Awaken my soul to who I am in You

Great Emerge song... "Awaken my Soul".. I love it.. for the tune, for its lyrics...

Recently I read a book called "The Hiding Place" by Corrie Ten Boom.

I chanced upon this book on one of my recent rare visits to National Library.. vaguely recalled Pastor Kong ever mentioning this name in his sermons about her being one of the Christian heros. And so.. I borrowed the book wanting to know more about her life.

The book has impacted me deeply.. like the song goes "Awaken my soul to who I am in You" .. one's faith in God truly can bring great strength, beyond all understanding and open many doors..

She was just a simple lady who grew up in a loving Christian home.. In her 50s.. the German Occupation started and all their family wanted to do was to protect the Jews (whom they recognised were the apple of God's eye) from the arrest of the Germans. Initially she sent the Jews to her brother, who was the pioneer in the family in this "business" of hiding the Jews. One fine day, her brother told her, "Corrie you got to establish your own sources" because he was getting increasingly watched over by the German police - Gestapo.

She had no clue how to get started...
She has no clue who to work with...
All she had was a desire to save God's people...
And God led her to different ones to facilitate her honorable "work"!

Indeed.. very often, A DESIRE is all that one needs to do great things for God. A God-given desire opens doors beyond what we can expect, brings strength beyond what is humanly-possible... It reminded me that God only needs 3 things to make us great:

1. A strong desire to do something more with your life
2. Hard work on our part
3. Commit this work to God and recognise He is in control

Corrie, together with her family, housed many Jews and managed to help many of them escape to safety. They took on the risk to protect God's people. We are to be law-abiding.. but more importantly, we are to fear God more than men. In the end, she and her family did get arrested and thrown into concentration camps. As I read about the persecutions she went through, I asked myself... would I be as strong as her if I were in her shoes? The Bible and the mention of God was not allowed in the camps.. Yet she secretly kept a Bible with her.. Praised and worship God... ministered to and shared the Gospel with as many as possible in her prison days .. even to a German officer! What audacity!! Which I feel is lacking in most Christians, maybe even myself.


Her story taught me what it means to have audacious faith.
Her story taught me what it means to praise God in all circumstances.
Her story taught me what even under the harshest environments, we can still serve the purposes of God.
Her story thought me a willing heart is all God needs to make our lives a great one.

For those of you who wanna read up on her, you can find a very good biography of her at http://www.answers.com/topic/corrie-ten-boom

Let's all be like her.. Let's run a good race for God in our lifetime..

Let's not merely exist but make it count!