There are times when I am tempted to think my efforts to help people does not pay off. At those moments I am tempted with being bitter about the time and energy I’ve invested in people. Satan even entices me to be angry at God in those times. Have you ever felt that way? Hebrews 12:15 tells us that when we let a root of bitterness inside us, it will contaminate us and all the people around us. It has very destructive affects on our spiritual eye sight so that “we cannot see straight”. Knowing this, I seek to avoid bitter thoughts like “the plague”. God assured all of us that our work in the Lord is never wasted. It will become fruitful in God’s timing.
“Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” (I Corinthians 15:58)
David and Svea Flood, a very young Swedish missionary couple, went with their two-year-old son to a hostile African community in 1921. Their only contact with the villagers was a young boy, who was allowed to sell this family chickens and eggs twice a week. Svea, a tiny woman, decided that if this was the only African she could talk to, she would try to lead the boy to Jesus. This young man became a Christian. Svea died seventeen days after the birth of a little girl named Aina, due to bouts of malaria. David Flood became bitter and after burying his twenty-seven-year-old wife. He said, “I’m going back to Sweden. I’ve lost my wife, and I obviously can’t take care of this baby. God has ruined my life.” After giving his newborn daughter to a missionary family, he went back to Sweden with his son.
In less than a year the missionary couple who took in Aina both died within days of each other. The baby was then taken in by some American missionaries and brought to the United States by age three. They loved the little girl and changed her name to Aggie, who grew up and attended a Bible College in Minneapolis. There she met and married a young man named Dewey Hurst who became president of a Christian college in Seattle. On their 25th wedding anniversary the college presented them with a gift to take a vacation to Sweden. There Aggie looked up her real father who was now an old man. David had remarried, had four more children, destroyed his life with alcohol, and suffered a stroke. He was still bitter and did not want anyone to mention God, because as he put it “God took everything from me”. She walked into his filthy apartment, with liquor bottles everywhere, and approached the seventy-three-year-old man lying in a rumpled bed. “Papa” she said tentatively. He turned and began to cry. “Aina,” he said. “I never meant to give you away.” “It’s all right, Papa,” she replied, taking him gently in her arms. “God took care of me.” The man instantly stiffened and his tears stopped. “God forgot all of us. Our lives have been like this because of Him.” He turned his face back to the wall. Aggie stroked his face and continued “Papa, I’ve got a little story to tell you, and it’s a true one. You didn’t go to Africa in vain. Mama didn’t die in vain. The little boy you won to the Lord grew up to win that whole village to Jesus Christ. The one seed you planted just kept growing and growing. Today there are six hundred African people serving the Lord because you were faithful to the call of God in your life.… Papa, Jesus loves you. He has never hated you.” The old man turned back to look into his daughter’s eyes. His body relaxed and he began to talk. And by the end of the afternoon, he had come back to the God he had resented for so many years. Over the next few days, father and daughter enjoyed warm moments together and within a few weeks, David Flood died and went into eternity. If we like David have become weary in well doing, God will restore us when we repent.
Let’s not look at the immediate circumstance to determine whether our work for the Lord was of value. Let’s look at God’s Promise and remember that He will never be proven wrong. Our work in the Lord will always bring lasting benefits in God’s timing! Working for God is never time wasted!
Selah,
Al Yoder
1/19/2011
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