Trust

Do not be anxious about your life, as to what you will eat, or what you shall drink, nor for your body, as to what you shall put on (Matt.6:25).

Jesus gives us a reason not to be "anxious:"  for your Father in heaven knows you have need of these things, but seek first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things will be added to you.

He also tells us to observe the birds of the air, "who neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns," yet who are fed by His Father.  If we do "observe" the birds, we see that they are not standing around waiting to be fed.  They do indeed work for their food; indeed, they are busy all day with the tasks of feeding themselves and their brood, constructing nests in which to lay their young, and filling the world with song.  The difference is that no bird is worrying or anxious about tomorrow, "for tomorrow will take care of itself," in the words of Jesus.

Jesus never told us not to work, but only not to worry or "be anxious."  Actually, it is much more difficult in my opinion not to worry than it is to work.  Worry, or anxiety, seems to come much easier to us than trust.  It is hard to trust in God; He seems far away from us.  We are not sure He actually knows what is happening in our individual lives -- or that He cares.  We tend to think that He would dismiss our small concerns as unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

Jesus taught us to ask and to keep on asking.  I think it is a lack of faith when we are afraid to ask.  I remember many years ago, before I really knew the Father, that someone asked me if I had prayed about a health problem.  "I am afraid to ask," I said, "because if God does not help me, I would lose the little faith I now have."  Looking back now, I realize that what I thought was faith was nothing but a lack of trust.

If we refuse to ask, we will always believe that whatever happens is what we ourselves made happen--or had no power to make happen.  Fortunately, God began to teach me in many ways to ask and to trust.  I am still on the journey; my trust is not yet perfect, but I am learning "in all things to give thanks, for this is the will of God on your behalf," and "to cast [my] cares upon the Lord, for He cares for [me]" (Phil. 4:6) and (I Peter 5:5-7).  We cannot afford to wait for the big things in life-- the major illness, the threat of bankruptcy, the loss of a job -- before we begin to ask, although that is usually what we do.  We tend to think we ourselves can handle our daily lives, so we don't "call on the Lord" until we really need Him -- sort of like going to the emergency room.  The problem is that when we do call on Him in a time of great need, we have not learned to trust along the way, so we remain anxious even while we are asking.

I recall once hearing a man tell a story about how he began to learn that God is here -- now-- and listening to our every prayer.  He had heard people say that we should ask for what we need, no matter how "small" we think the request might be.  He had parked downtown and found that he was short 25 cents for the meter (in the days before credit card meters).  He was on time for his appointment, but could not afford to leave his parking space and search for a free place to park.  What to do?  Most of us would not "bother" God with such a frivolous request; we would think that God would not care whether we parked or not -- and especially not when a quarter was the issue.   Maybe if we desperately needed five thousand dollars -- but a quarter?  Get real!

See -- that's exactly what the Lord said in Isaiah -- your ways are not my ways, nor are your thoughts my thoughts.  Imagine if we actually out loud said to Jesus what we are thinking:  God does not care that I need a quarter; He only begins to care if we need five thousand dollars.  I think Jesus might smile -- that is, if He did not throw back His head and laugh out loud at us!

Anyway, in his moment of desperation, the man telling the story, humbled himself -- and it was humiliating because of the small amount -- to ask his Father in heaven for the quarter he needed.  Just at that moment, as he was standing there trying to decide his next step, a friend of his drove up and stopped at the traffic light.  The two greeted one another, and the man asked his friend if he had a quarter to lend him.  Of course.....what did you expect?

Now here's the thing:  the man telling the story did not hesitate to ask his friend for a quarter, because it was nothing to the friend to hand over a quarter.  In fact, the friend was greatly happy to do so; he was so glad to have been on the spot and to be able to supply a great need of the moment, even though it was a small thing to him.  Can we see that our needs of the moment are also great to us, and that God's care for us extends to our "daily bread" as well as to what we think of as "important" enough for us to ask Him for? 

If we don't begin to ask our Father in heaven for the small things of life, there's no way we will ever be able to believe that He cares enough to give us the larger things we need.  And if we do begin to ask for the small things that are still important to us at the moment---like the quarter--we will begin to dance for joy at the attentiveness of the God who loves us enough to supply our needs from moment to moment.

