Deliverance and Judgment

One of these days we received a Word from God through Isaiah 35:4. God had told the prophet Isaiah to tell the people who had a fearful heart to be strong and fear not. God had said that He would come and deliver them and with recompense, and that vengeance was His. These words were such a strength to us, and we applied them to our lives. We had such a longing to be delivered from the place we were in [the Communist prison camp], that we anticipated the joy of our release.... We were awaiting freedom and with a holy emotion we looked for the fulfillment of the promise we were given. It seemed as though almost all the Scriptures that came to us spoke of release and freedom. Anything different, we quickly skipped over thinking it was not for us.

One time a verse from Jeremiah filled our hearts with special joy. "Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord and whose hope the Lord is." (17:7-9) It was such strength for us and we thanked God for His Word. But, verse 9 had the power to judge us all. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it?"

I found myself caught up in the miracles of God and waiting for my deliverance, instead of daily dealing with heart and all of its imperfections. I had no desire to search myself, and made no time for that. The greatest miracle of all would have been that I recognized all the ties that I still had with this world and ask God to cut them.

Somehow, I had switched from trusting in God's guidance, to trusting in my own heart's guidance. God will not allow me to have this way of cheating myself remain in me. It was through some difficult lessons that He taught me and showed me the deceitfulness of my own heart. The Word of God says that only He knows the heart of every man.... The Lord was soon to take me through such a fire that I was to be consumed had it not been for the grace and mercy of the Lord.

[JF (c)1989]