Hebrews 13:7 | From the Inside Out

Posts Tagged ‘Hebrews 13:7’

Courage, Perseverance, and Faith

Posted in Courage, Encouragement, Faith, God's Faithfulness, God's Power, God's Provision, God's Salvation, Heroes of the Faith, Perseverance, Service, Uncategorized, tagged Biliangao Philippines, Courage, Faith in God, Hebrews 13:7, Joanne Shetler, missionary, Perseverance, Wycliffe Bible Translators on January 23, 2020| 12 Comments »

Joanne examined the young woman again, hopeful that after another hour of labor, she would show signs of progress toward birthing her child. But change was imperceptible.

The prolonged labor was sapping the young woman’s strength. If intervention didn’t occur soon, Lorsan and the baby would die.

Even so, Joanne smiled reassuringly at the mother-to-be and announced, “We’re going to get some help for you, Lorsan.”*

Joanne had been midwife for many women of the Biliangao jungle-village in the northern Philippines. But she didn’t have the training or equipment for a C-section.

As a Wycliffe Bible Translator, her expertise lay in linguistics. Granted, her preparation for remote mission service had included a modicum of medical training, but certainly not for surgery.

Praise God we can arrange for help, thought Joanne. She asked her colleague Anne to use their newly acquired radio (no generator needed for this one) and call for an airlift from JAARS–Jungle Aviation and Radio Service.

(Founded in 1948; still in operation today.)

Meanwhile, Joanne prayed for her patient, and the villagers who’d gathered listened with wary attention.

Their faith was in the spirits of the jungle and the frequent sacrifices offered to appease them (even though the practice gravely depleted their food supply). The villagers were convinced that all trouble was due to angry spirits, including Lorsan’s difficult delivery.

Of course the JAARS operator who answered Anne’s distress signal knew the missionaries well. They were two of the most courageous women she’d ever met, living as they did in a remote, mountainous region, with people who’d been headhunters in the not-so-distant past.

(Mangyan village, Philippines)

But Joanne and Anne had been confident this was the people-group God wanted them to reach, and had talked the reluctant Wycliffe director in letting them go–despite their youth and gender. That was in 1962.

Now it was 1967. For five years Joanne and Anne had been learning the language, determining a way to transcribe it, and then translating the New Testament into the Baliangao language.

All the while they built relationships, helped the people as they could, and told them about Jesus.

The villagers were anxious for their language to be available in written form. But a New Testament about a new God? They had serious doubts about his significance and power.

Only a few villagers had accepted Jesus; everyone else feared what the spirits might do in retaliation.

The JAARS radio operator soon dispatched a plane to transport Lorsan to a lowland clinic. Days later she and her healthy baby were returned to the village.

The people were amazed that mother and child had survived. Perhaps some also wondered at the kindness of strangers to help a young mother.

They began to ask Joanne and Anne, “Who is this God, the one you’re always talking about?” Among them were several spiritists–witch doctors–desperate for release from their fear and the evil spirits who tormented them.

Joanne prayed as they acknowledged God, the powerful One over all spirits, accepted Jesus into their lives, and committed to end the useless practice of sacrificial appeasement.

Soon there were enough believers to start a church in Baliangao. Joanne’s village “father” and protector soaked up her Bible teaching and became a teacher himself.

By this time, Joanne’s coworker, Anne, had accepted a marriage proposal back in the States. The Wycliffe director recommended that Joanne leave also, but she refused, wanting to complete the New Testament translation for these people she’d grown to love.

While she worked, villagers traveled to near-by villages, telling them about the one true God and his Son Jesus. These neighbors were enemies who warred one another frequently. Many had died in the skirmishes.

But the message of a God who loved them (John 3:16) and offered peace of heart (Psalm 85:8), turned these enemies into brothers and sisters.

Bible classes grew into village-style conferences, and during the twenty-two years Joanne worked to translate the New Testament, she witnessed several thousand Baliangao people turn from fear of spirits to peace in Jesus.

As for the original village, they are now sending out a second generation of missionaries into other parts of Asia.

And as of February 2019, Joann was still serving God as a speaker with Scripture Engagement International, presenting workshops around the world.

The author of Hebrews wrote:

Joanne Shetler is certainly a heroine to consider and imitate–for her courage, perseverance, and faith.

*Real name unknown

Sources:

https://www.jaars.org/updates/my-story-jaars-was-there-for-me/

https://billygraham.org/decision-magazine/june-2006/a-message-for-all-people/

https://bulletininserts.org/inspiration-from-a-bible-translator-whose-work-was-offensive/

http://www.thetravelingteam.org/articles/joanne-shetler

https://www.westsidebiblechapel.ca/1_3_109_missions-history-joanne-shetler.html

http://magazine.biola.edu/article/16-summer/meet-the-2016-alumni-award-winners/

https://www.checkitout.org/check-it-out/speakers/

Photo credits: http://www.wikipedia.org; http://www.flickr.com; http://www.commons.wikimedia.org; http://www.flickr.com; http://www.dailyverses.net; http://www.pikrepo.com.