You might think I am either crazy or impious or inpertinent, but I will confess that I even ask God for mulch for my garden when I begin to run low.  There was a time when I would not have dared to ask for such a "silly" thing, but now.....Well, when your neighbor comes over to apologize that he has not yet gotten around to raking his leaves and delivering them to your driveway, you just have to laugh.

Faith and Belief

I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! (Luke 12:49)

We are not saved by our beliefs, but only by our faith!  Belief satisfies the mind that inquires after truth, but faith brings peace to the soul, which goes deeper and further than our minds.  It has been said that faith is like the pick or hook used by mountain climbers -- it is tossed upwards from where the climber now stands; it anchors into a safe place, permitting the adventurer to climb upwards to that point.  In the same way, our faith anchors our souls into a Person, a Place of Safety that cannot fail us.  Then our minds gradually follow until we comprehend and fully understand our faith.

God does not ask us to dismiss the mind He gave us to understand truth; but the truth is that we will not fully comprehend until we surrender in faith to the only One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 

We've got it backwards if we think to understand first and then we'll surrender.  Our minds are too small to understand the mysteries of the universe, much less the ways of God. 

Abraham was asked to start out on a journey, whereby he would come to know the Creator of the universe in faith.  In everything he did, he encountered the faithfulness of God, who was always and everywhere with him, who never abandoned him.  At first, he did not have right belief, but only faith.  It was his faith in the Person that led him to the Truth.  He came out of a pagan culture, worshipping many gods until he came to know the One and Only God.  His faith led him to the Truth!

Many years ago, I was teaching a woman from Taiwan, a faithful Buddhist, who had entered this country with her two teen-agers on a temporary Visa.  Her children were enrolled in high school, and she was taking English classes at the college.  An unscrupulous lawyer in Texas, who spoke her language, was holding her papers for blackmail.  He was threatening to report her to the government for illegal entry if she did not pay him vast sums of money.  Without her documentation, she was helpless and desperate.   Under months of intense worry and anxiety, she broke down and told me her story.

I asked whether she had prayed about the situation.  She confessed to me, "I pray and pray to your Jesus, but he don't answer me!"  "Maybe this is His answer," I told her.  "I have a good friend who is a Christian lawyer; maybe he can help you."    We prayed together that day for wisdom and direction for her.  Soon, she decided to attend a Bible study I was teaching at night.

The first night, she arrived at 9:00, as we were leaving.  She cleaned houses at night, and had just got off work.  Since she had driven to Metairie from New Orleans East, I could not tell her that we were all going home.  So I told her that we would do a quick lesson.  She had never before seen a Bible, so I showed her the first chapter of Genesis and then the first chapter of John: in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God....in Him was life, and that life was the light of men.

"How can I receive this Jesus?" she asked me.  "You just invite Him to come within you," I replied. 

"I cannot," she said; "there is too much crime within me."  "That's why He came," I said, "to take away the crime from within our hearts, to give us new hearts!"  With that, she immediately knelt on the floor and asked Jesus to come into her heart.  In all my life, I have never witnessed anything like what I saw happen that night!  She rose from the floor with tears in her eyes, full of the "fire" of truth:  Now I know the real God, she almost shouted.  All my life, I have visited the temples of Buddha, spending much money on thousands of candles, burning them before every shrine and statue.  How could I have not known that these were not real gods?!  How could I have not seen that they could not help me?!

The Truth entered that woman's heart without anyone telling, explaining, or teaching her.  The Holy Spirit fell on her that night and taught her the Truth from within.  Never again would she be deceived by the empty promises of idols---now she knew the real God, in her own words.  That night, she went home and started reading the Bible for the first time.  The next day, she introduced both of her children to Jesus, and they both accepted Him as their God and began to read the Bible with her. 

The next time she spoke to her husband in Taiwan, he asked, "What happened to you?  Everytime I talk to you, you are crying and worried.  Now you are happy and not worried anymore!"  She told him about Jesus and told him to buy a Bible and to begin reading it.  He too started reading the Bible in Taiwan and accepted Jesus.  Later, her son started a Bible study in his public high school.

