Elizabeth is a good teacher for us because she takes us from where most of us are, or have been...sleepless nights when the crisis comes...to where we’d like to be, a source of strength when loved ones run out of theirs. For the same reason there is much we can learn from Mrs. Visky. When her life, and the lives of her seven children, were abruptly shattered with the arrest and trial and sentencing of her husband to twenty-two years in prison...and for a year she’d heard not a word, or knew if she’d ever see him again...then shattered again with her own arrest and sentencing...immediately to be put on a train with inadequate water with her seven children for a three day trip to the prison camp through Romania’s hottest region...when this whirlwind swirled around her, she responded as most of us would have. “So much bitterness had begun to seep into my heart...and I cried, not for lack of water but because I realized my bitterness was real.”
So much bitterness had begun to seep into my heart...Instead of abiding in His passions and feelings, I had remained in my own.
Only the most mature Christian would have been able to keep her mind off her husband, off the loss of her home and friends, off her dismal future, off her children crying for water...and that strength Mrs. Visky wouldn’t find until three years later. We identify with her bitterness, feel, perhaps, that it’s justified. ‘Wouldn’t any mother feel the same?’ But alongside the bitterness were thoughts that were the seeds of future victory. “I knew Christ had paid such a great price for me, a price that had pierced my heart…I realized I did not want to take part only in His power and the joy of His resurrection. Along with these I wanted to be a partaker of His suffering. (But) in the midst of my own personal sufferings I realized I had forgotten the Cross. I had been caught up only in what was happening to me and not what Jesus had gone through on the Cross. Instead of abiding in His passions and feelings, I had remained in my own.”
That battle, a battle literally between life and death, waged within Mrs. Visky for three years...between seeing only the dismal realities in the seen world, what Paul calls having ‘the mind of the flesh which leads to death’...and ‘the mind of the spirit’, transcendent sight, seeing unseen realities, God’s thoughts about the situation, His provision, particularly what He provided through the Cross...which leads to life and peace. When conditions weren’t so desperate, when it was ‘only’ her husband in prison, because the great price of the Cross had pierced her heart, she had been able ‘to offer herself as a living sacrifice’, had been willing to be ‘a partaker of His suffering’. But the additional many blows were too heavy for this young Christian and bitterness, the mind of the flesh, won the battle that day on the train. Many battles, won and lost, had to be fought...one with a false doctrine she had received regarding the nature of God. “Could it be that I was not letting go of what God had asked for because I did not know God?...If He asked for my home and husband should I not give them to Him? Oh, yes, I knew the Lord as my Provider, but who was this Lord who had the right to ask everything of me? I was learning that the two were the same God.”
That battle, a battle literally between life and death, waged within Mrs. Visky for three years...between seeing only the dismal realities in the seen world, what Paul calls having ‘the mind of the flesh which leads to death’...and ‘the mind of the spirit’, transcendent sight, seeing unseen realities, God’s thoughts about the situation, His provision, particularly what He provided through the Cross...which leads to life and peace. When conditions weren’t so desperate, when it was ‘only’ her husband in prison, because the great price of the Cross had pierced her heart, she had been able ‘to offer herself as a living sacrifice’, had been willing to be ‘a partaker of His suffering’. But the additional many blows were too heavy for this young Christian and bitterness, the mind of the flesh, won the battle that day on the train. Many battles, won and lost, had to be fought...one with a false doctrine she had received regarding the nature of God. “Could it be that I was not letting go of what God had asked for because I did not know God?...If He asked for my home and husband should I not give them to Him? Oh, yes, I knew the Lord as my Provider, but who was this Lord who had the right to ask everything of me? I was learning that the two were the same God.”
Our hut became a royal palace.
We learned of the final battle...at the bedside when God filled her heart with unspeakable warmth and unending joy, covered her shivering body with His mantle of love. Having Seen Him who is invisible, but more important, having seen how God saw her, led to dramatic spiritual growth. Thereafter, Mrs. Visky, according to her son, ‘did everything in love’. Being then motivated to seek the highest good for each person in every situation, even for the same callous guards, she reaped the astounding benefits Jesus promised in John 15:11 for those who abide in His love, ‘that My joy may remain in you and that your joy may be complete’.1 “Even the few bare trees seemed to be waving a greeting to me. Without a doubt in my heart, our hut became a royal palace. Truly the Lord, in spite of the circumstances, had been once again glorified. For me this little village was no longer a closed place of bondage. The Lord had overcome all territorial fences and placed me upon a much larger land.”2 Though it was another year before the family left ‘Misery Village’, the same broken down hut seen through the eyes of one doing everything in love remained a ‘royal palace’. You can imagine what a tremendous source of strength she’d become for the children. The unending joy that filled her heart, her knowledge of the Lord’s joy over her, these were her strength.
For each of us this may be a good time for an honest evaluation of our own estimation of the payment of the Cross. To what degree has its immense payment pierced our hearts? Or, at least, do we have the conviction that it should...that ‘certainly later I’ll take the time to brood and dwell on those six hours that changed the world’. (Will you?) We have seen in the last chapter what we will miss if we don’t...the revelation that God’s love for us is infinite...the love relationship with the Lord that revelation produces...even growing, we have seen, into loving an enemy, into the ‘no greater love’ of laying down ones life for a friend. Without a heart pierced by the immense payment of the Cross those would remain but distant fables. And when the crisis comes, which it will, how easily we would find ourselves living only in our feelings, even as Elizabeth was, tormented with fears and nightmares. We’d miss the power of the Holy Spirit released into our lives that ‘wasn’t a human power, it was a divine force that came to help me.’ We’d miss being able to make that final surrender, ‘I was giving my life to God’, miss dying to self, having Jesus, indeed, become Lord, knowing ‘we belonged to Him, that He had the right of property over us’...of entering His rest, being at peace during a crisis, ‘never again having a sleepless night’.
