Friday, August 24, 2018

The Insanity of God


This is actually a book title and because of the unusual use of the word, insanity, I decided to check the book out of my church library. Written by Nik Ripken (not his real name), the book chronicles a journey of faith, despair, and renewed perception.

Nik and his family went to Somalia to try to alleviate the starvation and need after the civil war totally destroyed the infrastructure there. That experience, in itself, was a huge learning experience for the family, but a more bitter life lesson they received came in the form of one of their sons dying from a bizarre physical anomaly.

The family returned to the US, pretty much broken, looking for restoration of hope and a healing of emotional wounds—not just for the loss of their son, but for the persecuted believers they were leaving behind.

After searching for information/help to sustain the persecuted church, Nik was led to visit believers in Russia, Ukraine and other Eastern European countries as the Iron Curtain had recently come down and believers were experiencing freedom that most had not known during their lifetime. He discovered awesome testimonies of God’s power among His people.

Then Nik went to China, where all his meetings had to be held in secret. There he discovered confirmation that—catch this—God is doing today what He had done in the past, in Bible times. People being healed, people being resurrected from the dead, and miraculous provision of everyday needs. (See Joel 2:28-29)

He took part in a secret conference of house group leaders, pastors, and evangelists as they prayed, getting up before the sun rose and praying for their persecuted brothers and sisters in other parts of the world. Nik wrote, “it’s no wonder the Church in China has increased from several hundred thousand to an estimated several hundred million.”

The anecdotal section ends with the story of a young Muslim woman who miraculously came to Christ. She eventually ended up in the US and was visiting the Ripkenns’ church one Sunday when an entire family was being baptized. Nik could tell she was agitated as she watched and he asked her what was wrong. “Why are we all not standing and shouting praises to God,” she asked. “I never thought I would see such a miracle as an entire family being baptized and no one being shot or killed.”

That statement led Nik to realize the “common-day” miracles that he (and we) take for granted:  having your own Bible (those Chinese pastors were grateful to have one Bible with various pages of Scripture handed out to each to preach from until another Bible could be had); sharing the Lord’s Supper/Holy Communion with fellow believers; singing praise songs/hymns out loud. There were more but you get the idea.

Another thing Nik learned was that almost all believers have the choice as to whether to obey Christ (worship with others, share Christ, etc.).However, the choice to obey God in doing so comes at a much higher price in some places than in others, hence what we call persecution.

This book certainly presents “food for thought” and the fact that it is written in excellent storyteller style makes it easy to read—not necessarily easy to act upon. This  book can be purchased at Christianbook.com or if you live in the Elko area, you can check it out of our church library. It is definitely worth reading.