Lessons from Corrie

(Note: This was written in August 1999—26 years ago. I still love Corrie. )

From time to time, I suppose each of us stops to think about the direction our life is taking.  If you’re like me, you never would have imagined ten, fifteen or even five years ago that you would be where you are today.  Living where you are.  Doing the job you’re now doing. Engaged in relationship with specific people.  The losses, achievements, griefs, and vision.

            Some of this reflection makes us smile.  Had we been the author of our lives, we certainly would like to rewrite some parts, perhaps edit out a chapter or two, condense or expand another.  But we don’t hold the power of the red pen. That is what the Psalmist surrendered, in part, when he wrote “my times are in Your hands, O Lord” (Psalm 31:15).

            I was reminded of this recently when reading our August premium, Reflections of His Glory.  This book is a collection of Trans World Radio (TWR) “lost” transcripts from Corrie ten Boom’s early radio broadcasts.

You may know that Corrie has long been one of my heroes. Before God placed her in the center arena after World War II, Corrie lived 52 relatively uneventful, obscure years in her childhood home with her parents, her also single sister, and their old maid aunts, working in her family’s watch shop. Who would have figured the course God intended for their family? Who would have guessed God would take Corrie out of Holland and send her criss-cross around the world for the next 38 years?  Certainly not Corrie.  And yet, as our Author, God directs edits our chapters according to the mystery of providence and sovereignty. 

            What I learn from Corrie’s life has a standing list in my journal titled “Lessons Learned from Godly People.” The lessons listed after her name have meant so much to me that I wanted to share them with you.  There are eleven—not the typical ten, because I feared editing out the one that you need to be reminded of today.

 Lessons from the Life of Corrie ten Boom:

1.               Be a mirror reflecting God’s love.  Cultivate an accepting love for people. See people as God sees them.

2.               Seek your strength from prayer not people. Be open, trustworthy, and keep short accounts with God’s people. Live in conversation with the Father.

3.               Simplicity.  See great things great and small things small. Most of life is filled with small irritations. Let them go.

4.               “Keep looking down on your problems from your position of victory in Christ.”

5.               Pray that the Father keeps you so close to His heart that you see things more and more from His perspective. “The higher view we have of His sovereignty, that our times are in His hands, the greater will be the possibility to live in His victory.”

6.               Do nothing—victoriously.  Wait on the Lord. Refuse to manipulate circumstances.

7.               Be quick to give God glory.  Lift compliments like bunches of flowers up to heaven.

8.               Hold things of earth very lightly.  “It hurts too much when God pries my fingers off earthly things.” “What could be so important that it could compare to eternal life?”

9.               Forgiveness. “You are never so free as when you forgive others.”

10.            Do not allow self-pity, one of the most destructive sins, in your life.  “God allows hard things—let them have their effect.”  Surrender your “If onlys.”

11.            God’s ways are mysterious. We will not understand why God allows everything all the time.  Betsie said “...On the blueprint of our lives, God wrote Ravensbruck.”

            Corrie invited those whom she loved to called her “Tante,” Aunt Corrie.  And that is appropriate since, like a Dutch uncle, this Dutch aunt will tell it to you straight.  So, if you pick up Reflections of His Glory this month, or even Hiding Place (a must read!) or a dozen other books about her, remember that she saw life—and what’s important in it—from the perspective of eternity.  And that’s bound to change the “political correctness” or safeguards we often put on our communication.  I think you’ll find the glimpse of glory refreshing.

            I can’t imagine that Corrie, at age 52 (that’s older than most of us,) would have believed it if she could have seen what God had planned for the rest of her life.  But that’s why surrendering to the Author of our lives always results in the best manuscript.  Your book is still being written. The sooner you had over the red pen, the better your final draft will be, too. 

            Just recently I stood beside Corrie’s grave (at Fairhaven, just a few miles south of our offices off Tustin and Grand), a humble marker for a very humble hero. This “Tramp for the Lord” lived her final seven years in a donated home in Placentia, a few blocks from me, near where Michelle Dixon, Fran Osborne, Deedee Snyder, Jeri Roesch, Don Bernstein, and Julie Meredith also live.  Kinda makes you wonder what will be written in our books in the next ten, fifteen, even five years in the future.  Could we imagine how the Lord will choose to use us?