We’d miss, if the spread of wickedness in these last days leaves the headlines and enters our neighborhood, being able to become a channel of strength to traumatized loved ones, miss the memory of looking back even at a great trial, realizing in amazement that ‘those were the happiest days of our lives when we were at any moment ready to die’, that ‘without a doubt they were the most profitable, most valuable years of my life.’ And from the only thing we take into eternity, if the immense price of the Cross has not pierced our hearts, strength would be lacking...the joy of the Lord would be in short supply in our character. From these, at whose feet we are honored to sit, that joy radiates. Their first key lesson for us has been that joy starts at the Cross. The natural man must be crucified, kept in check, his voice silenced, for there to be a possibility of the joy of the Lord.
One excuse I tell myself for not having discovered this joy till a few years ago is that not becoming a Christian till I was thirty-nine meant I had all those years of the habit of sowing to the flesh, giving it a louder voice than most Christians have to contend with. I remember the day, and even the moment, of discovery. I was driving from the city where our office is located to where we live twenty minutes away. I had spent the afternoon with a group of pastors and missionaries discussing something that concerned us deeply. We had learned that many, some say most, of the girls who leave the Romanian orphanages at the mandatory age of eighteen become prostitutes. They are under nurtured, starved for love, mistake lust for love, are used and ruined.
Peggy and I had recently ministered for three days at an all-girls orphanage and their faces were before me. I realized while driving that I was experiencing something new. My focused attention was, of course enough on the car to drive safely; but the focus of my attention was way out in front of the car...praying…for the girls, for possible solutions, how we could save some, how our ministry could participate. Then I had the startling realization...that for two hours I hadn’t had a thought about myself...I had been nearly completely other directed. It wasn’t anything like happiness...we were dealing with unhappy realities.
I could see Carmen’s face, whom we had gotten to know and love over the weekend, who would be eighteen soon, then I would see her projected future if something weren’t done for her and, I think you can imagine, tears near the surface and something like anger mixed with urgency...not unlike how I had felt knowing that inside the orphanage near our house was Ioan turning into a human pretzel…but with a major difference. After five years of studying the prisoners’ lives it seems I had begun to learn, as Mrs. Visky had on her way to the abusive commandant’s office, to respond spiritually to problems, with prayer and thinking with God about the situation, instead of carnal, emotional responses. It seems like a contradiction. I was to care but not to care. Yes, care deeply for Carmen and her friends, but by ‘casting all my cares upon Jesus’, finding His heart and mind, I was not to care. What, at one time would have been anger and frustration, was being replaced by the sensation of strength, of joy.
I believe I had received God’s burden for Carmen and her friends, because, you can imagine, if I was feeling that way, how God felt to watch his precious daughters have their being and beauty crushed. Oswald Chambers writes that there is no real joy without burden...that as we share one of the Lord’s burdens, receive from Him a divine purpose, that it is in the releasing of that burden through prayer and responses based on the word of God that we experience His joy, His pleasure. Chambers says that for there to be ‘fullness of joy’ there must be a burden3. I have learned since then why most intercessors have the joy of the Lord. They seek to receive God’s burdens, His divine purposes, then release them through intercession. So in the car I’d discovered what I knew to be the joy of the Lord. I felt the strength of this joy...felt that if I could remain there, other directed, the self-centered voice stilled, that nothing would be impossible. I finally understood why the joy of the Lord is our strength.
Stilling the Self-centered Voice
The burden of the Lord, Constantin Caraman received was to get the ‘forbidden’ Word of God into the hands of Christians. He received shipments of Bibles smuggled from the West then distributed them throughout the country. “Every time I had an opportunity to be involved in this dangerous activity I was happy like a child. I used to say, ‘Now I know what it really means to live,’ for I knew I was doing something for God. When I was captured I knew that although people condemned me, God doesn’t, for I was doing something for His glory. This gave me strength and helped me not to regret anything.”
In that empty spacecreated when the old
man left, lives the life
of Christ, God’s life.
The joy Caraman received from sharing one of the Lord’s burdens (‘happy like a child…what it really means to live’) he was able to maintain in prison because he knew how to still the voice of his selfish nature, the voice of self-pity and revenge. “The prosecutor was threatening me with torture. But to all those who mistreated me, I answered, ‘If I surrendered to Christ and if I follow Him, it is written in Galatians 2:20 that I no longer live but Christ lives in me. This means my ego died, that the old man doesn’t live any more and in that empty space created when the old man left, lives the life of Christ, God’s life. So God lives in me and now He is responsible for my life, not you. I surrendered myself into His Hands as my instructor, my teacher, my guide and now I trust Him, knowing that all things will end well, even if in death.’ Through Him in me I was certain eventually I’d be an overcomer. This was my attitude all those years.”