If that is not the "fire" that Jesus came to cast upon the earth, I don't know what is!   And here is the interesting thing:  none of these people had to come first to right "belief" or doctrine before they surrendered to Jesus.  Abraham was called first to "leave his people and his father's house and come to a land I will show you."  As he took the first step, he came to know and to believe in the God Who had called him forth.  So, too, my student and her entire family:  they were called to surrender first, and to learn afterwards.  Like the mountain climber, they anchored their souls in the One Who IS Truth, and learned from Him what they were to believe.

If we think we will come to Truth any other way, we have not yet found the Savior of the world:  no one comes to the Father but by Me!  Our belief is the what we hold true, but our faith is in a Person who cannot fail us.  Many people do not know exactly what they believe, but they do know the One in whom they trust.  The Apostles articulated their doctrines, or beliefs, only later, after the One they loved had risen from the death and had manifest Himself to them as alive.  Then, and only then, did their minds begin to re-form and re-shape their beliefs.

The Word of the Lord

He sent forth His word and healed them;

he rescued them from the grave....

They reeled and staggered like drunken men;

they were at their wits' end.

Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,

and he brought them out of their distress.

He stilled the storm to a whisper;

the waves of the sea were hushed (Ps. 107:20;27-30).

During his 40 days in the desert, Jesus Himself had to come to know in His innermost soul and mind the truth of Deuteronomy 8:3:  He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

I would have to say that both Scripture passages cited here sum up the experience of the Christian.  Who has not known deep spiritual hunger and thirst? Who has not experienced overwhelming fear -- almost despair and abandonment -- and not turned to the Lord?  And who among us has not experienced Jesus awaking from His sleep in the corner of our boat to still the storm and calm the waves?

Until we go through such an experience, we probably cannot recognize the significance of "manna in the desert," feeding us with food that "neither [we] nor our fathers had known" -- the Word of God that sustains the weary and heals the broken-hearted.

I have heard that a broken bone that heals is stronger than the bones around it; the healing process has filled the bone with more calcium than it had previous to the break.  The ways of nature and of the body

speak volumes to us about the spiritual world:  those who have been deeply wounded are the strongest, those best equipped to heal the wounds of others.  But healing of our spirit comes only through and by the Word of the Lord -- he sent forth His word and healed them; by His word, the storm was hushed.

Psalm 119, the longest in the Bible, is a hymn of praise to the Word of God, calling it by a variety of synonyms:  the law of the Lord; your precepts; your commands; your word; his statutes; your decrees; the laws that come from your mouth; your unfailing love....your promise; the word of truth, your teaching.  Psalm 119 says this:  My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise renews my life....I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have renewed my life.

The writer of Psalm 119, presumably David, so loved the Word of the Lord, the promises of God, that he used each letter of the Hebrew alphabet as the basis of 8 verses, all beginning with that letter.  The psalm is an acrostic, though we cannot read it that way in English, unfortunately, and each verse contains a different synonym for Word -- again, something we don't always see in our English translations. 

Anyone who has ever spent the night wrestling with an agonizing problem, crying out to the Lord, feeling as if "the cords of the grave [were] coiled around [him]," as Psalm 18 puts it -- and then experienced the Lord "turning my darkness into light" (Ps. 18:28) will, like David, sing a hymn of praise to our God. 

About a year ago, I bought a bracelet at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.  The bracelet bears an inscription from Psalm 46:  God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in distress.  I wear the bracelet every day whenever I leave the house, putting it on with my watch.  As I was praying this morning, after "wrestling" most of the night with a problem, my cat got up on my dresser and tossed my bracelet on the floor in front of me, something she has never done before.  In my spirit, I had been hearing "He sent His word and healed them" (from Ps. 107) ever since I awoke, but I never thought God would literally send His word to me by tossing it on the floor at my feet! 

I am learning never to underestimate the power and the humor of the Most High!

Seeing Through God's Eyes

As the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts (declares the Lord) (Is. 55:8).

Every now and then, the curtains of this visible world draw back to allow a glimpse of the invisible world -- and it takes my breath away.  Today was such a day.

