Have you ever thought of yourself as a poet? You are. Poets are those who see beneath surface appearances to the essence of things. This describes all Christians. We know that behind the seen world exists the true, real world. We have seen and entered the Kingdom of God. Have you ever thought of yourself as an artist? You are. All Christians have been called by God to participate with Him in the most important art projects of all, in the regeneration of souls, the expansion of His kingdom and the conforming of their characters to the image of Christ. We are called to be spiritual artist/poets working hand in hand with God’s Holy Spirit. By preserving the testimonies of these Romanian faith heroes, God has arranged for us to be tutored by some of the most creative artist/poets in history.
What could be more creative than, in the midst of tragedy and degradation that pulled most down into despair, to be experiencing, as Maria did, ‘God’s presence’, ‘the full love of God’, and ‘God strengthening me to look after a very ill woman and seven children’? She, literally, month after month, God participating with her, injected life into the family. And to fellow prisoners who were unbelievers, what could have been a more powerful witness than for them to be observing, in the midst of misery, one who was feeling she ‘could catch Jesus and hold Him in her hands?’ We gratefully sit at the feet of such a one. She teaches us essentials for growing as spiritual artist/poets...co-creators with God.
Jesus’ Love
“Through meditation”, Charles Spurgeon says, “we can see Jesus even closer up than the disciples did when they walked with Him on earth.”1 A major part of Maria’s mental life is meditation on her Savior. With absolute certainty she told us, “I know one kind of love, Jesus Christ...I know just one love, Jesus’ love.” Always in her consciousness is the love Jesus has for her. Like the Shulamite woman in the Song of Solomon she hears her Lord saying:
“Like a lily among the thorns,
So is my beloved among the daughters...
And His desire is toward me…
Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth.”
The pleasure she gives our Lord must be immense. Imagine Him observing her begging to be sent to prison, serving, laboring, literally keeping that precious family alive. His thoughts, too, must have resembled those from the Song of Solomon:
“You have ravished my heart
My sister, my spouse;
You have ravished my heart
With one look of your eyes...”2
An orphan who had not yet learned to read, Maria knew just a few scriptures. Virtually the entirety of her spiritual life was to have always before her mind’s eye the image of her Savior’s love...but it was enough, even in great hardships, to create a life of joy and rest and uninterrupted communion with God. She inspires us to keep in our mind’s eye the infinite love which God, personally, has for each of us. ‘God so loved the world...’, all of us, not just Maria. Awareness of being the focus of that love is the anchor, especially as wickedness spreads in these last days, that keeps us from falling short of the life ordained by God for us...a life of co-creation with Him. Maria shows us how...a life of meditation and worship upon the most glorious Being in the universe.
A Life of Worship
There are many definitions of worship. My favorite is ‘responding to the revealed nature of God by giving to Him the best He has given us’. How perfectly this describes Maria and all of the Romanian faith heroes. The best God had given them...life and family and freedom and health and career...they offered it all back to God for His use in resisting evil and expanding His Kingdom. All the parts of their being, their will and dreams and plans, through worship, were brought into a single focus onto God and His purposes. As they ‘beheld as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, they were transformed into His image from glory to glory.’3 How closely their characters, formed by lives of giving to God the best they had, became conformed to the image of Christ. They inspire us to do the same. Using that half hour drive to work to listen to a teaching tape, identifying with the Lord’s interests in my neighbors, praying with my wife every morning, helping to clean the church...these are worship. For forty-five years my senior pastor has offered part of ‘his best day’, his Saturday morning, to lead evangelizing teams into the neighborhoods. Every single door in Baltimore, Md., where the church has been located since 1988, has been knocked on...they’re on their second time around. That’s worship!
Preparation
What we consider to be hardships to be avoided at all costs are often situations God puts us through to develop us as His effective co-creators. Pastor Ton, towards the end of six months of interrogation that resulted from his letter to Ceausescu demanding freedom for the churches, was told by the investigating officer: “Mr. Ton, we investigated your past life and you know there was a time when your life was different. We have found some notes of yours from that period and if we multiply them and ‘forget’ them on the tables in some churches, your brothers would come and break the windows in your house.” When threatened with the loss of his life for spearheading the letter writing campaign, Pastor Ton had shown great courage; but his reaction to this new threat was quite different. “I thought I’d have a heart attack. I was so scared. I turned yellow. Two days later I couldn’t stand on my feet.”
What an eye opener for a man who was ready to lose his life to help bring freedom to the Church to be so devastated with the threat of loss of reputation. God, inspiring the officer with that specific threat, brought Pastor Ton face to face with an area of his spiritual life that had not yet reached maturity, a part of his self life that needed to die. The next morning, having secured his full attention, not only with the attack of anxiety but with the loss of physical strength, God spelled out the lesson He wanted Pastor Ton to learn.
