Inspired by Blasphemy
If you didn’t catch last week’s devos, go give them a listen or read, because this week is a follow on from those. We’re looking at the life of Wally Herron, the Condor of the Jungle, a missionary pilot in Bolivia in the 1930s through to the 60s.
Wally ended up doing a great deal of good work in a town with a high number of leprosy cases. But the medical officer in the town was a Frenchman named Rene Rosseau. He was an outspoken atheist, and would ridicule Herron’s faith in Jesus at every opportunity.
One day these two men went to visit an old woman whose leprosy had been getting worse and worse, and after pushing their way through a rough overgrown section of grass and trees they encountered the lady lying in a puddle of muddy water, barely clothed, with a finger and a few toes having rotted off. She was dying.
Finding Purpose in Adversity: A Lesson in Faith
Rosseau turned to Wally Herron with anger in his eyes and said “Here’s your proof – there is no God!” And as they walked home Wally tried to explain to him that the presence of suffering in no way disproves God’s existence. Rosseau was not convinced. But his words kept ringing in Wally’s ears – there is no God – and he made a decision there and then that he would give the rest of his life to doing all he could to eradicate leprosy from that part of the world.
The author says this on page 94: “Here was a case in which God used the blasphemous words of an infidel to move the heart of one of His servants to action.”
I thought this was profound. We Christians are always going to be surrounded by people who don’t see what we see in Jesus. Who don’t believe what we know to be true. We will always encounter people who will ridicule us, knock us and even get angry with us for our faith.
The question is – will we be embarrassed by their taunts? Will we be crippled by their words? Will they defeat us by coming against us? Or will we be encouraged to do more for God, to go further for God, to stand more strongly in our faith as they taunt us?
Turning Unbelief into Fuel for Faith
I love how God used this man’s godless cry to light a fire under Wally Herron and get him excited about proving God’s power.
Don’t let unbelievers around you drag you down! Even if they rail against your faith and laugh and mock, go deeper with Jesus. Do more for Jesus. Sing Jesus’ praise even louder!
Perhaps God is going to do something great through you because you kept on going, even when the unbelievers around you laughed.