Yesterday, we traveled with 15 high-school juniors to the Abbey Youth Fest, an annual gathering of 5000 young adults who come together to celebrate their Catholic Faith and to be encouraged by their mutual energy and strength.  We had heard from others how great the festival was, and we all looked forward to a day of spectacular music, inspirational talks, and fun. 

Despite predictions all week of rain, the weather turned out perfectly--cool, sunny, a small breeze.  The 5000 kids and adults gathered in a huge field around 10:00 a.m., as the first of several bands during the day began playing -- sort of a Christian jazz-fest.  There were groups from about seven states: Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and other areas.  Some of the groups were highly energized and excited by the music, jumping up and down and waving their arms in the air.  Our kids were not "into" that kind of excitement.  They sat patiently waiting for the first talk.  That, too, seemed to fall flat. 

By 11:00, the sun was high in the heavens; there was no available shade, and our group was wilting.  They were hungry (we had left the parking lot at 7:30); they were not "inspired" by what was happening around them, and I was beginning to wonder why we had all come on this journey.  I had been pretty sure all week that God was leading us to do this, but now I began to doubt.

By 1:00 in the afternoon, the kids were all sunburned and napping on the tarps.  None of them were wearing hats; most of them were amusing themselves by giggling or texting.  Fortunately, around 1:30, a cloud-cover began to move over the entire field, growing deeper and more welcome with each passing hour.  It was not a dark rain-cloud, but more like an umbrella, allowing a cool breeze to refresh us.  For the first time in my life, I began to really understand the Exodus passage that describes the Israelite journey through the desert, accompanied by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.  (Without the cloud by day, they would have fainted from the heat; without the fire by night, they would have frozen after sunset. )  

Mass began at 3:30, and it was beautiful to see 5000 teens worship quietly, without cell phones, chatter, and distraction.  That was the best part of the day, and I continued to glance at the clouds over us with a thankful heart.  After Mass, we decided to gather up the ice-chests and tarps and head back to the bus, even though the bus driver was not supposed to arrive until 7:00 pm.  We thought we'd just sit on the bus for an hour and wait -- but another miracle happened (the first was the cloud-cover).  The bus driver arrived at 6:00 instead of 7:00!

I was so grateful that God was taking care of this small bedraggled group that we had dragged to a long, hot, and in their eyes, boring, day.  It was supposed to be their Confirmation retreat, and it had turned out to be something to endure rather than an inspiration.  I felt that I had let them down somehow.   I kept thinking about Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt into the wilderness, where they experienced hunger and thirst and heat and exhaustion -- and they said to Moses:  Were there no graves in Egypt that you had to bring us out into the desert to die?  In the Exodus story, the people murmured against Moses and even rebelled against him.  As we all got onto the bus for the trip home, I wondered whether the kids would do the same against me, and I wondered what this trip had been all about.  I told  them that despite the heat, boredom, hunger, and exhaustion of the day, I had not heard a lot of whining and complaining, and I was grateful to them for their patience.  But I did wish the day had been more fun and inspiring for them.

In the middle of the night, I got up because I couldn't sleep, and as I sat with God for awhile, I slowly began to see something that I could not see before.  With my physical and mental "eyes," I had been seeing an experience that failed all of my expectations.  Now, seeing the experience through the eyes of God, I saw something else:  all year, in preparing for Confirmation, I have been talking about the fruits of the Holy Spirit --- those qualities of character in us that can arise only from the Spirit of God dwelling in us:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Looking back on the day, I could clearly see all of these qualities in our kids.  Though they were hot, tired, hungry, bored, and sunburned; though they desperately wanted us to call the bus-driver and have him come back (an hour and a half) to get us, they did not gripe, complain, whine, or pester me.  They carried their own suffering without inflicting it on me and everyone else around them.  They were good, and patient, and kind, and self-controlled. 

God allowed me for a moment to see through His eyes -- in the long run, a beautiful, joyful, inspirational day, while it would have fulfilled all our hopes and expectations -- was not as valuable to Him as the patience and endurance and long-suffering of these children.  I saw, too, that in most of life's endeavors (such as marriage, for example), we begin our journey full of hope for a wonderful and joyful experience.  But we soon discover that life can be tedious, wearing, boring, exhausting, hot, and hunger-producing, much as the Israelite journey through the desert.  We soon wear down and become discouraged.  In such circumstances, it is a great and immeasurable gift to be traveling with those whose souls are filled with the fruits of the Holy Spirit, rather than with the spirit of grumbling, complaining, whining, and blaming other people for their discomfort. 