“Saturday morning in my fellowship with God, somehow Jesus Christ appeared before me and told me, ‘Joseph, your image of the crucifixion is this: you taking your cross and climbing up towards martyrdom where you’ll be crucified but passing through two lines of your applauding brothers and sisters, saying, ‘Bravo, Joseph.’ But do you mind if I’d like you to go between those two lines of people who are throwing mud on you and your cross and in this way you go to your crucifixion.’” Pastor Ton accepted this Divine correction...“Oh, Lord this comes from You, I accept a cross covered with mud,”…then immediately received the miraculous visitation from God described in a previous chapter. “And then I felt something like lightning and I felt strength coming into my bones and feet.”
God, I believe, chose this specific manifestation of Himself to correct a misconception Pastor Ton had about the root source of his strength. When we asked him, “When being persecuted, how can a Christian resist?” he answered, “I asked myself that question at the beginning of communism. The fundamental question is: How much I love Jesus? What is He for me?” Father Galeriu reminds us that this is not ‘the fundamental question’. “The essential question is not the fact that I love God and that I strive to love Him, but to feel His love, to perceive that He loves me, that He embraces me with a pure love.” God sending ‘something like lightning’ to invade Pastor Ton’s body and soul was God causing him to feel, to experience, an iota of His love, to experience being ‘embraced with a pure love’. That’s the love Paul was persuaded “neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from”4. Our love for God, regardless if it’s ‘with all our heart and soul and strength’ is still infinitesimal compared with His for us. Those who remain pillars of strength, available to co-create with God in a crisis, who remain a threat to Satan’s kingdom, live in the awareness of being embraced by the infinite love of God. By seeing himself through what he imagined would be condemning eyes, Joseph temporarily lost his victory, but regained it by seeing himself once more as God does, through eyes of unconditional love.
Sent
When Fery Visky asked Maria what caused her to make the decision to go to prison, she answered, ‘The Love of God sent me there.’ She knew she was on a mission from God, that He had a purpose for her there. Imagine that your own father, who’d proved his love by making huge sacrifices for you, made an urgent request for you to rush into a neighbor’s burning house to rescue a child.
That’s how Maria felt. She knew it was a potentially fatal mission, but knowing she’d been sent, and knowing the love of the One who sent her, she didn’t hesitate. Fery, a teenager at the time, had no such convictions. He told us, “I couldn’t believe we were leaving our beautiful home to live in that wreck of a house, that living such a hard life could in any way be in God’s plan.” Finding no purpose for being there, his responses to the same conditions were completely different than Maria’s. Showing us photographs taken at the time, he said, “You can see that at fourteen-years-old I hadn’t learned to smile as my father did.”
What could be more creative than, in the midst of tragedy and degradation that pulled most down into despair, to be experiencing, as Maria did, ‘God’s presence’, ‘the full love of God’, and ‘God strengthening me to look after a very ill woman and seven children’? She, literally, month after month, God participating with her, injected life into the family. And to fellow prisoners who were unbelievers, what could have been a more powerful witness than for them to be observing, in the midst of misery, one who was feeling she ‘could catch Jesus and hold Him in her hands?’ We gratefully sit at the feet of such a one. She teaches us essentials for growing as spiritual artist/poets...co-creators with God.
Jesus’ Love
“Through meditation”, Charles Spurgeon says, “we can see Jesus even closer up than the disciples did when they walked with Him on earth.”1 A major part of Maria’s mental life is meditation on her Savior. With absolute certainty she told us, “I know one kind of love, Jesus Christ...I know just one love, Jesus’ love.” Always in her consciousness is the love Jesus has for her. Like the Shulamite woman in the Song of Solomon she hears her Lord saying:
“Like a lily among the thorns,
So is my beloved among the daughters...
And His desire is toward me…
Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth.”
The pleasure she gives our Lord must be immense. Imagine Him observing her begging to be sent to prison, serving, laboring, literally keeping that precious family alive. His thoughts, too, must have resembled those from the Song of Solomon:
“You have ravished my heart
My sister, my spouse;
You have ravished my heart
With one look of your eyes...”2
An orphan who had not yet learned to read, Maria knew just a few scriptures. Virtually the entirety of her spiritual life was to have always before her mind’s eye the image of her Savior’s love...but it was enough, even in great hardships, to create a life of joy and rest and uninterrupted communion with God. She inspires us to keep in our mind’s eye the infinite love which God, personally, has for each of us. ‘God so loved the world...’, all of us, not just Maria. Awareness of being the focus of that love is the anchor, especially as wickedness spreads in these last days, that keeps us from falling short of the life ordained by God for us...a life of co-creation with Him. Maria shows us how...a life of meditation and worship upon the most glorious Being in the universe.
