. They stood against persecution. Rufus’ mother must have been an encourager. These people were web-builders as they deliberately cross-connected for Christ. Even as transplants to Rome, they weren’t shy about digging in and serving one another.

I used to think of Romans 16 as something of a Biblical “autograph book” bearing names of people whose identities have passed with time. Now I see it as a powerful reminder that, wherever God has put us, He has planned a way for us to serve and honor Christ. It might happen through church-sponsored programs or another opportunity that’s Christ-centered. The most important thing is that people are served for Jesus’ sake, and our faith grows.

Paul said it better in his final statements—that the end result of all this is that “all nations might believe and obey him” (v. 27).

In both the spider and spiritual world, webs grow one strand at a time. It doesn’t happen when we sit on the sidelines. Being a part of the grand web of spiritual connection, in some way, is expected of those who claim the name of Christ.

P.S. Talk about "connections"--several years ago, at a Christian writers conference, I met Grace Fox,  another writer with Northwest connections. She writes and speaks from British Columbia, Canada, and has published an excellent book on a felt need of many women: Moving from Fear to Freedom: A Woman's Guide to Peace in Every Situation. She also writes a blog where she features other authors, and this week I'm her guest:  http://www.gracefox.com/2012/10/19/friendship-friday-author-interview-with-jeanne-zornes/

Dusting off the past

It was definitely the stereotyped antiques/second-hand store. Dust coated the cluttered stacks of knickknacks, old kitchen items, antlers, music instruments, magazines and books, records, tables, rusted wood stoves, souvenirs…and more hung from the ceiling. You had to watch your step to keep from stumbling in the narrow aisles while the store’s “watch cats” slithered here and there.


“I’d call that a museum without the admission price,” my husband said as we finished our wide-eyed browsing. “One other impression,” he added. “The prices he put on things told me he loved his stuff more than he wanted to sell it.”

The owner didn’t get a dime out of us. But the owner did give me something—and that was a reminder of our human tendency to hoard. Besides “things,” we hang onto memories that have outlived their usefulness.

I think that is what God was addressing in an admonition tucked into Isaiah 43. As the chapter begins, He tenderly reminds the Israelites that He who created, formed, redeemed, and called by name will protect them in the difficult times ahead (the “floods” and “fires” in v. 2).

He can make that claim because He is…God: “I, even I, am the LORD, and apart from me there is no savior” (v. 11). They only had to think back a few centuries to the miraculous parting of the Red Sea, freeing them from enslavement in Egypt. Yet as fantastic as that was, God told them to look ahead, not back:

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. (vv. 18-19)

Through Isaiah, God was urging His people to look beyond their current negatives, which would lead to captivity in Babylon. Someday, they would return—as they did in small numbers later. But as true with many prophecies, there is a "forward look" to a time in the renewed earth when wastelands and deserts will have plenty of water (v. 20). God’s gifts of refreshment will cause His children to praise His name (v. 21).

I have occasionally shared verses 18-19 with people going through the death of a loved one, relationship, or dream. We have a tendency to romanticize the past to get us through a less-than-pleasant present. But God says the old parts of our lives, even if they had good in them, are not to be dwelt upon to the exclusion of new things God wants to do in our lives. The "old" become like dusty, chipped dishes and deer antlers in a junky “antique” store. He has better.

In applying that counsel, I’ve needed to think twice in re-telling some of the “glory stories” of God’s work in my life from decades ago. If I don’t give equal or more time to the newer stories of my spiritual journey, I’m essentially saying God took a break—and that’s not true at all! Sometimes He works with breathtaking miracles, other times through quiet but essential changes in my heart.That’s part of my ongoing testimony, too.

No matter where we are, God has better things ahead—things that will bring Him praise. Things that refresh, like water in a desert. New things, that in His wisdom and power He can bring about. We’re to be living with anticipation for fresh workings of God, not muddled in dusty memories.

Beyond cocoons

I’d just come back from my morning walk, a bit discouraged from a time of talking to God about hurting people I know, when He surprised me with a gift the size of a quarter. On a dead rose I spotted a tiny butterfly with exquisite black and white wings. “I made that,” God seemed to be reminding me. “I planned the process through which caterpillars become butterflies or moths. Can you trust me for greater things in these persons’ lives?”

“Metamorphosis”—that’s the scientific term for the process through which caterpillars turn into winged beauties. I recall it being one of those wicked “challenge” words for Third Grade Spelling. But as an adult I realized how God used this miracle of nature to illustrate what can happen in a human heart. The word shows up in the original Greek of New Testament scriptures: metamorphoo, meaning “to change into another form.” One place it’s used is Romans 12:2: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Another is 2 Corinthians 3:18: “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory” (boldface added).

In both cases, according to Vine’s Expository Dictionary, the word expresses a complete change of human character and conduct under the power of God.

In the natural world, a caterpillar doesn’t suddenly become a butterfly. There’s a dying, then a hidden creative process of a new likeness. Breaking out of the chrysalis to become a butterfly is a strenuous process. Once out, it must join the halves of its proboscis together, pump up and dry out the wings, harden the exoskeleton, and firm up legs and other body parts.

In the spiritual world, in being “transformed” into Christ’s likeness, we’re up against more—a lot more. Obeying God in changing things about one’s life isn’t easy. And some simply resist that change. So why pray for these stubborn believers?

J. Oswald Sanders, whose insightful book Spiritual Leadership I try to read every few years, helped lead me to an answer. “People are difficult to move,” he wrote. “It is much easier to pray for things or provisions than to deal with the stubbornness of the human heart. But in just these intricate situations the leader must use God’s power to move human hearts in the direction he believes to be the will of God. Through prayer the leader has the key to that complicated lock” (Moody, 1994, p. 90).

So, for now, even though I see these people preferring their confining cocoons of old ways, I keep praying. God sees what they could become through spiritual metamorphosis, and His plan is beautiful--like that little butterfly who, after my “grace lesson,” flitted away.