Transforming Suffering to Opportunity

These summer evenings find me soaking up books and messages. I've so enjoyed listening to a series by Ravi Zacharias, Convictions That Conquer the World, that I've listened to it twice. Ravi tells a story of a Chinese evangelist, Wang Ming-Dao, that moves me every time I hear it (I think I've replayed it 10 times!)

Mr. and Mrs. Wang Dao

This is an excerpt from Ravi Zacharias' address:

'A couple of years ago I was in Shanghai, China in the home of Wang Ming Dao, the Chinese evangelist. Sitting in his chair knarled like this, head thrown back, mouth half open, eyes barely focusing. His wife completely blind. But very good in his English communication even though the tongue seemed at times to struggle to even enunciate the words.

And with a fellow evangelist there he looked at us and told us the story how Mao Tse Tong, when he took charge, put several of the believers into prison included in which was Wang Ming Dao. When they put this famous evangelist in prison he said, “I began to fail, my spiritual strength began to cower and I slowly started to submit and I renounced my faith in God. And Mao Tse Tong had me released.”

“I was a free man from the prison, and I walked away free now, but all of a sudden I realized what I had done, and I realized whom I’d betrayed.” Wang Ming Dao was walking through the street of Beijing shouting at the top of his lungs, “My name is Peter, I have denied my Lord! My name is Peter, I have denied my Lord!”

Mao Tse Tong sent for him again and incarcerated him once again for 21 years. And as we sat in this tiny little apartment there and he told us the story of the 21 years, almost impulsively he broke into the strains of All the Way My Savior Leads Me.

This is the transformation of pain into a platform of opportunity.'

What a perfect illustration of how life without Christ is NOTHING. A life with Christ, no matter the trials, is rich and full and the ONLY way to live.