A Life of Worship
There are many definitions of worship. My favorite is ‘responding to the revealed nature of God by giving to Him the best He has given us’. How perfectly this describes Maria and all of the Romanian faith heroes. The best God had given them...life and family and freedom and health and career...they offered it all back to God for His use in resisting evil and expanding His Kingdom. All the parts of their being, their will and dreams and plans, through worship, were brought into a single focus onto God and His purposes. As they ‘beheld as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, they were transformed into His image from glory to glory.’3 How closely their characters, formed by lives of giving to God the best they had, became conformed to the image of Christ. They inspire us to do the same. Using that half hour drive to work to listen to a teaching tape, identifying with the Lord’s interests in my neighbors, praying with my wife every morning, helping to clean the church...these are worship. For forty-five years my senior pastor has offered part of ‘his best day’, his Saturday morning, to lead evangelizing teams into the neighborhoods. Every single door in Baltimore, Md., where the church has been located since 1988, has been knocked on...they’re on their second time around. That’s worship!
Preparation
What we consider to be hardships to be avoided at all costs are often situations God puts us through to develop us as His effective co-creators. Pastor Ton, towards the end of six months of interrogation that resulted from his letter to Ceausescu demanding freedom for the churches, was told by the investigating officer: “Mr. Ton, we investigated your past life and you know there was a time when your life was different. We have found some notes of yours from that period and if we multiply them and ‘forget’ them on the tables in some churches, your brothers would come and break the windows in your house.” When threatened with the loss of his life for spearheading the letter writing campaign, Pastor Ton had shown great courage; but his reaction to this new threat was quite different. “I thought I’d have a heart attack. I was so scared. I turned yellow. Two days later I couldn’t stand on my feet.”
What an eye opener for a man who was ready to lose his life to help bring freedom to the Church to be so devastated with the threat of loss of reputation. God, inspiring the officer with that specific threat, brought Pastor Ton face to face with an area of his spiritual life that had not yet reached maturity, a part of his self life that needed to die. The next morning, having secured his full attention, not only with the attack of anxiety but with the loss of physical strength, God spelled out the lesson He wanted Pastor Ton to learn.
“Saturday morning in my fellowship with God, somehow Jesus Christ appeared before me and told me, ‘Joseph, your image of the crucifixion is this: you taking your cross and climbing up towards martyrdom where you’ll be crucified but passing through two lines of your applauding brothers and sisters, saying, ‘Bravo, Joseph.’ But do you mind if I’d like you to go between those two lines of people who are throwing mud on you and your cross and in this way you go to your crucifixion.’” Pastor Ton accepted this Divine correction...“Oh, Lord this comes from You, I accept a cross covered with mud,”…then immediately received the miraculous visitation from God described in a previous chapter. “And then I felt something like lightning and I felt strength coming into my bones and feet.”
God, I believe, chose this specific manifestation of Himself to correct a misconception Pastor Ton had about the root source of his strength. When we asked him, “When being persecuted, how can a Christian resist?” he answered, “I asked myself that question at the beginning of communism. The fundamental question is: How much I love Jesus? What is He for me?” Father Galeriu reminds us that this is not ‘the fundamental question’. “The essential question is not the fact that I love God and that I strive to love Him, but to feel His love, to perceive that He loves me, that He embraces me with a pure love.” God sending ‘something like lightning’ to invade Pastor Ton’s body and soul was God causing him to feel, to experience, an iota of His love, to experience being ‘embraced with a pure love’. That’s the love Paul was persuaded “neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from”4. Our love for God, regardless if it’s ‘with all our heart and soul and strength’ is still infinitesimal compared with His for us. Those who remain pillars of strength, available to co-create with God in a crisis, who remain a threat to Satan’s kingdom, live in the awareness of being embraced by the infinite love of God. By seeing himself through what he imagined would be condemning eyes, Joseph temporarily lost his victory, but regained it by seeing himself once more as God does, through eyes of unconditional love.
Sent
When Fery Visky asked Maria what caused her to make the decision to go to prison, she answered, ‘The Love of God sent me there.’ She knew she was on a mission from God, that He had a purpose for her there. Imagine that your own father, who’d proved his love by making huge sacrifices for you, made an urgent request for you to rush into a neighbor’s burning house to rescue a child.
That’s how Maria felt. She knew it was a potentially fatal mission, but knowing she’d been sent, and knowing the love of the One who sent her, she didn’t hesitate. Fery, a teenager at the time, had no such convictions. He told us, “I couldn’t believe we were leaving our beautiful home to live in that wreck of a house, that living such a hard life could in any way be in God’s plan.” Finding no purpose for being there, his responses to the same conditions were completely different than Maria’s. Showing us photographs taken at the time, he said, “You can see that at fourteen-years-old I hadn’t learned to smile as my father did.”
The martyrs of the communist period lived ‘with their thinking on things above’.
