Friday, March 19, 2010

Lesson 1 from “The Hiding Place”

God had directed me to read “The Hiding Place” by Corrie Ten Boom.  I had read it before, a very, very long time ago, but I knew He was telling me to read it again.  I received a lot from this book.  So much so, I will have to tell it in separate posts. 

In the portion of the book I am talking about now, Corrie & her sister Betsie are in the extermination camp Ravensbruck.  They have cut their own hair terribly short because of the lice.  The living conditions are beyond deplorable.  A bible was miraculously smuggled in under Corrie’s clothing.  The sisters are reading from the bible to the others every night.  The circle gets larger and larger around the group.  This scripture is read

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword"?  …….Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.”

They were experiencing every horrible thing listed in that scripture.

This is a direct quote from the book. 

More than conquerors……It was not a wish.  It was a fact.  We knew it, we experienced it minute by minute—poor, hated, hungry.  We are more than conquerors.  Not “we shall be.”  We are!

Corrie goes on to say that they lived in two different worlds.  The external one grew more horrible every day.  The internal one, the life they lived with God, grew better daily, truth upon truth, glory upon glory.

These words leapt off the page at me.  Not because they are the title of this blog, but because they are life.  These women knew their purpose and answered God’s call in the midst of an earthly hell. 

Father God, I will answer Your call on my life.  I will glorify You in spite of any circumstance.  Through You, Who loves me, I am more than a conqueror.

Read the book; it’s awesome.

4 comments:

Shelly said...

Jess read that over the summer for school.....now I gotta go find it to read.

Pam said...

Wow! What an amazing quote. It's hard to grasp the hard places, even when we have our own. So thankful she could share her God with others and live his Light in the midst of such darkness. And so thankful you can live it our in your life too, because you do.

MarshaMarshaMarsha said...

horrible on the outside, more beautiful on the inside.

i am going to get that book today.

Kelley said...

I am going to have to get that books! It sounds so good!