This is brilliant. Caraman insisted, like Paul, on being what God said he was. God said he was a new creature with God’s life living in him, so he acted like it. God said his sin nature, ‘the old man’, who would normally react to mistreatment, in His eyes, had been crucified when Christ was crucified, so Caraman reckoned him dead. Though the conditions during all those years were terrible, he wasn’t living in his condition, but in his position…in Christ and with Christ in him.
Because of several health problems Nicolae Moldovanu, who was eighty-three years old when we spoke with him, is often in pain. Still, every day he continues to fulfill the burden he received from the Lord of expanding God’s kingdom by providing powerful weapons for the Body of Christ...Bible commentaries, songs and poems. Reciting his poetry, discussing the Bible, or singing with his ‘bride of sixty years’, the joy of the Lord radiates in their home. He sang for us the song he’d written for her the day before and songs he’d composed while in prison...one while being forced to lay face down all day in a freezing cell. Like Caraman, the truth expressed in Galatians 2:20 is his ‘secret’ for being able, for decades, to quiet the voice of his selfish nature and continue in the joy of the Lord.
This is brilliant. Caraman insisted, like Paul, on being what God said he was. God said he was a new creature with God’s life living in him, so he acted like it. God said his sin nature, ‘the old man’, who would normally react to mistreatment, in His eyes, had been crucified when Christ was crucified, so Caraman reckoned him dead. Though the conditions during all those years were terrible, he wasn’t living in his condition, but in his position…in Christ and with Christ in him.
Because of several health problems Nicolae Moldovanu, who was eighty-three years old when we spoke with him, is often in pain. Still, every day he continues to fulfill the burden he received from the Lord of expanding God’s kingdom by providing powerful weapons for the Body of Christ...Bible commentaries, songs and poems. Reciting his poetry, discussing the Bible, or singing with his ‘bride of sixty years’, the joy of the Lord radiates in their home. He sang for us the song he’d written for her the day before and songs he’d composed while in prison...one while being forced to lay face down all day in a freezing cell. Like Caraman, the truth expressed in Galatians 2:20 is his ‘secret’ for being able, for decades, to quiet the voice of his selfish nature and continue in the joy of the Lord.
To forget Galatians 2:20 is like forgetting to eat.
It is my spiritual life, without it the Christian life is impossible.
“I am in the habit of saying to myself many times a day the verse Galatians 2:20: ‘I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God.’ To forget Galatians 2:20 is like forgetting to eat. Our life is Christ, ‘You are dead and your life is hidden with Christ in God.’...meaning that we have to deny ourselves, take up our cross daily, not in order to wear it around our neck, but to die on it and to suffer. To suffer what? All the passions of the flesh should be crucified and then we will live the new life with the Lord. On His last night the Lord said to His disciples, ‘Watch and pray so as not to enter into temptation; the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.’ I don’t want to forget this and I pray not to. It is my spiritual life, without it the Christian life is impossible. That’s why I meditate daily on this verse, for one of the weak points of human flesh is: it forgets.”
For over fifty years Moldovanu has waged a battle against the natural reactions of his selfish nature with the weapon of the truth contained in that scripture. He uses it now against the aches and pains of old age, keeping them powerless to steal his joy. His burning love, and poems about it, are another of his weapons…like this one written the day before our visit, inspired by the scripture, ‘You shall have a burning love, for it covers a multitude of sins.’4
On a burning stove
Flakes of snow won’t land
They disappear before it flying in the air
And no eye can see them any more
In a burning love
Bad thoughts can’t remain
If they are born, they are shattered
Like snow flakes near a red hot stove, if bad thoughts arise, like being reminded by the ache in his leg of the torture that was its source, temptations of bitterness, the voice of his selfish nature, is silenced by his burning love and he remains in the joy of the Lord. He will continue, right on into glory, fulfilling God’s purpose for his life, being joyfully creative for God.
The Joy of the Bride
For over fifty years Moldovanu has waged a battle against the natural reactions of his selfish nature with the weapon of the truth contained in that scripture. He uses it now against the aches and pains of old age, keeping them powerless to steal his joy. His burning love, and poems about it, are another of his weapons…like this one written the day before our visit, inspired by the scripture, ‘You shall have a burning love, for it covers a multitude of sins.’4
On a burning stove
Flakes of snow won’t land
They disappear before it flying in the air
And no eye can see them any more
In a burning love
Bad thoughts can’t remain
If they are born, they are shattered
Like snow flakes near a red hot stove, if bad thoughts arise, like being reminded by the ache in his leg of the torture that was its source, temptations of bitterness, the voice of his selfish nature, is silenced by his burning love and he remains in the joy of the Lord. He will continue, right on into glory, fulfilling God’s purpose for his life, being joyfully creative for God.
The Joy of the Bride
In prison I was so happy. Every morning the Lord gave me a verse.
Szilagy Sandor’s joy was truly phenomenal. Peggy and I consider him to be the most joyful man we have ever met. “In prison I was so happy. One day I told my colleagues: ‘You know what? There is no one who left his mother and father who doesn’t receive from the Lord a reward one hundred times bigger. And that’s how I feel...that I’ve received that one hundred fold reward!’ And one by one they told me: ‘I don’t understand.’ ‘Of course you don’t understand, but I tell you if you can’t find this joy anywhere but in prison, then I ask God to bring my wife and child here’. And they were shocked at this.
‘What! You wish them brought to prison?’