Dr. Paul Negrut, a Baptist Pastor and seminary professor, who earned a PhD in psychiatry from Cambridge University, provides incisive spiritual insight into the reasons for Maria’s strength and Fery’s weakness. “A Christian who doesn’t fully understand his identity, that he is a child of God here on earth, a son of eternity in this world, if he does not relate to this world through the perspective of the other world, he will be swallowed by it again and again. The martyrs of the communist period continue the Biblical tradition of Abel, Enoch, Noah and Abraham who overcame history by being anchored in eternity. They lived as the apostle said, ‘with their thinking on things above’. It is a paradox...to be efficient down here we have to look at things above, citizens of heaven living on earth.” That describes Maria perfectly. Because her perspective was ‘God sent me. He has a vital purpose for me there!’, instead of being ‘swallowed’ by the harsh realities of Misery Village, she remained, for four years, tremendously ‘efficient’, ‘anchored in eternity with thoughts on things above’, a valuable co-creator with God.
Fery’s depression, which rendered him incapable of co-creating with God, was the predictable result of ‘thinking on things below’, on the ruined house and their hard life. These opposite reactions to the same circumstances are a powerful reminder of the fearful responsibility all Christians have been given. In every situation we find ourselves, even standing in a supermarket line, by our blessings and prayers or by resentments and complaints, we either expand God’s Kingdom or push it farther away. Those Christians who are God’s most effective co-creators are those who know they are loved with an infinite love, who know God has a purpose for them in every situation.
Mrs. Visky vacillated between trusting God, even when her husband had been stolen from her, because ‘the immense price of the Cross had pierced her heart’ and believing He had a purpose in her harsh treatment at the commandant’s office because ‘the Word of God hit her on the head like a hammer’…to depression... caused by not being able to look beyond the children’s harsh life. Not until the precise moment that God had her full attention, letting her arrive at the very brink of death, did He send the lesson that has never left her.
Fery’s depression, which rendered him incapable of co-creating with God, was the predictable result of ‘thinking on things below’, on the ruined house and their hard life. These opposite reactions to the same circumstances are a powerful reminder of the fearful responsibility all Christians have been given. In every situation we find ourselves, even standing in a supermarket line, by our blessings and prayers or by resentments and complaints, we either expand God’s Kingdom or push it farther away. Those Christians who are God’s most effective co-creators are those who know they are loved with an infinite love, who know God has a purpose for them in every situation.
Mrs. Visky vacillated between trusting God, even when her husband had been stolen from her, because ‘the immense price of the Cross had pierced her heart’ and believing He had a purpose in her harsh treatment at the commandant’s office because ‘the Word of God hit her on the head like a hammer’…to depression... caused by not being able to look beyond the children’s harsh life. Not until the precise moment that God had her full attention, letting her arrive at the very brink of death, did He send the lesson that has never left her.
I was refusing the grace that was lying at my feet…
“My entire life passed before my eyes...As I looked close, I realized I had been reading God’s Word according to the desires of my own heart. I wanted to lead Him...I was looking at life through my own common sense and refusing the grace that was lying at my feet...Within the pity for my children I also found there was self pity...The roots of sin that God revealed to me on the death-bed were those of lack of faith, lack of lowliness and the desire for my will to lead the Lord...it was then I opened my heart totally to the Lord. Through tears I confessed my unbelief...”5
Who has all power in heaven and earth...Mrs. Visky had become so obsessed with her children’s hardships that the only way God could provide her with the gift of repentance, what Oswald Chambers calls ‘the great gift, the great mercy of God’6, was to take her so close to death that she had no attention left for the seen world. No one seeing her immobile body could imagine this was anything but a tragedy...but it was anything but. It was God giving to Mrs. Visky, not unlike the gift He gave to Pastor Ton, the gift of experiencing Divinity and seeing herself as He did. It was His detailed orchestration and minute timing in the fine tuning of her character in order for her to become a powerful co-creator with Him. This should revitalize anyone’s faith in how precisely and intimately God is involved in our lives.
Immediately following Mrs. Visky’s repentance, as also happened to Pastor Ton, came her glorious visitation from God (‘An unspeakable warmth and unending joy, so smooth and quiet filled my heart.’) What she then received, “...a new life with a view of God so worthy to be worshipped and faithfully served...who has all power in heaven and earth...Yes, He has the power to help us to the end day by day...” has never left her. No longer did she have the problem which the Israelites had in the wilderness of having a small God so that their trials produced hardened hearts, (Ps. 95:8) The God she now knew was bigger than her problems. Her vision of God had become ‘unveiled and she was transformed into the same image as she beheld His glory.’ (2 Cor.3:18) She’d become a mirror in the hands of God, reflecting Whom she had beheld.
