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About the Book
"His Word is Now" by E.W. Kenyon is a Christian devotional book that emphasizes the power of God's word in the present moment. The author explores how believers can experience the reality of God's promises and miracles in their daily lives through faith and obedience to God's word. The book encourages readers to trust in God's faithfulness and promises for their lives today.
John and Betty Stam
The year 1934. Americans John and Betty Stam were serving as missionaries in China. One morning Betty was bathing her three-month-old daughter Helen Priscilla Stam when Tsingteh's city magistrate appeared. Communist forces were near, he warned, and urged the Stams to flee.
So John Stam went out to investigate the situation for himself. He received conflicting reports. Taking no chances, he arranged for Betty and the baby to be escorted away to safety if need be. But before the Stams could make their break, the Communists were inside the city. By little-known paths, they had streamed over the mountains behind government troops. Now gun shots sounded in the streets as looting began. The enemy beat on the Stams' own gate.
A faithful cook and maid at the mission station had stayed behind. The Stams knelt with them in prayer. But the invaders were pounding at the door. John opened it and spoke courteously to the four leaders who entered, asking them if they were hungry. Betty brought them tea and cakes. The courtesy meant nothing. They demanded all the money the Stams had, and John handed it over. As the men bound him, he pleaded for the safety of his wife and child. The Communists left Betty and Helen behind as they led John off to their headquarters.
Before long, they reappeared, demanding mother and child. The maid and cook pleaded to be allowed to accompany Betty.
"No," barked the captors, and threatened to shoot.
"It is better for you to stay here," Betty whispered. "If anything happens to us, look after the baby."
[When we consecrate ourselves to God, we think we are making a great sacrifice, and doing lots for Him, when really we are only letting go some little, bitsie trinkets we have been grabbing, and when our hands are empty, He fills them full of His treasures. --Betty Stam]
Betty was led to her husband's side. Little Helen needed some things and John was allowed to return home under guard to fetch them. But everything had been stolen. That night John was allowed to write a letter to mission authorities. "My wife, baby and myself are today in the hands of the Communists in the city of Tsingteh. Their demand is twenty thousand dollars for our release. . . . We were too late. The Lord bless and guide you. As for us, may God be glorified, whether by life or by death."
Prisoners in the local jail were released to make room for the Stams. Frightened by rifle fire, the baby cried out. One of the Reds said, "Let's kill the baby. It is in our way." A bystander asked, "Why kill her? What harm has she done?"
"Are you a Christian?" shouted one of the guards.
The man said he was not; he was one of the prisoners just released.
"Will you die for this foreign baby?" they asked. As Betty hugged Helen to her chest, the man was hacked to pieces before her eyes.
Terror in the Streets
The next morning their captors led the Stams toward Miaosheo, twelve miles distant. John carried little Helen, but Betty, who was not physically strong, owing to a youthful bout with inflammatory rheumatitis was allowed to ride a horse part of the way. Terror reigned in the streets of Miaosheo. Under guard, the foreign family was hustled into the postmaster's shop.
"Where are you going?" asked the postmaster, who recognized them from their previous visits to his town. "We do not know where they are going, but we are going to heaven," answered John. He left a letter with the postmaster. "I tried to persuade them to let my wife and baby go back from Tsingteh with a letter to you, but they would not let her. . . ."
That night the three were held in the house of a wealthy man who had fled. They were guarded by soldiers. John was tied to a post all that cold night, but Betty was allowed enough freedom to tend the baby. As it turned out, she did more than that.
Execution
The next morning the young couple were led through town without the baby. Their hands were tightly bound, and they were stripped of their outer garments as if they were common criminals. John walked barefoot. He had given his socks to Betty. The soldiers jeered and called the town’s folk to come see the execution. The terrified people obeyed.
On the way to the execution, a medicine-seller, considered a lukewarm Christian at best, stepped from the crowd and pleaded for the lives of the two foreigners. The Reds angrily ordered him back. The man would not be stilled. His house was searched, a Bible and hymnbook found, and he, too was dragged away to die as a hated Christian.