‘No, but I wish for them to experience the joy that I have! And if it is not possible any other way, let God bring them here.’ And I told them that if multi-billionaires would tell me, ‘Look, we’ll give you all we have if you’ll give us your joy’, I would tell them, ‘Go away, I want to stay with my treasure!’ Because what we gather here, each of us, we leave it here, but what we gather with and for Christ, that we will take with us. And I have a poem which I like very much which says:
When I am called home, what will I bring with me?
A drop of contentment, my faith, a testimony?
What I have done here?
The news of my lost battles?
What will I give an account for?
But there, they know all these things about me!
And see upon me that Blood
And they will receive me because of Christ.”
Such convictions and the strength of such joy is what made this beautiful soul such a threat to the kingdom of darkness. He lived his life purely in the light of eternity...knew that this life has one over-reaching purpose...the preparation for eternity. He gathered and sowed and reaped and couldn’t begin to count the zeros on the balance of his heavenly bank account. He reconstructed for us the deposits of a single day.
“In my morning prayers, I asked God, ‘What can You give me for today?’ The Lord gave a verse from Acts: ‘I was led by God to go to Jerusalem, not knowing what would happen...but I care not about my life. I only wish to finish my course worthy of Him.’
In the morning, at 5:00 o’clock, when they got us up to go to work, I looked down the hall to be sure I wasn’t seen and went to the next cell. I knew they needed to be encouraged.
‘Look, these are the words which I received this morning for you to meditate on!’ They thanked me; then beside me a prisoner said:
‘Take care, they come!’
‘Stop!’ They surrounded me and asked:
‘What did you speak about, that the Americans are coming?’
‘No.’
‘Then, what?’
‘I brought the Word of God to my friends.’
‘What is the Word of God?’
‘Look, I can do my job here in prison peacefully because I ask the Lord Jesus to tell me something every day, and what He told me I brought to my friends.’
‘Why have you been brought here?’
‘For preaching the Gospel.’
‘And you continue? What did you speak?’ So I told them the scripture.
‘Nothing like that exists in the Bible!’
‘Really? Give me a Bible,’ and I showed it to them, smiling.
For this ‘crime’ I was sent to solitary confinement and on the way the officer asked, ‘Will you rejoice now in the punishment cell, you know it is freezing in there?’
I answered that it is written, ‘Rejoice in the Lord, again I say unto you, rejoice!’
‘I am very curious about your Lord’.
‘You will see, I will rejoice!’”
Through the eyes of the Lord, to whom even a cup of cold water given in His Name is not forgotten, what a joy! Sandor’s capacity to receive, daily, specific scriptures from Him certainly blessed the Lord. Also, his witness to the officers, showing them the scripture, answering kindly to their mocking, continuing in trust when being taken to the punishment cell, answering with the scripture, ‘Again I say rejoice!’ And his expectation that even there he would rejoice, the curiosity about the Lord this stirred in the officer...imagine the wonderful smile all of this brought to the face of Jesus Christ. Think about that for a moment. See that morning from the perspective of heaven where everything is recorded. And, of course, the Lord saw him entering that freezing cell. It was there that Sandor reaped a bountiful harvest from the many seeds he had sown.
“In the winter they wouldn’t keep us in that cell for more than one or two days because it was so cold and they didn’t want us to get sick. But they kept me there for six days because I had done the most serious thing, I had preached the Word of God. Two priests were with me on the first day and we spoke about the wedding of Cana. I said, ‘It’s good, now I know what to meditate on.’ They left and I began to pray. But I couldn’t sleep. ‘Lord. why can’t I sleep; yesterday I slept so well? Oh, You want to teach me something about the wedding at Cana. Then I’m here listening. You know when I was free I use to tell those who were upset or afraid that they lived like that because they didn’t live in the joy of the wedding, for Jesus, the Bridegroom, is with us, so we should all live joyfully. Now what do You wish to teach me?’ To this, God answered: ‘You weren’t correct when you said that you are one of those invited to the wedding, you will be so much more. You will be my Bride.’ I was weeping for joy.
‘What! You wish them brought to prison?’
‘No, but I wish for them to experience the joy that I have! And if it is not possible any other way, let God bring them here.’ And I told them that if multi-billionaires would tell me, ‘Look, we’ll give you all we have if you’ll give us your joy’, I would tell them, ‘Go away, I want to stay with my treasure!’ Because what we gather here, each of us, we leave it here, but what we gather with and for Christ, that we will take with us. And I have a poem which I like very much which says:
When I am called home, what will I bring with me?
A drop of contentment, my faith, a testimony?
What I have done here?
The news of my lost battles?
What will I give an account for?
But there, they know all these things about me!
And see upon me that Blood
And they will receive me because of Christ.”
Such convictions and the strength of such joy is what made this beautiful soul such a threat to the kingdom of darkness. He lived his life purely in the light of eternity...knew that this life has one over-reaching purpose...the preparation for eternity. He gathered and sowed and reaped and couldn’t begin to count the zeros on the balance of his heavenly bank account. He reconstructed for us the deposits of a single day.
“In my morning prayers, I asked God, ‘What can You give me for today?’ The Lord gave a verse from Acts: ‘I was led by God to go to Jerusalem, not knowing what would happen...but I care not about my life. I only wish to finish my course worthy of Him.’
In the morning, at 5:00 o’clock, when they got us up to go to work, I looked down the hall to be sure I wasn’t seen and went to the next cell. I knew they needed to be encouraged.