God is looking for those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth…in the truth of who He is. That morning that’s who Mrs. Visky became. The most essential of all truth, that God has all power in heaven and earth, was now hers. This radical trust in Him is precisely what God wants from all of us. With her new trust that God is available to participate with her in every situation, Mrs. Visky has created a family that is a spreading tree of righteousness, blessing Romania tremendously...seven children and the children’s children all serving God, dedicated to expanding His Kingdom. She inspires us to ask ourselves if there may be grace lying at our feet that we are refusing to receive; and to seek the gift of seeing in our lives what may be hindering us from discovering as she did “a view of God so worthy to be worshipped and faithfully served, who has all power in heaven and earth.”7
Living in Truth and Beauty
In a seminar our ministry was presenting in a church, as I discussed Maria’s testimony, with her image projected onto a screen behind me, I realized my translator was weeping and unable to continue. She told me later she’d become overwhelmed by the beauty radiating from Maria’s face, particularly from her eyes. Father Galeriu made a statement that helps explain such astounding spiritual beauty. “In order to live in the truth and beauty in which we were originally created, say only ‘Yes’ to God.” Holy Spirit quickened a verse of scripture to Maria and her response, though she knew the suffering it would entail, was ‘Yes’. “And I knew a scripture, ‘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... ” She responded, ‘Yes’, not only to that scripture but to the prompting of Christ’s life, His love, powerful and alive within her. (‘The love of God sent me there.’) Her constant ‘Yes’ to God caused her to spontaneously fulfill the principles of the Kingdom of God which Jesus taught in His parables and in the Beatitudes. All of these principles…such as forgiveness, love, humility, perseverance, unity…are based on the character of God. They are the principles upon which His universe operates. Follow them and you find yourself moving with God, like swimming downstream. Break them with lust, greed, selfishness and hatred and you find yourself going against God, like swimming upstream. The first leads to peace and joy…spiritual beauty…the other to strife and frustration…spiritual ugliness.
Maria, through her life of service and sacrifice, unwittingly had become great in God’s eyes. (“Let him who would be great among you be your servant”.8) By fully investing her talents in God’s purposes, as Jesus taught we should do in the parable of the ‘talents’, they were multiplied back to her. (‘The Lord strengthened me to do an impossible job.’) Because of the unity she brought to the family, she received remarkable answers to her prayers. (“If two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.”9) Because of her humility she received great outpourings of grace. (“God gives grace to the humble but resists the proud.”10) Romania’s only voluntary prisoner, who became responsible for the family’s survival, told us, “I never did anything important for God”.
Maria’s constant ‘Yes’ to God…not outward conformity to rules, but obedience from the heart…has resulted in a life of participation with Divinity; a life, as Father Galeriu says, that approaches the truth and beauty of how humanity was originally created to live. Just as we delight in the beauty of a wild animal, if we are fortunate enough to observe one in its unspoiled, perfect environment, Maria finds herself in an environment perfectly suited for the human condition, living in accordance with God’s Word. Ravi Zacharias, in ‘Deliver Us From Evil’, a book that documents the spread of wickedness in these last days, writes that the number one priority of the age is the restoration of truth. The exquisite beauty and strength in Maria…in the characters of all the Romanian faith heroes...the root of the beauty in the Chinese man that astounded Wurmbrand (‘If he had been a woman I would have fallen in love with him.’)...their survival, even with joy, while most despaired, is irrefutable proof that the eternal, unchangeable laws of God on which their lives were based, is the truth the world so desperately needs. ‘Follow Me’, Jesus said, ‘and I will make you fishers of men.’ (Mt. 4:19) That scripture could also read, ‘Follow Me and I will make you beautiful.’
Those who temporarily lost their beauty...Elizabeth Ton, when she was taken over by fear, Mrs. Visky when she entered despair, Joseph Ton when he was devastated over the possible loss of reputation...did so because there was a part of the truth they had not yet learned. Elizabeth needed a revelation of the full extent of the payment of the Cross; Mrs. Visky, to discover that God had all power in heaven and on earth; Joseph Ton, to learn that the essential question was not his love for God, but that God embraced him with an infinite and pure love.
Who has all power in heaven and earth...Mrs. Visky had become so obsessed with her children’s hardships that the only way God could provide her with the gift of repentance, what Oswald Chambers calls ‘the great gift, the great mercy of God’6, was to take her so close to death that she had no attention left for the seen world. No one seeing her immobile body could imagine this was anything but a tragedy...but it was anything but. It was God giving to Mrs. Visky, not unlike the gift He gave to Pastor Ton, the gift of experiencing Divinity and seeing herself as He did. It was His detailed orchestration and minute timing in the fine tuning of her character in order for her to become a powerful co-creator with Him. This should revitalize anyone’s faith in how precisely and intimately God is involved in our lives.
Immediately following Mrs. Visky’s repentance, as also happened to Pastor Ton, came her glorious visitation from God (‘An unspeakable warmth and unending joy, so smooth and quiet filled my heart.’) What she then received, “...a new life with a view of God so worthy to be worshipped and faithfully served...who has all power in heaven and earth...Yes, He has the power to help us to the end day by day...” has never left her. No longer did she have the problem which the Israelites had in the wilderness of having a small God so that their trials produced hardened hearts, (Ps. 95:8) The God she now knew was bigger than her problems. Her vision of God had become ‘unveiled and she was transformed into the same image as she beheld His glory.’ (2 Cor.3:18) She’d become a mirror in the hands of God, reflecting Whom she had beheld.