Seeing what God sees in these children makes me realize that the Spirit of God does indeed dwell within them, and that it is difficulty, rather than entertainment, that draws forth their goodness.  My prayer is that they, too, will see their goodness and rejoice in it forever!

What is Truth? (3)

"Then you are a king?"

"For this I was born and came into the world, to testify to the truth.

Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."

"What is truth?"

Skeptics (like Pilate) believe that no one possesses truth -- and they are correct!  We do not have the Truth -- it has us:  Those who belong to the truth listen to Me. 

Jean Vanier founded an international network of communities for people with intellectual disabilities, and he also wrote a book called Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John.  His title alone would be enough for us to contemplate, if we but followed where it would lead.  But his writing on truth is so profound that all I can do here is to share it with you:

We are called humbly to contemplate the truth that is given to us,

to search unceasingly in order to be drawn into truth,

to be possessed by truth and to serve truth.

To live in truth is to live a relationship of love

with the Word of God made flesh,

who is truth, compassion, and forgiveness.

To be true is to let oneself be challenged by others

and to accept all the brokenness in us.

The truth, then, is not something to make us feel superior.

On the contrary, it calls us into humility, to littleness,

and to the light of love.

All the light in us comes from the light of the Word of God.

The light of truth, then, is the gentle marriage

of what we see and experience,

with what we have received from above and the Word of God,

each one enlightening the other,

each one calling us to live in God

and to see things through the loving eyes and loving heart of God.

I know of no greater joy than to take each event of our lives and to examine it in conversation with The Truth, the Light of the World, Jesus of Nazareth, Who came into the world to bear witness to the Truth.  He alone is the Wisdom of God, the One who "makes sense" of our experience, who opens our eyes to see and to understand the ways of God.  He is indeed the king, but not of this world. 

If Truth possesses us, we, like Mary, turn over "all these things" in our hearts, pondering "what this might mean."  If we do not give ourselves over to Truth, if we do not enter into the Truth, we remain like Pilate, skeptical that Truth exists.  Jesus came to testify to Truth.  The only way we can know Truth is to surrender and to listen to Him.  He unfolded it gradually to those who walked with Him daily.  The process is still the same for us today.

Spirit to spirit

My heart is broken within me;

all my bones tremble.

I am like a drunken man,

like a man overcome by wine,

because of the Lord

and his holy words.

The land is full of adulterers;

because of the curse, the land lies parched

and the pastures in the desert are withered....

[False prophets] keep saying: 'You will have peace,'

and 'No harm will come to you.'

But which of them has stood in the council of the Lord

to see or to hear his word?

Who has listened and heard his word?....

...if they had stood in my council,

they would have proclaimed my words to my people

and would have turned them from their evil ways (Jer. 23:9-10; 18 & 22).

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The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God....no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God....we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept  the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned (I Cor. 2:10-14).

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When Paul traveled to Greece, he found there a culture of debate and argument, following a long history of philosophers and statesmen whose entertainment (no television) was to sit in public forums listening to "wise men" speak and declaim earthly wisdom.  Those who had the best argument, based on human reason, "won."  Sometimes I think our televised political debates follow the tradition of the Greeks. 

I can no longer listen to them; they are all speaking empty words.  Whoever the candidate, his spirit does not speak to my spirit, so his words no longer matter to me.  I am not being negative; I still plan to vote for the man (or woman) who seems to be the best leader for our troubled nation.  All I am saying is that human wisdom is no longer enough to save us as a nation.  Unless we can find leaders who "stand in the council of the Lord" to hear His words, we are certainly lost.  And of course, I realize that living in the public eye, moving along the campaign trail, and trying to please all of the people all of the time leaves no time for prayer and listening to the Spirit of God speaking to our own spirit.

