Another chapter and once
again more miraculous events transpire in the life of Brother Yun. Again, while the miraculous – or at least the
obvious movements of God if it be improper to label some as “miraculous” – are
exciting, there are also several concrete things we can both learn and apply to
our lives from this chapter. Among them
are a commitment to God’s Word (memorizing and sharing it), seeking the Holy
Spirit, obedience when God directs, as well as the undeniable truth that our
Theology (which is, perhaps in more ways than we realize, impacted/shaped by
the songs we sing) ought to impact our lives..
These themes are important
because in this chapter the “miraculous” happens (or God simply moves) in
relation to what His people do. It is
relatively easy to pray and hope for “miraculous” things; it is quite another
to live your life in such a way that God will “show up” in order to validate
His people and therefore glorify His name.
An amazing example of
this (our work and God’s power) occurs after Yun had his long sought for Bible. He read it daily, in spite of having only a
third grade education, until he had read it cover to cover. Yet God did not miraculously enable him to
read despite his low literacy skills.
Rather, Yun had to look up most words (which are made up of characters
in the complicated Chinese language) as he progressed through the Bible. Then after having read through the Bible he
started to memorize a chapter
a day; after 28 days he had memorized Matthew.
Next he read the other three gospels quickly and then started to
memorize the book of Acts.
All of that is “our
work” – what we can do. Sadly, too often
it seems we think we “own” the Bible just because we have purchased it, have received
it as a gift, or can put it down and stop reading whenever we want. Yet more accurately the Bible is the subject
and we are the object…it pokes and prods our lives and we are to conform to
it. This is made abundantly clear in
what happens a bit later in the chapter.
Basically, Yun is told
by God to go and be His witness. God directs
Yun to people who had been praying and fasting for him to come after they heard
how he miraculously received a Bible. They
wanted Yun to teach them, but he did not know how to preach. So Yun did what he could; he recited
Scripture – as in the whole book of Matthew.
Yun did what he could, and what did God do? After Yun recited all of Matthew, with his
eyes tightly shut, the Holy Spirit led him to sing Scripture-based songs Yun previously
did not know. After finishing and
opening his eyes he saw the people kneeling in repentance with tears running
down their cheeks. That is clearly the
work of God…yet it came about as a man did what he could.
As far as songs
influencing our Theology, we will cover them in the next post. Until then, may continue to grow in our
understanding of how to appropriately handle God’s word.