God is looking for those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth…in the truth of who He is. That morning that’s who Mrs. Visky became. The most essential of all truth, that God has all power in heaven and earth, was now hers. This radical trust in Him is precisely what God wants from all of us. With her new trust that God is available to participate with her in every situation, Mrs. Visky has created a family that is a spreading tree of righteousness, blessing Romania tremendously...seven children and the children’s children all serving God, dedicated to expanding His Kingdom. She inspires us to ask ourselves if there may be grace lying at our feet that we are refusing to receive; and to seek the gift of seeing in our lives what may be hindering us from discovering as she did “a view of God so worthy to be worshipped and faithfully served, who has all power in heaven and earth.”7
Living in Truth and Beauty
In a seminar our ministry was presenting in a church, as I discussed Maria’s testimony, with her image projected onto a screen behind me, I realized my translator was weeping and unable to continue. She told me later she’d become overwhelmed by the beauty radiating from Maria’s face, particularly from her eyes. Father Galeriu made a statement that helps explain such astounding spiritual beauty. “In order to live in the truth and beauty in which we were originally created, say only ‘Yes’ to God.” Holy Spirit quickened a verse of scripture to Maria and her response, though she knew the suffering it would entail, was ‘Yes’. “And I knew a scripture, ‘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... ” She responded, ‘Yes’, not only to that scripture but to the prompting of Christ’s life, His love, powerful and alive within her. (‘The love of God sent me there.’) Her constant ‘Yes’ to God caused her to spontaneously fulfill the principles of the Kingdom of God which Jesus taught in His parables and in the Beatitudes. All of these principles…such as forgiveness, love, humility, perseverance, unity…are based on the character of God. They are the principles upon which His universe operates. Follow them and you find yourself moving with God, like swimming downstream. Break them with lust, greed, selfishness and hatred and you find yourself going against God, like swimming upstream. The first leads to peace and joy…spiritual beauty…the other to strife and frustration…spiritual ugliness.
Maria, through her life of service and sacrifice, unwittingly had become great in God’s eyes. (“Let him who would be great among you be your servant”.8) By fully investing her talents in God’s purposes, as Jesus taught we should do in the parable of the ‘talents’, they were multiplied back to her. (‘The Lord strengthened me to do an impossible job.’) Because of the unity she brought to the family, she received remarkable answers to her prayers. (“If two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.”9) Because of her humility she received great outpourings of grace. (“God gives grace to the humble but resists the proud.”10) Romania’s only voluntary prisoner, who became responsible for the family’s survival, told us, “I never did anything important for God”.
Maria’s constant ‘Yes’ to God…not outward conformity to rules, but obedience from the heart…has resulted in a life of participation with Divinity; a life, as Father Galeriu says, that approaches the truth and beauty of how humanity was originally created to live. Just as we delight in the beauty of a wild animal, if we are fortunate enough to observe one in its unspoiled, perfect environment, Maria finds herself in an environment perfectly suited for the human condition, living in accordance with God’s Word. Ravi Zacharias, in ‘Deliver Us From Evil’, a book that documents the spread of wickedness in these last days, writes that the number one priority of the age is the restoration of truth. The exquisite beauty and strength in Maria…in the characters of all the Romanian faith heroes...the root of the beauty in the Chinese man that astounded Wurmbrand (‘If he had been a woman I would have fallen in love with him.’)...their survival, even with joy, while most despaired, is irrefutable proof that the eternal, unchangeable laws of God on which their lives were based, is the truth the world so desperately needs. ‘Follow Me’, Jesus said, ‘and I will make you fishers of men.’ (Mt. 4:19) That scripture could also read, ‘Follow Me and I will make you beautiful.’
Those who temporarily lost their beauty...Elizabeth Ton, when she was taken over by fear, Mrs. Visky when she entered despair, Joseph Ton when he was devastated over the possible loss of reputation...did so because there was a part of the truth they had not yet learned. Elizabeth needed a revelation of the full extent of the payment of the Cross; Mrs. Visky, to discover that God had all power in heaven and on earth; Joseph Ton, to learn that the essential question was not his love for God, but that God embraced him with an infinite and pure love.
Our martyrs are the people who made our history beautiful.
It is the combined spiritual beauty of individuals, Dr. Negrut tells us, that makes a country beautiful. “Our martyrs in the communist period lifted themselves above history. They are the people who made our history beautiful. If, in Romania, we had only those who were defeated in the interrogations, our history would be ugly. The beauty is that against all those forces of evil there were some who were shining, who said ‘darkness isn’t eternal, light overcomes, even though you may meet darkness in the here and now, beyond the darkness there is light.’” It is becoming increasingly apparent, as this century progresses, that we, too, have been handed a history we must lift ourselves above. Secular humanism’s false promises, promoted by an irresistibly powerful media, of finding happiness apart from God through materialistic and hedonistic pursuits, are not going to go away. The weapons of the Islamic fundamentalists, or any other group deceived by the worship of false gods, will only become more sophisticated and deadly. The over-reaching lesson from those who were not consumed by the apparent terminal cancer of communism in Eastern Europe is that not just any form of Christianity will suffice. Only those who saw Him who is invisible and saw themselves as God does, who lived the mystery, had strong faith and loved with the love of God, who had the joy of the Lord and were co-creators with God...these are the ones who, ‘in the darkness, remained shining’.