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Jurgen Moltmann and the Power of Hope

Posted in Heroes of the Faith, Hope, Salvation, Uncategorized, tagged German POWs, Hebrews 13:7, Hope in Jesus, Jurgen Moltmann, Norton POW Camp, World War 2 on October 24, 2019| 12 Comments »

Jurgen Moltmann’s eyes searched the German forest for a glimpse of his fellow soldiers’ Nazi gray uniforms. Somehow he’d gotten separated from his unit and was now alone near the front lines.

Not far ahead he detected movement in the trees, then spotted a brown army jacket and the unmistakable shape of the other soldier’s helmet: British.

Moltmann made a split-second decision. He put his hands on top of his head, and walked toward the enemy. After a year and half of war, after enduring nightly bombing raids in Hamburg and witnessing the horrific deaths of friends, Moltmann decided he’d endured enough.

It wasn’t a war he believed in anyway. Hitler had cut short his education in 1943 when Moltmann’s whole class was assigned to the anti-aircraft batteries in Hamburg. He’d been just sixteen years old.

As he approached the British soldier, Moltmann thought, Being a POW can’t be worse than the war itself. But behind the barbed wire of the camp in Belgium he suffered horrific nightmares, felt unrelenting guilt for what his country had done, and collapsed into deep depression and hopelessness.

German prisoners, February 1944

Later Moltmann was transferred to Kilmarmock, Scotland, assigned to a POW road crew. Relentless rain drummed on their backs day after day. To and from the work site he and fellow prisoners rode in trucks—silent, with heads down near their knees. “It was a picture of real forsakenness,” Moltmann later recounted (1).

While in Scotland, a U.S. Army chaplain gave Moltmann a Bible, and out of boredom he started to read. In the book of Mark he encountered another Man who also knew forsakenness, and soon the young soldier came to believe in Christ.

The war ended in April of 1945 but at least 400,000 German prisoners were kept in the British camps, to be repatriated to their homeland one boatload at a time. Germany had been decimated; there weren’t enough places to live nor enough food to eat if all the prisoners were returned en masse.

In 1946, Moltmann was transferred to Norton Camp in Nottinghamshire, England, which the YMCA helped to run. Though still prisoners, the men were allowed to study education or theology.

Moltmann chose the latter, anxious to understand more of his newfound Christian faith. He took advantage of the large library and proffered lectures. He learned Hebrew and Greek.

Frank and Nellie Baker, a young pastor and his wife, served several small churches in the area. God gave them the desire to minister to the POWs of Norton Camp. With the commander’s permission, the couple took a prisoner home for dinner each Sunday after worship.

Moltmann was one of them. “The seed of hope was planted in my heart around Frank and Nellie Baker’s Sunday dinner table,” he said (2).

In 1947, he attended a Student Christian Movement conference. There he experienced reconciliation with young men and women who had fought for the Allies.

As a result of the forgiveness and increasing hope in his spirit, Moltmann decided to continue his study of theology once he returned to Germany, to better understand “the power of hope that had saved his life” (3).

Since Moltmann had been one of the last Germans captured, he was one of the last to be sent home, in 1948. By 1952, he had earned a doctorate degree and become pastor of the Evangelical Church of Bremen-Wasserhorst.

In subsequent years he taught theology at an academy (1958-1963), then Bonn University (1963-1967), and finally the University of Tubingen (1967-1994).

Moltmann also wrote forty-three books. The first, published in 1964, carried a highly appropriate title: The Theology of Hope. And today he is regarded as “one of the most significant theologians of the age” (4).

Jurgen Moltmann, March, 2016

But if it weren’t for hope, we’d surely not know of Jurgen Moltmann because “without hope one cannot live,” he wrote. “To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante’s hell is the inscription: ‘Leave behind all hope, you who enter here’” (Theology Of Hope).

https://www.azquotes.com/quote/843177

Moltmann’s transcending hope prospered in the war’s aftermath, even amidst the decimation, grief, and uncertainty, because he embraced what Christ offered him: resurrection hope.

“Hope finds in Christ not only a consolation in suffering, but also the protest of the divine promise against suffering. If Paul calls death the ‘last enemy’ (1 Cor. 15:26), then the opposite is also true: that the risen Christ, and with him the resurrection hope, must be declared to be the enemy of death” (Theology of Hope) (5).

That gleam of resurrection hope has now been shining through Jurgen Moltmann for over seventy years, impacting for eternity countless others.

We would do well to remember him, consider his way of life, and imitate his faith (Hebrews 13:7).