Today my pain was redirected by rereading Evidence Not Seen. Oh, how gently God has purified my faith compared to many, many others. These passages especially brought tears to my eyes:
When there were no more tears to cry, I would hear Him whisper, “But my child, my grace is sufficient for thee. Not was or shall be, but it is sufficient.” Oh, the eternal, ever-present, undiminished supply of God’s glorious grace!
Just two weeks before I was brought to this prison, the Lord had laid it on my heart to memorize a poem by Annie Johnson Flint. Now I knew why. After drying the tears from my face and mopping the tears from the floor with my skirt, I would sit up and sing:
He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater
He sendest more strength when the labors increase
To added affliction, He addeth His mercy,
To multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.
When We have exhausted our store of endurance,
And when our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
The Father’s full giving is only begun.
His love has no limit, His grace has no measure.
His power has no boundary known unto men.
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth and giveth and giveth again.
Strength came, and I knew I could go through another interrogation, and another, and another. I was physically weak, and desperately frightened, but God gave me the courage to deport myself like a good soldier for my Lord before these cruel men.
and later,
I knelt again before my Bride’s Book, lying open on the heap of ashes. I saw how bright and shining the gold ink had become. The gold had to pass through fire to destroy the tarnish, and it was the background of a black, charred page that displayed its beauty–a beauty I had never noticed, written, as it had been, on a bright white page, surrounded by pretty flowers! “I understand, Lord, I really do understand what You’re saying to me through this. Forgive my tears!” I learned that my tears were a gift from Him to erase the hurt, a gift to be shared with others who were hurting. Was I not to weep with who weep? (Rom. 12:15). “When the tarnish begins to appear, take me through the fire, Lord. I’m available.”
One by one, He pulled Scripture passages out of the storehouse of my memory, to remind me that they had been hidden there for such a time as this. “I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.” (Isaiah 48:10). This verse called to rememberance my Lord in a blazing furnace with three young Hebrew men. There was something so poignant, so intimate about the privilege that was theirs, of “walking around in the fire” with their Lord. Because of the testimony, the faith, and the courage of three young men, the king and a crowd of people caught a glimpse of Jesus. When they emerged from the furnace, there was no acrid, caustic scent of fire upon them–just the fragrance that emanated from three young people who had been walking with their Lord in the furnace of affliction.