The Church, Scriptures and God
The Church, Scriptures and God
My mother had extraordinary wisdom which came from the Church, from the Scriptures and from God.
Father Calciu in 1988, after having survived the horrors of the re-education program, after having survived another prison term that was payment for his sermons to the students in Cluj, began ministering in the inner city of Washington, D.C. He is a tremendously effective warrior in God’s army. He was supplied with and trained in the use of spiritual weaponry by a woman who was like Maria in many ways. “My mother was a very simple, peasant woman, with little education, but she had extraordinary wisdom which came from the Church, from the Scriptures and from God.” Mrs. Calciu was an artist working with the materials of truth and love…‘the Church, the Scriptures and God’. Her family was her masterpiece. “To bring up eleven children, with my father absent working, was terribly hard. From her we got our education and through faith and love we became a very united family and helped each other very much. She taught us real faith, real love, not sophisticated faith, not theology. My whole life I’ve been obsessed, in the true sense of the word, by this love.”
For a family to love with this real love is such a miracle because it reflects the essence of the universe, of life.
As you listen now to Szilagy Sandor, imagine the brightness of that family, eleven children and one woman of God, in the midst of the darkness of that anti-God society. “When beings washed with this love decide to love each other with the same love that comes from God, that’s the foundation, the true foundation upon which we build spiritual relationships. That foundation of real love can never be destroyed because it’s God’s love poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. For a couple in a marriage, or for a family, to love with this real love, means to give to make the other person happy, not taking but giving. In that family God is revealed. His power is working and all are blessed. That family is such a miracle because it reflects the essence of the universe, of life.”
In such a family God’s power is working. He is participating in the creation of the character of Christ within each member and expanding through them the Kingdom of God in their community. Dr. Negrut helps us to understand Sandor’s brilliant revelation that such a family ‘reflects the essence of the universe’. “Christianity has its roots in the Trinity...a God in which the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit give to one another eternally, one to the other...the Father gives Himself to the Son and to the Spirit, the Son gives Himself to the Father and to the Spirit, the Spirit gives Himself to the Father and to the Son.” As you picture this eternal giving one to another, keep in mind that Albert Einstein, perhaps the world’s most brilliant scientist, said that ‘for God to exist His power must exceed all the combined energy in the universe by infinity’. At the center of the universe, sustaining and upholding it, is a continual circulation of beyond-infinitely-powerful, totally selfless love. C.S. Lewis calls this “a Divine dance of love...a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality”.11
Dr. Negrut explains how in relationships which reveal this ‘dance of love’, such as Father Calciu’s family, as Sandor said, ‘God’s power is working.’ “Together the Trinitarian God offers Himself to us...and when we receive Him, the Godhead fills creation with love.
In such a family God’s power is working. He is participating in the creation of the character of Christ within each member and expanding through them the Kingdom of God in their community. Dr. Negrut helps us to understand Sandor’s brilliant revelation that such a family ‘reflects the essence of the universe’. “Christianity has its roots in the Trinity...a God in which the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit give to one another eternally, one to the other...the Father gives Himself to the Son and to the Spirit, the Son gives Himself to the Father and to the Spirit, the Spirit gives Himself to the Father and to the Son.” As you picture this eternal giving one to another, keep in mind that Albert Einstein, perhaps the world’s most brilliant scientist, said that ‘for God to exist His power must exceed all the combined energy in the universe by infinity’. At the center of the universe, sustaining and upholding it, is a continual circulation of beyond-infinitely-powerful, totally selfless love. C.S. Lewis calls this “a Divine dance of love...a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality”.11
Dr. Negrut explains how in relationships which reveal this ‘dance of love’, such as Father Calciu’s family, as Sandor said, ‘God’s power is working.’ “Together the Trinitarian God offers Himself to us...and when we receive Him, the Godhead fills creation with love.
The Godhead offers Himself to us and we are also fulfilled by giving.
When Christians live this beauty of receiving Divinity, then they are filled and give and are fulfilled by giving. Like a spring...the beauty of a spring is that it is fulfilled by giving, not by absorbing, but by offering itself to us, offering us the joy of drinking. The Godhead offers Himself to us and we are also fulfilled by giving.” Because Mrs. Calciu, through the Church, the Scriptures and God, ‘lived the beauty of receiving Divinity’, she was ‘filled and gave’...had an overabundance of faith and love to invest in her children. She was ‘fulfilled by giving’ as she saw, over the years, emerging before her a masterpiece of a family co-created with God, a family that reflected the essence of the universe in which the members ‘made decisions to love, to make the others happy, not taking but giving’. God’s power, when her son desperately needed it, when he was a guinea pig in the heinous Pitesti re-education program, was working in his life. “Often, during the hard times, I used to be visited by my mother in my dreams and she’d speak as she had before with great encouraging words...she’d speak about Jesus, about faith and the Divine help we can get from God. Even in moments when, perhaps I denied love, that love inherited from my mother did somehow work within me and gave me strength and power to pray and weapons to withstand hatred or despondency or doubt. I survived on such a ground.”