‘Look, these are the words which I received this morning for you to meditate on!’ They thanked me; then beside me a prisoner said:
‘Take care, they come!’
‘Stop!’ They surrounded me and asked:
‘What did you speak about, that the Americans are coming?’
‘No.’
‘Then, what?’
‘I brought the Word of God to my friends.’
‘What is the Word of God?’
‘Look, I can do my job here in prison peacefully because I ask the Lord Jesus to tell me something every day, and what He told me I brought to my friends.’
‘Why have you been brought here?’
‘For preaching the Gospel.’
‘And you continue? What did you speak?’ So I told them the scripture.
‘Nothing like that exists in the Bible!’
‘Really? Give me a Bible,’ and I showed it to them, smiling.
For this ‘crime’ I was sent to solitary confinement and on the way the officer asked, ‘Will you rejoice now in the punishment cell, you know it is freezing in there?’
I answered that it is written, ‘Rejoice in the Lord, again I say unto you, rejoice!’
‘I am very curious about your Lord’.
‘You will see, I will rejoice!’”
Through the eyes of the Lord, to whom even a cup of cold water given in His Name is not forgotten, what a joy! Sandor’s capacity to receive, daily, specific scriptures from Him certainly blessed the Lord. Also, his witness to the officers, showing them the scripture, answering kindly to their mocking, continuing in trust when being taken to the punishment cell, answering with the scripture, ‘Again I say rejoice!’ And his expectation that even there he would rejoice, the curiosity about the Lord this stirred in the officer...imagine the wonderful smile all of this brought to the face of Jesus Christ. Think about that for a moment. See that morning from the perspective of heaven where everything is recorded. And, of course, the Lord saw him entering that freezing cell. It was there that Sandor reaped a bountiful harvest from the many seeds he had sown.
“In the winter they wouldn’t keep us in that cell for more than one or two days because it was so cold and they didn’t want us to get sick. But they kept me there for six days because I had done the most serious thing, I had preached the Word of God. Two priests were with me on the first day and we spoke about the wedding of Cana. I said, ‘It’s good, now I know what to meditate on.’ They left and I began to pray. But I couldn’t sleep. ‘Lord. why can’t I sleep; yesterday I slept so well? Oh, You want to teach me something about the wedding at Cana. Then I’m here listening. You know when I was free I use to tell those who were upset or afraid that they lived like that because they didn’t live in the joy of the wedding, for Jesus, the Bridegroom, is with us, so we should all live joyfully. Now what do You wish to teach me?’ To this, God answered: ‘You weren’t correct when you said that you are one of those invited to the wedding, you will be so much more. You will be my Bride.’ I was weeping for joy.
In the punishment cell I was like a bride weeping on the shoulder of her beloved bridegroom at the wedding.
The next morning they came and took away even the little rug that was covering me so I walked continually for it was very cold. A friend of mine appeared at the little window and asked how I was and I told him:
‘Like a bride weeping on the shoulder of her beloved bridegroom at the wedding.’
After six days when I was released I was surrounded by many prisoners trying to comfort me, saying some curses about those who kept me there so long. But I told them, ‘See, when you enter for a day there you start cursing those who sent you there, but I bless them for sending me there, for look what I have learned from this Jesus whom I speak to you about. That’s why I urge you to receive Him! This way you’ll have a happy life!’” Immediately after a glorious mountain top experience he’s down in the valley preaching the Gospel, planting more seeds...and his heavenly bank account grows and grows.
How many hundred of times do we read in the Bible that ‘The Lord said’, or ‘The Holy Spirit sent us’, or ‘On the Lord’s day I was in the Spirit’. We all know this happens, but how many of us believe it happens only to others? Father Galeriu told us that survival at The Canal of Death depended on it happening... depended on being able to discover ‘the secret of communication and communion with the Lord.’ Sandor’s path to this discovery began with his surrender to God’s will for his life. After surrender came only a desire for unbroken communion with the Lord, eliminating from his life whatever hindered it. He eliminated half hearted Bible reading and became a serious student of the Bible, memorizing large portions of scripture, striving to understand it, applying its principles to his life; he eliminated half hearted meditation on the Word and half hearted prayer. His complete respect for the Word, his ‘bowing down, prostrate in his inner man before it’, giving it, and sermons about it, his total attention, is a form of worship, perhaps the deepest form of worship. This was his path, really the only path, that leads to the strength of unbridled joy.
Accepting God’s burden that the Gospel continued to be preached, earned Sandor prison. Accepting His burden that fellow prisoners be edified daily with the Word of God earned him the punishment cell. Though surrounded with curses and cruelty, he wasn’t conformed to that world…he’d been transformed by the renewing of his mind. He wasn’t even occupied with the freezing cold. Instead, occupied with God and truth and worship, the voice of his selfish nature remained mute and he found ‘joy unspeakable and full of glory’. He leaves us detailed steps we may follow.
