It was during my time at Bible college that I helped at the local street mission run by the Cooks. I also eventually fell in love with a fellow student whom I will call Cass. We prayed together, studied together and witnessed together. Each of us had a difficult background, but I was certain that God could restore anyone. Cass was the one person I would trust unreservedly. By then Brother Cook had died, so Cass and I met with Sister Cook, who was also known for listening to God. When she prayed with us, she warned us that something difficult lay ahead. It sounded scary, but eventually we forgot her warning.
After I graduated, Cass returned home to work, and I began master’s work in history and religion at what is today Missouri State University. The only job I could find was in a fast-food restaurant, so I often walked the five miles to and from the university, even at night, to avoid the fifty-cent bus fare. I also ate simply; though I am nearly six feet tall, sometimes I weighed just 132 pounds.
I began pastoring a multiethnic congregation that was too small to offer a salary. I fasted a day each week to pray for God’s transforming power in the message I would give that week. Idealistic, I imagined that after my first ten sermons the handful of people in the congregation would be so zealous for God that a nationwide revival would break out. I was the one who had the most to learn.
I heard God’s brokenhearted love deeply in prophetic parts of the Bible, especially Jeremiah and Hosea. I felt His lament that much of the Church in America was unfaithful; also that we were arrogant, feeling that we were somehow immune to what Christians were suffering elsewhere in the world. I will strip them of the things they value, I felt Him warn, so they may learn to value what really matters.
The one time Cass was able to visit me in Missouri was the week that I gave a play – a monologue – from the book of Hosea. That book communicated deeply God’s heart of love and faithfulness without compromising His holiness. As Hosea’s wife betrayed him, so God’s people betrayed Him; yet God still loved them and wanted them back. As I delivered that play to my little congregation, I could almost feel God’s broken hearted pain for the world.
This content is by Craig Keener, but is edited and posted by Defenders Media.
For more, please check out Dr. Keener’s Impossible Love.
