At our recent VOP conference, Andrew Brunson was one of the speakers. He was the only speaker from a Western country, but what qualified him to share about persecution was his two-year imprisonment in a Turkish jail because of his long-standing work as a missionary.
What made his contribution stand out is that he spoke from a perspective of a Western person going through persecution. This gave the listeners some insight into how they themselves might respond to pressure. Our other speakers usually have very different backgrounds, involving life-long marginalisation and/or deep poverty and hardship. Their stories speak powerfully about how God carried people through extreme circumstances and worked in miraculous ways. They bring tears and hallelujahs for our brothers and sisters and challenge us to put our trust in God. But they are often harder to relate to on a personal level.
Andrew’s story was also unique in that it was very focussed on what happened inside himself, not necessarily on big events. Whereas the stories of people like Brother Yun and Peter Xu cover decades and read like an action movie, Andrew spent two years in solitary confinement. Not much happened. The significance of his story is how God worked in his heart. Below are some of the highlights and takeaways which spoke to me as I listened to his story.
Evangelical Christians have a strong expectation of the presence of God. We believe that as we seek Him and worship Him, we can feel his presence, his love, his power and his comfort. Many believers can share testimony after testimony of how God was with them, particularly in hard times. Andrew Brunson himself testified to knowing the presence of God deeply.
But if we listen to the saints of the Bible and church history, there is also an experience of the absence of God. We hear Job and David struggle through times when they cannot find Him in a time when they need him most. John of the Cross writes extensively about the dark night he experienced in his soul when God was nowhere to be found, while he was persecuted severely. And even Jesus, in his darkest hour asked God the Father why he had forsaken Him.
This absence was also experienced by Andrew Brunson, much to his surprise. He described himself as offended when God, who had always been close, didn’t show up when he was scared and alone in solitary confinement. God did not show up to comfort him or give him supernatural strength. He did not get any of the experiences or miracles he had always read about in books of persecuted Christians. Rather he experienced intense fear and loneliness.
We may be tempted to explain the absence of God as a sign of God’s rejection, or as caused by our sin. But in the Bible and church history the absence of God experienced by the faithful, is interpreted as a time of testing, a difficult assignment, which proves whether we still love God even when he seems to give us nothing. Years later, Andrew talks of this time more in these terms. He knew he had to remain faithful despite this felt absence. His mother commented that he was placed in a long line of people who suffered for the gospel. He had to set an example of faithfulness under spiritual pressure. His faithfulness mattered, both to God and to those who would eventually follow in his footsteps.