The Voluntary Prisoner
The communists must have thought the Visky bloodline was contaminated; even one-year-old Andras, along with the six other children, was sent to the prison village. Maria, an orphan who had come to live with the Viskys, wasn’t accused of any crime, but she felt compelled to be there with them. When we interviewed Maria and Fery Visky, who spent four of his teenage years in the prison village, she had been part of the family for fifty years. Fery knows that it was Maria who saved his mother’s life, forced water and food into her when she had lost her desire to live. You can imagine the love and respect in his eyes when he addresses her. As we left their home Peggy and I agreed there seemed to be something like fire radiating from Maria’s eyes. We felt it was the most beautiful thing we had ever seen. When she talked about the love of God, talked about ‘her Jesus’, the words and attitude of this seventy-year-old orphan were those of a young girl who had recently fallen in love. “I was an orphan. Jesus took care of me even before I knew Him. And how amazingly He cares for me now that I know Him. I know just one kind of love, which is Jesus Christ...and I know that with His love He released me from being in love with one man. He released me from human love. I know just one love, Jesus Christ.”
I know just one kind of love, Jesus Christ.
Fery asked Maria: “‘How did you find us without an address? Do you want to tell us? How did God put it in your heart to make this decision? If you can’t, don’t speak.’
‘It’s hard to speak of those things.’
‘What, Maria, what was hard?’
‘I went to the police station, they tried to scare me...to prevent me from going where you were.’
She went to the Securitate and struggled with them to be sent where the family was and that was unbelievable. The officer said, ‘You are a crazy lady. If you want to die, go there.’”
Can you picture her through the eyes of the Securitate? An orphan girl insisting on going to prison...they dismiss her as crazy. Could there be anything weaker in their eyes? No money, no position, no connections...to them a powerless, crazy orphan. How wrong they were. In Maria, and working through her, was the driving, compelling energy of ‘no greater love’...‘willing to lay down ones life for a friend’. Even if the Securitate hadn’t told her she could easily die there, she certainly knew she may be sacrificing her life, but God’s love in her overcame her fear, even fear of death. Not believing in God, the Securitate knew nothing of this kind of love, they relied on prison and torture to get what they wanted. But even physical torture was no power at all compared to the power of God’s love...all it could do was crush the body. God’s love in one’s heart could crush something more powerful...the self, ego, pride. In Maria’s case it was even more powerful than the self’s natural instinct of self preservation.
Fery asked her: “Maria, what caused you to make this decision?”
“The Love of God took me there. And I knew a Bible verse, ‘Not my will but Yours be done.’ That was my way to obey. I wanted to obey God. I wanted to serve others...to obey God in this way.
‘It’s hard to speak of those things.’
‘What, Maria, what was hard?’
‘I went to the police station, they tried to scare me...to prevent me from going where you were.’
She went to the Securitate and struggled with them to be sent where the family was and that was unbelievable. The officer said, ‘You are a crazy lady. If you want to die, go there.’”
Can you picture her through the eyes of the Securitate? An orphan girl insisting on going to prison...they dismiss her as crazy. Could there be anything weaker in their eyes? No money, no position, no connections...to them a powerless, crazy orphan. How wrong they were. In Maria, and working through her, was the driving, compelling energy of ‘no greater love’...‘willing to lay down ones life for a friend’. Even if the Securitate hadn’t told her she could easily die there, she certainly knew she may be sacrificing her life, but God’s love in her overcame her fear, even fear of death. Not believing in God, the Securitate knew nothing of this kind of love, they relied on prison and torture to get what they wanted. But even physical torture was no power at all compared to the power of God’s love...all it could do was crush the body. God’s love in one’s heart could crush something more powerful...the self, ego, pride. In Maria’s case it was even more powerful than the self’s natural instinct of self preservation.
Fery asked her: “Maria, what caused you to make this decision?”
“The Love of God took me there. And I knew a Bible verse, ‘Not my will but Yours be done.’ That was my way to obey. I wanted to obey God. I wanted to serve others...to obey God in this way.
The Love of God took me there. And I knew a Bible verse…that was my way to obey.
I really didn’t know Jesus very well yet, but I had the feeling that that was the kind of obedience I had been waiting in my heart to do. I desired to obey my Lord and actually do something for my Lord in His Name.” I have pastored fishermen who could barely read or write who would memorize one scripture at Sunday service then chew on it all week as they fished and return to tell us more about it in a few words than I could offer with all my commentaries. It had been to their innermost parts, combined with their deepest emotions. Maria, pre-literate back then, had done the same with what Holy Spirit gave her, that part of Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane which led to our very salvation, ‘Nevertheless, not My will but Yours be done.’ Her obedience to the scripture was not outward conformity to a rule but obedience of the heart, ‘The love of God took me there…what I had been waiting in my heart to do.’ And through obedience to it, the life of a mother of seven, and probably the lives of some of the children, were spared.
There could hardly be a more perfect example of surrender. By deliberately signing away her ‘claim of her right to herself, her deliberate independence of God’5, how Chambers describes our sin nature, Maria became a willing captive of the Lord, so, for her, the thought of physical captivity held no threat. Her ‘old man’ had been ‘crucified with Christ’...she’d become, in Paul’s words, ‘a living sacrifice’. The proof, according to Chambers, “is the amazing ease which the life of God in her enabled her to obey that scripture”6. As she told us of the three days and three sleepless nights, walking nearly halfway across Romania, we could almost feel the power of the Holy Spirit’s abiding presence that accompanied her. Entering the area where the camp was located she spoke of her burning conviction “that even if the family were under water I knew I would go to them and find them.” She was experiencing one of the true joys of life, being on an assignment from God, being used up for one of His purposes, experiencing the passion this always brings. God knew what fierce attacks waited for Mrs. Visky, knew of Satan’s plan to cripple her husband’s ministry by destroying his wife, of aborting the potential of this righteous family’s children by killing their mother. By imparting to Maria His purpose through His Word, by propelling her with the power of His love, God, participating with Maria, won.