 “My times are in Your hands.” (Psalm 31:15)

More quotes from Corrie Ten Boom:

1. “Don’t bother to give God instructions, just report for duty.”

2. “Even as the angry vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him….Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness….And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on his. When he tells us to love our enemies, he gives along with the command, the love itself.”

3. “Thou art my hiding place and my shield: I hope in thy word. . . . Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe.”

4. “Some knowledge is too heavy…you cannot bear it…your Father will carry it until you are able.”

5. “God never measures the mind… He always put His tape measure in the HEART.”

6. “You will find it is necessary to let things go, simply for the reason that they are too heavy.”

7. “There is no panic in Heaven! God has no problems, only plans.”

8. “You can never learn that Christ is all you need until Christ is all you have.”

9. “Trying to do the Lord’s work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you.”

10. “Happiness isn’t something that depends on our surroundings…it’s something we make inside ourselves.”

11. “Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.”

12. “Jesus Christ is able to untangle all the snarls in your soul, to banish all your complexes, and to transform even your fixed habit patterns, no matter how deeply they are etched in your subconscious.”

13. “This is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person he puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for the future that only he can see.”

14. “Now, I know in my experience that Jesus’ light is stronger than the biggest darkness.”

15. “Today I know that such memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. I know that the experiences of our lives when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work he will give us to do. ”

16. “You can never learn that Christ is all you need until Christ is all you have.”

17. “Do you know what hurts so very much? It’s love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain. There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill that love so that it stops hurting. But then of course, part of us dies, too. Or we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel.”

18. “Worry is like a rocking chair: it keeps you moving but doesn’t get you anywhere.”

19. “It is not my ability, but my response to God’s ability that counts.”

20. “Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?”

21. “The first step on the way to victory is to recognize the enemy.”

22. “When you are covered by His wings, it can get pretty dark.”

23. “His will is our hiding place. Lord Jesus, keep me in your will! Don’t let me go mad by poking about outside of it!”

24. “If God sends us on strong paths, we are provided strong shoes.”

25. “Discernment is God’s call to intercession, never to faultfinding.”

26. “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.”

27. “He uses our problems for His miracles. This was my first lesson in learning to trust Him completely…”

28. “Faith sees the invisible, believes the unbelievable, and receives the impossible.”

29. “Love is larger than the walls which shut it in.”

30. “If God sends us on stony paths, he provides strong shoes.”

31. “God dealt with our whole situation on the cross; there is nothing left for you to settle. Just say to Him, “Lord, I cannot forgive and I will no longer try to do it; but I trust that You in me will do it. I can’t forgive and love; but I trust that You will forgive and love in my place and that You will do these things in me.”

32. “If you look at the world, you’ll be distressed. If you look within, you’ll be depressed. But if you look at Christ, you’ll be at rest.”

33. “With Jesus, even in our darkest moments the best remains and the very best is yet to be…”

34. “In darkness, God’s truth shines most clear.”

35. “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”

36. “God has plans—not problems—for our lives.”

37. “What wings are to a bird and sails to a ship, so is prayer to the soul.”

38. “Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open.”

39. “Let God’s promises shine on your problems.”

40. “You may never know that JESUS is all you need until JESUS is all you have.”

41. “And our wise Father in heaven knows when we’re going to need things too. Don’t run out ahead of him.”

42. “Perhaps only when human effort had done its best and failed, would God’s power alone be free to work.”

43. “Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.”

44. “God takes our sins – the past, present, and future, and dumps them in the sea and puts up a sign that says NO FISHING ALLOWED.”

45. “Don’t pray when you feel like it. Have an appointment with the Lord and keep it. A man is powerful on his knees”

46. “There is no pit so deep, that God’s love is not deeper still.”

47. “The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.”

48. “When I try, I fail. When I trust, he succeeds.”

49. “Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear.”

50. “If the devil cannot make us bad, he will make us busy.”