Testimony - Part 2 — Corrie Ten Boom

But, oh, my times are in God's hands and I go where He tells me to go. You go with our prayers and I'm going to ask people to pray for Corrie Ten Boom. You've heard this marvelous, just a little bit of her testimony, but as you think of this dear Saint of God who's growing stronger than most of us at 82, you know, she is, most of us in 30, 40 are still there at most, and serving God and leading thousands of people into a deeper walk with Jesus, you pray for her.

Strength Through God's Boundless Resources

The following testimony from Corrie Ten Boom was given in the same year at the 1974 Lausanne Conference. And it's all what you heard has taught me to obey the Lord. In the Bible we read in Colossians 1, 11, as you live this new life with Jesus Christ, we pray that you will be strengthened from God's boundless resources, so that you will find yourselves able to pass through any experience and endure it with courage.

The Command to Be Filled With the Holy Spirit

God's boundless resources we find when we obey the commandments, be filled with the Spirit. This is not a suggestion. The Bible has no suggestions, only commandments. And this is the most happy commandment of the whole Bible.

Spirit-Empowered Witness and Discipleship

When the Lord told us to witness and make to disciples over the whole world, He promised you will receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you. To me, a little story of a bird, a woodpecker, has helped me in this.

A woodpecker picks with his beak against the stem of a tree like they are used to do, but the very moment the lightning struck the tree and destroyed it, and the woodpecker flew away and said, I didn't know that there was so much power in my beak.

I don't ask you, have you the Holy Spirit, but has the Holy Spirit you? When I was a little girl, I remembered that I had talked with my father, and I said, Daddy, I will never be strong enough to be a real witness and a martyr for Jesus.

And Father said, when you go to travel, when do I give you the plane ticket or the money for it? Three weeks before, I didn't know, Daddy, the day that I go to travel. And Father said, that is what God does.

You don't need to have the power to be a sufferer for Jesus at this moment. But the moment that you have the great honor to be a martyr for Jesus, the Lord will give you everything. And I have experienced the Holy Spirit.

We have not a spirit of fear, but of power of love and a silent mind. And the Holy Spirit is there always to do the job, to make us ready. We live in a time that we can expect the Lord Jesus coming very soon.

Many of the signs of the time are so very clear. And it is very important that we are ready for Jesus coming. Peter writes, because you have a hope like this before you, I urge you to make certain that such a day would find you at peace with God and with men.

Clear and blameless in His sight. Sometimes I tremble when I think that that is necessary. We are right with God and right with men. But in Russia, once I got a great comfortable story. There was a big apartment house.

Many people lived there. And they all put their junk in the basement. But there was in the basement also a beautiful house. But it was broken and nobody could repair it. Once there came a tramp and said, May I sleep this night in your house?

It is such a terrible snowstorm. And they said, we have no restrooms, but you can sleep in the basement. After some hours, they suddenly heard beautiful music in the basement. And the owner of the harp came down and said, How can you could you repair that harp?

And the man said, I have made this harp. And when you have made something, you can also repair it. Who has made you? Wasn't it God? Wasn't it that nothing has been made without Jesus? Do you think He is able to make you good and blameless and right with God and men?

God's Faithfulness to Sanctify His People

So that you will be ready for Jesus coming? He is able and He will do it. For it is written that Paul prayed, May the God of peace make you holy through and through. May you be kept in spirit, soul and body in spotless integrity until the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Is that possible? In spotless integrity? You and I? Yes. For the rest of the text is, He who calls you is utterly faithful and He will finish what He has set out to do. The Holy Spirit shows as many things as it were from God's point of view.

Casting Burdens and Becoming Channels of Living Water

The Holy Spirit gives you wisdom to cast your burdens on the Lord because He gives us spiritual insight and understanding. I was in Vietnam and I was there not a thermometer but a thermostat. Do you know what I mean?

The thermometer goes with the heat and the cold up and down. A thermostat brings a cold wind immediately in contact with the source of heat and so restores the temperature. I carried the load of suffering that I saw in the hospital, in the tribes, in the front line.

And the Holy Spirit showed me that I had to cast my burden on the Lord. We are not called to be burden bearers but cross-bearers. So I could be used as an open channel of streams of living water. In my work to bring the Gospel in many places I sometimes feel weak and old, not adequate to speak in so many different meetings.

Power, the Cross, and Redemption

But I trust that we heard today again and again that you shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you. The Holy Spirit gives power and we can never expect too much from Him. He points to the cross where Jesus finished all for our redemption.

Obedience and Surrender to Jesus

And obedience and surrender is the answer. I was comforted by a story told in New Zealand. A little boy went with his father over a bridge. It was a very small bridge. And he was scared and said, ''Daddy, I'm afraid.

Do you see this water underneath us?''. And the father said, ''Boy, give me your hand.''. Then he was not afraid any longer. But in the evening he had to go again over the bridge and now it was pitch dark.

He said, ''Daddy, I'm more scared than this morning.''. And then the father took the little boy in his arms and immediately the boy fell asleep and awakened in his own little bed. That is surrender to the Lord Jesus.

And that is what the Holy Spirit teaches us how that we are safe in Jesus' hands. When I was in prison, when my sister died and 95 ,000 women were killed or died, I experienced the same. What Paul has written to the Philippians, when he was in a terrible prison, the Holy Spirit had pointed him to Jesus.

Christ's Sufficiency in Prison and Suffering

And he did with me. And I can say with him what he wrote in that text, I found everything as lost compared with the priceless privilege, I read it from the Amplified New Testament, the overwhelming preciousness, the surpassing worth and the supreme advantage of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord and of progressively more intimately getting acquainted with him.

That happened when I was in that terrible prison. That can happen with you when you let the Holy Spirit turn your eyes more and more to the Lord Jesus. Even when we are perhaps entering now a time of very great darkness and suffering over the world.

The world is very sick, is very ill. Who is it that overcomes the world? He who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. And I am sure that all of us believe that Jesus is the Son of God. That means that you and I, that we all have to overcome a world.

Hope in Christ's Coming and the Renewal of Creation

And that is hope for the world, the best is yet to be. Jesus is coming and he has said, I will make everything new. And that is this world. Yes, this sick, ill world will be covered with the knowledge of God like the waters cover the bottom of the sea.

God's Sovereign Plans and Reconciliation

What a joy to know from the Word of God that God has no problems, only plans. There is never a panic in heaven. And we have to be right with God and we know it. That is because of the finished work of Jesus at the cross.

Divine Love Through the Holy Spirit

And we have to be right with men also because of Jesus' presence. The love of God he will bring into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given to us. Romans 5, 5. I love the Germans. There is not a country where I work with such a great joy.

And my greatest friends live in that country. But sometimes I find people who have been cruel to me in the concentration camps. Once I saw a lady.