There could hardly be a more perfect example of surrender. By deliberately signing away her ‘claim of her right to herself, her deliberate independence of God’5, how Chambers describes our sin nature, Maria became a willing captive of the Lord, so, for her, the thought of physical captivity held no threat. Her ‘old man’ had been ‘crucified with Christ’...she’d become, in Paul’s words, ‘a living sacrifice’. The proof, according to Chambers, “is the amazing ease which the life of God in her enabled her to obey that scripture”6. As she told us of the three days and three sleepless nights, walking nearly halfway across Romania, we could almost feel the power of the Holy Spirit’s abiding presence that accompanied her. Entering the area where the camp was located she spoke of her burning conviction “that even if the family were under water I knew I would go to them and find them.” She was experiencing one of the true joys of life, being on an assignment from God, being used up for one of His purposes, experiencing the passion this always brings. God knew what fierce attacks waited for Mrs. Visky, knew of Satan’s plan to cripple her husband’s ministry by destroying his wife, of aborting the potential of this righteous family’s children by killing their mother. By imparting to Maria His purpose through His Word, by propelling her with the power of His love, God, participating with Maria, won.
Only in His presence could you survive in those conditions. I know His presence was there. We felt we could catch Jesus and hold Him in our hands.
“What happened in that camp is too hard to talk about. You would have to be there to understand how hard. For me it was good to be there in the presence of the Lord. But only with the presence of the Lord...not without His presence. And only in His presence, only in His presence could you survive in those conditions. I know His presence was there. We felt we could catch Jesus and hold Him in our hands. And there I saw God’s love, because He strengthened me to look after a very ill woman and take care of seven children. This is something you can’t speak in words. You’d have to be there to see how amazing is God’s love...And I had the experience of the full love of God and His presence every time we prayed. He was with us all the time.”
With passing of years the memories stand
Of God’s full love in a forsaken land
Of children to care for, a mother’s despair
Of certain death if God wasn’t there
With evil surrounding and hate to destroy
Her strength was His Presence, the fullness of joy
No one can fathom His glorious plans
Jesus...she held Him right there in her hands
Maria was free to leave at any time, but regardless of how great the sacrifice she remained committed to her decision to give herself unconditionally for the good of the Visky family...that’s the love of God. Through expressions of this love, God’s presence, ‘holding Jesus in our hands’, was manifested in the place called Misery Village...and they survived. It is also how Father Langa survived, running for four months in a freezing cell. “Love is a provocation towards God to make Himself present. It is not I who speak but He speaks.And when I love, God in me loves. And when He loves He manifests Himself.
This means that God is brought to where I commit the act of loving. Humanly speaking it was impossible to survive in that frost for four months. What gave me the strength to stay alive was the consciousness of God’s Presence in me.
And when I love, God in me loves. And when He loves, He manifests Himself.
I experience Him through love...it is the only influence I have over God: to love like Him, to love through Him and He loves through me. In prison I made God present in the souls of men, and His presence grew stronger in me by love.”
‘The Joy of Thy Salvation’
As recorded in Psalm 51, David cried out to the Lord, “Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation”. None, of all those we interviewed, experienced so intensely this joy as Tudose. The day he received the gift of salvation he couldn’t read more than five or six verses related to salvation’s blessings without crying for joy. Years later he continued to equate the joy his salvation brought him with that explosion of shouts and hats thrown in the air when a thousand prisoners learned they’d soon be free. Just as the joy of Tudose’s salvation was unsurpassed, so also was the despair caused by his knowledge of his unsaved condition. He had great fear of death, was afraid of where he would go when he died…experienced heart-rending crying before God. The two are directly related. The extent of his pre-salvation despair led to the extent of his post salvation joy.
For decades, New Tribes Mission, which ministers to tribal people worldwide, used conventional evangelism methods. They would enter a tribe, preach on the existence of God, on the reality of heaven and hell…show from the Book of Romans that ‘all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God’…would present the Gospel and lead some in a prayer of salvation. For decades much of the seed they were sowing appeared to be falling, as spoken of by Jesus in the parable of the sower, on thorny ground. The cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches would often choke it. ‘Cracks’ would appear in the foundations of many of the tribal churches. Believers, even leaders, would return to the ‘sins that had so easily entangled them’.
In the early 1960s a missionary working on the island of Palawan in the Philippians received a revelation that not only was the Bible inspired, but also inspired was the order in which it was written. Instead of quickly preaching the solution from the New Testament, the Gospel, he used the Old Testament to reveal the problem. From each story, beginning in Genesis 1:1, he would bring out the aspect of God’s character, His faithfulness, holiness or righteousness, which the story revealed; then used the law as it was intended to be used…to reveal the impossibility of man obeying all of it to satisfy God’s righteous requirements. Along the way the messianic promises would be mentioned, but for three months who they were referring to was not revealed. As they approached the end of the Old Testament and the solution…Jesus Christ and His death, burial and resurrection…still had not been presented, many of the Indians began to despair at the impossibility of their escaping judgment and, like Tudose, they experienced great fear of death. But when they heard the Gospel and learned that all of mans’ sin had been paid for by the Son of God, in those who received the free gift of salvation, there were explosions of joy.