Tudose’s life as a co-creator with God began, after many unfulfilled years of performing to please God, ‘doing canons, rituals and visits to monasteries’, when he learned that Christianity begins with a big ‘Done’ and not a big ‘Do’… that the payment of the Cross is an absolutely finished work and there is nothing we can add to it…that ‘it is because of what God has done that we are in Jesus Christ.’ (1Cor.1:30)
Tudose’s life as a co-creator with God began, after many unfulfilled years of performing to please God, ‘doing canons, rituals and visits to monasteries’, when he learned that Christianity begins with a big ‘Done’ and not a big ‘Do’… that the payment of the Cross is an absolutely finished work and there is nothing we can add to it…that ‘it is because of what God has done that we are in Jesus Christ.’ (1Cor.1:30)
More than half the village came to the Lord...God knew exactly where every rock would fall...an invisible hand led me to change directions.
He entered what Dr. Negrut described as ‘the beauty and fulfillment of the life of a receiver...receiving Divinity then giving to others.’ “I knew the calling He gave me to preach was sent by God through Ioan Marini. When he took my hand I felt something like electricity, like a power came into me through him while he told me where and what to preach. I was led to work in God’s fields by Him. The Holy Spirit was leading me to talk to people in my town then all around the country.” As his capacity to receive from God grew, likewise did the fruit of his ministry. “In the village where I was serving more than half the village came to the Lord and the bars and discos went bankrupt.” Being able to receive promptings from the Holy Spirit saved his life. “At the Canal some were working with dynamite. Immediately before an explosion I felt a great urge to move two feet backwards and a huge rock fell exactly where I had been sitting. God knew exactly where every rock would fall. All these things made me to feel very secure in God’s hands.” After his release from prison he was about to be arrested again, but God had other plans. “After I prepared my things for going back to prison and we had prayed I left my house and in the street an invisible hand, a hand, led me to change directions and led me to the mountains not knowing where I was going where I stayed for three years...I had strength and joy from the Lord.” His first day in prison provides us with an unforgettable example of the beauty of the life of a receiver of what James 4:6 refers to as ‘greater grace’. “When I first went to prison and entered the cell everyone lifted his head to see who was coming, and I could see dead people moving...only black skin and bones...and I thought, ‘here will be my end’. But I didn’t know how much grace from God someone could receive in a place where Satan thinks he can do whatever he wants. God was with me and I had great joy. I was praising the Lord and they were amazed I could sing in such a place. I told them: ‘Let me sing. Otherwise I will die’. My joy was so great I couldn’t stop singing.”
Such a great capacity for receiving grace begins, the example of Tudose’s life teaches us, with a thirst for God. His was insatiable. One of Holy Spirit’s strategy to stir such a thirst in the Body of Christ is by preserving for us Tudose’s and the other faith heroes’ testimonies and by inspiring us to dig deeply into them to find the treasures they contain. Tudose’s life further teaches us that our capacity to receive grace is in direct proportion to the size of our love and hunger for the Word of God. The measure that we know, as he does, that there is absolute oneness between God and His Word, that it is ‘a being, quick and powerful,’ that ‘if all books were destroyed and I still had the Bible, I would have lost nothing’ is the measure we will hear God speak to us through it. And his ears are kept tuned to what Holy Spirit is saying through his tremendous gratitude for, and celebration of, the one thing he can never lose, his name written in the Lamb’s Book of Life...it will do the same for us. If joy and gratitude are in short supply in your life, the most effective way I know to stimulate them is through meditation on the depravity of man in his fallen state, on the infinite price paid by the Trinity and on the blessings of such a glorious salvation.
Perhaps the greatest example he and the others set for us is that of lives offered to God. Obedience from the heart and sacrifice define their lives. They constantly obey Jesus’ great commission to preach the Gospel...to neighbors, in other towns, at any opportunity...even when they knew the probable consequence would be the sacrifice of freedom, even life. All they ever dreamed God would be in their lives, He became. The measure that we, as they have, offer our lives for God to use as He wills, is the measure God will become, for us also, all we have dreamed He could be. And, as we have seen, it is not only pastors and priests who can become co-creators with God, but anyone who feeds on spiritual food from the Church, from the Scriptures and from God, who knows they are loved by God with an infinite love, who knows that in every situation God has a purpose for them…who are worshippers of God ‘who is so worthy to be worshipped and faithfully served, who has all power in heaven and on earth’.
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