Life lessons from Corrie ten Boom - Part 2Sample

Come forth as gold 

Job 23:10 (NIV)

 “But He knows the way that I take; when He has tested me, I will come forth as gold.”

Ten dark months, surrounded by so much cruelty and inhuman suffering! Not only for others but they themselves were not spared either. Corrie could hardly bear to see how her sister Betsie, eight years older than her, was beaten severely and starving to death.

Corrie has no answers to the “why” of suffering. But in her book “Prisoner and yet ..” she writes: “I do not understand suffering, but I do understand my own suffering. The Lord has called me for a task to lead desperate and sad people to the Savior and to see how He comforts them. Christ’s suffering has become more clear clearer to me and I now understand His love better than before. I learn not to trust in my own strength anymore, but as a child, to bring everything to Him. I see my own insignificance more and more and I feel purified and stronger. The reason for my own suffering is no problem for me.”

Corrie thought about the meaning of suffering. With all the questions that remain, she confesses that, for her, suffering was a purifying and refining process to discover what really matters in life. This process determines her future after the war.

Question

Everyone has experienced suffering in one way or another.  

• Did it only bring you sorrow, sadness, and questions or have you experienced that, where God allowed suffering in your life, it has refined you like gold?  “These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” 

(1 Peter 1:7)

Prayer

Father, there is so much suffering I do not understand. Give me the courage to bear my own suffering and to allow You to purify and refine me. Give me the hope that, even through my suffering, You will accomplish your plans for my life.