Those who received salvation through this method of evangelism…and Peggy and I received first hand accounts of this during the two years we lived in the Philippians…did not need to be persuaded to witness and evangelize. They would run to the next village to tell them the good news. Tudose’s reaction was similar. “The Holy Spirit was leading me to talk to people in my town…more than half the village came to the Lord…then all around the country.” New Tribes Mission now uses this method in all of its more than two hundred ministries around the world. The understanding of the depravity of man which it reveals, I’m convinced, is the greatest piece missing from the foundation of most Christians. How many truly understand that “God was sorry He had made man on earth, and He was grieved in His heart;” (Gen. 6:6) or that “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it”? (Jer. 17:9) The lack of joy in the lives of many Christians can be traced, I believe, to their ignorance of the desperate, really impossible condition, from which they were saved.
We have received invaluable lessons from those who, in terrible circumstances, experienced ‘joy unspeakable and full of glory’ by having fed Christ’s life in them with an excellent diet of The Word, worship and fellowship. From Mrs. Visky we learned that seeing how God sees us leads to doing everything in love, which in turn leads to abundant joy. From Caraman and Moldovanu we learned that joy comes from receiving and releasing a Divine purpose of the Lords, and is maintained by being able to still the voice of our selfish nature. Maria and Sandor leave us with unforgettable examples of finding the joy of ‘holding Jesus in my hands’ and ‘a bride weeping on the shoulder of her beloved bridegroom’ after accepting immense burdens from the Lord, being motivated by the love of God to fulfill them, and keeping the voice of their selfish natures quiet by being occupied with the presence of God and communion and communication with Him.
As recorded in Psalm 51, David cried out to the Lord, “Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation”. None, of all those we interviewed, experienced so intensely this joy as Tudose. The day he received the gift of salvation he couldn’t read more than five or six verses related to salvation’s blessings without crying for joy. Years later he continued to equate the joy his salvation brought him with that explosion of shouts and hats thrown in the air when a thousand prisoners learned they’d soon be free. Just as the joy of Tudose’s salvation was unsurpassed, so also was the despair caused by his knowledge of his unsaved condition. He had great fear of death, was afraid of where he would go when he died…experienced heart-rending crying before God. The two are directly related. The extent of his pre-salvation despair led to the extent of his post salvation joy.
For decades, New Tribes Mission, which ministers to tribal people worldwide, used conventional evangelism methods. They would enter a tribe, preach on the existence of God, on the reality of heaven and hell…show from the Book of Romans that ‘all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God’…would present the Gospel and lead some in a prayer of salvation. For decades much of the seed they were sowing appeared to be falling, as spoken of by Jesus in the parable of the sower, on thorny ground. The cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches would often choke it. ‘Cracks’ would appear in the foundations of many of the tribal churches. Believers, even leaders, would return to the ‘sins that had so easily entangled them’.
In the early 1960s a missionary working on the island of Palawan in the Philippians received a revelation that not only was the Bible inspired, but also inspired was the order in which it was written. Instead of quickly preaching the solution from the New Testament, the Gospel, he used the Old Testament to reveal the problem. From each story, beginning in Genesis 1:1, he would bring out the aspect of God’s character, His faithfulness, holiness or righteousness, which the story revealed; then used the law as it was intended to be used…to reveal the impossibility of man obeying all of it to satisfy God’s righteous requirements. Along the way the messianic promises would be mentioned, but for three months who they were referring to was not revealed. As they approached the end of the Old Testament and the solution…Jesus Christ and His death, burial and resurrection…still had not been presented, many of the Indians began to despair at the impossibility of their escaping judgment and, like Tudose, they experienced great fear of death. But when they heard the Gospel and learned that all of mans’ sin had been paid for by the Son of God, in those who received the free gift of salvation, there were explosions of joy.
Those who received salvation through this method of evangelism…and Peggy and I received first hand accounts of this during the two years we lived in the Philippians…did not need to be persuaded to witness and evangelize. They would run to the next village to tell them the good news. Tudose’s reaction was similar. “The Holy Spirit was leading me to talk to people in my town…more than half the village came to the Lord…then all around the country.” New Tribes Mission now uses this method in all of its more than two hundred ministries around the world. The understanding of the depravity of man which it reveals, I’m convinced, is the greatest piece missing from the foundation of most Christians. How many truly understand that “God was sorry He had made man on earth, and He was grieved in His heart;” (Gen. 6:6) or that “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it”? (Jer. 17:9) The lack of joy in the lives of many Christians can be traced, I believe, to their ignorance of the desperate, really impossible condition, from which they were saved.
We have received invaluable lessons from those who, in terrible circumstances, experienced ‘joy unspeakable and full of glory’ by having fed Christ’s life in them with an excellent diet of The Word, worship and fellowship. From Mrs. Visky we learned that seeing how God sees us leads to doing everything in love, which in turn leads to abundant joy. From Caraman and Moldovanu we learned that joy comes from receiving and releasing a Divine purpose of the Lords, and is maintained by being able to still the voice of our selfish nature. Maria and Sandor leave us with unforgettable examples of finding the joy of ‘holding Jesus in my hands’ and ‘a bride weeping on the shoulder of her beloved bridegroom’ after accepting immense burdens from the Lord, being motivated by the love of God to fulfill them, and keeping the voice of their selfish natures quiet by being occupied with the presence of God and communion and communication with Him.
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