As a nation, as a church, as a people, as individuals --- we all need Divine Wisdom to carry out the tasks we have been given.  It is not about being popular, being liked, being admired -- as the prophet Jeremiah discovered.  No one really wants to listen to God or to the directions of the Holy Spirit, for that means giving up our own agendas, opinions, and ways.  All of us want to go our own way and "do our own thing." 

None of us want to wait upon the Lord, to be still and to hear His direction.  It is too hard; it demands too much.  It is easier for us to stand in the marketplace, raise our fists, and demand to be heard.  It is easier for us to impose our own will on others than to listen to the Lord's will for us.

Moses had a passion to free his people from slavery to unjust rulers.  He first tried his way -- violence--but found that did not work.  Forty years later, after retreating to the desert, he was finally able to "stand in the council of the Lord" and to listen to God's way: not by power, not by might, but by my Spirit, says the Lord.  Following the counsel of the Lord, he led the people to the Red Sea and said, "The Lord will fight for you; you need only be still."

Unless Moses had listened, he could never have known the mind and the plans of God -- His mind and His plans for us are spiritually discerned.  The man without the spirit does not understand or accept the things of God, for they are foolishness to him.....But we have the mind of Christ.

If we want the mind of Christ, if we want to understand God's plans to deliver us from evil, we must listen to Him.  We must stand in the council of the Lord.  If we fail to do this, nothing else matters -- not political debates, not promises, not the words of any false prophet.



Martyrdom

As Catholic children, we heard the names "Perpetua and Felicity" read at Mass in the list of the saints/ martyrs, but the names sounded to me so foreign, so "other," that they bore no relationship to the world I knew.  Now that I have had the opportunity to hear about the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity, I marvel at these courageous young women, and now that I have heard about similiar martyrdoms happening today, I am still in awe that men and women today have the courage to become Christian in such a hostile culture.

In the year 200, the Roman empire still ruled the known world, and to be a Christian was to be an enemy of the state, to call down the wrath of pagan gods who might be offended by this "unknown" God of the Christians.  Perpetua was 22 and the mother of an infant son when she was arrested with her servant Felicity, who was 8 months pregnant, both of whom had converted to Christianity.  Perpetua had to leave her baby in the care of the Christian community; Felicity delivered her child while still in prison and had to hand over her new-born daughter to friends.  The next day, both were led into the arena to face being torn apart by wild beasts.  Both died in 203 A.D.

A few days ago, I heard that the U.S. Senate was considering a bill to formally protest the case of a young pastor in Iran, who is now in prison and under the formal sentence of execution for converting from Islam to Christianity.  He, too, is considered an enemy of the state, as was Bonhoeffer and others in Germany in 1939 who were executed for sedition against the government.

Yesterday, I wrote about hatred against the Jews.  That same "spirit of hatred and persecution" still exists today in many parts of the world, not only against Jews, but also against Christians.  We may not see it in the free world, but all over the world, Christians are still imprisoned and martyred just because of their faith in Jesus Christ.

In Cuba, in the 60's, Christian pastors and workers were considered enemies of socialism and Communism, and they were imprisoned and tortured.  Those who risked their lives and everything they owned to escape from Cuba did so for a reason.  I remember praying for "political" prisoners in Cuba during the 60's and 70's because I had heard about the torture they were suffering.  Many years later, I met one of those people I had prayed for -- a man who had been stuffed into a small cage on asphalt in the hot sun for days, without food or water.  He could not lie down or stand up or even sit; his body was folded into a cage too small for him to shift position.  He was forced to lie in his body waste until he was released.  Then, because the commander was not yet satisfied that his spirit had been broken, he was immediately put back into the cage for three more days.

His crime?  He believed in Jesus Christ, as he does even to this day.  It was a privilege and a humbling experience for me to encounter this man, whose spirit is still strong and unbroken.  Where does this kind of strength come from?  Surely not from ourselves.  In the face of this kind of suffering and torture, it must be that we are sustained by the Spirit of Jesus Himself. 

"Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."  Jesus taught us this prayer.  "Temptation" to us means inducement to sin, but the word as used in the New Testament means "the place of trial or testing."  Knowing that gives strong impetus to our prayer.  We need to pray not only for ourselves, but for all those who are facing torture, sickness, fear, and death:  Deliver us from evil!