John pleaded for the man’s life. The Red leader sharply ordered him to kneel. As John was speaking softly, the Red leader swung his sword through the missionary’s throat so that his head was severed from his body. Betty did not scream. She quivered and fell bound beside her husband’s body. As she knelt there, the same sword ended her life with a single blow.
Betty
Betty Scott was born in the United States but reared in China as the daughter of missionaries. She came to the United States and attended Wilson College in Pennsylvania. Betty prepared to follow in her parents’ footsteps and work in China or wherever else the Lord directed her.
But China it proved to be. At a prayer meeting for China, she met John Stam and a friendship developed that ripened into love. Painfully they recognized that marriage was not yet possible. “The China Inland Mission has appealed for men, single men, to work in sections where it would be impossible to take a woman until more settled work has commenced,” wrote John. He committed the matter to the Lord, whose work, he felt, must come before any human affection. At any rate, Betty would be leaving for China before him, to work in an entirely different region, and so they must be separated anyhow. As a matter of fact, John had not yet even been accepted by the China Inland Mission whereas Betty had. They parted after a long tender day, sharing their faith, picnicking, talking, and praying.
Betty sailed while John continued his studies. On July 1, 1932, John, too, was accepted for service in China. Now at least he could head toward the same continent as Betty. He sailed for Shanghai.
Meanwhile, Betty found her plans thwarted. A senior missionary had been captured by the Communists in the region where she was to have worked. The mission directors decided to keep her in a temporary station, and later ill-health brought her to Shanghai. Thus without any choice on her part, she was in Shanghai when John landed in China. Immediately they became engaged and a year later were married, long before they expected it. In October, 1934 Helen Priscilla was born to them. What would become of her now that her parents John and Betty were dead?
In the Hills
For two days, local Christians huddled in hiding in the hills around Miaosheo. Among them was a Chinese evangelist named Mr. Lo. Through informants, he learned that the Communists had captured two foreigners. At first he did not realize that these were John and Betty Stam, with whom he had worked, but as he received more details, he put two and two together. As soon as government troops entered the valley and it was safe to venture forth, Mr. Lo hurried to town. His questions met with silence. Everyone was fearful that spies might report anyone who said too much.
An old woman whispered to Pastor Lo that there was a baby left behind. She nodded in the direction of the house where John and Betty had been chained their last night on earth. Pastor Lo hurried to the site and found room after room trashed by the bandits. Then he heard a muffled cry. Tucked by her mother in a little sleeping bag, Helen was warm and alive, although hungry after her two day fast.
The kindly pastor took the child in his arms and carried her to his wife. With the help of a local Christian family, he wrapped the bodies that still lay upon the hillside and placed them into coffins. To the crowd that gathered he explained that the missionaries had only come to tell them how they might find forgiveness of sin in Christ. Leaving others to bury the dead, he hurried home. Somehow Helen had to be gotten to safety.
Pastor Lo's own son, a boy of four, was desperately ill -- semi-conscious after days of exposure. Pastor Lo had to find a way to carry the children a hundred miles through mountains infested by bandits and Communists. Brave men were found willing to help bear the children to safety, but there was no money to pay them for their efforts. Lo had been robbed of everything he had.
From Beyond the Grave
But from beyond the grave, Betty provided. Tucked in Helen's sleeping bag were a change of clothes and some diapers. Pinned between these articles of clothing were two five dollar bills. It made the difference.
Placing the children in rice baskets slung from the two ends of a bamboo pole, the group departed quietly, taking turns carrying the precious cargo over their shoulders. Mrs. Lo was able to find Chinese mothers along the way to nurse Helen. On foot, they came safely through their perils. Lo's own boy recovered consciousness suddenly and sat up, singing a hymn.
Eight days after the Stams fell into Communist hands, another missionary in a nearby city heard a rap at his door. He opened it and a Chinese woman, stained with travel, entered the house, bearing a bundle in her arms. "This is all we have left," she said brokenly.
The missionary took the bundle and turned back the blanket to uncover the sleeping face of Helen Priscilla Stam. Many kind hands had labored to preserve the infant girl, but none kinder than Betty who had spared no effort for her baby even as she herself faced degradation and death.
Kathleen White has written an excellent and very readable biography John and Betty Stam, available from Bethany House Publishers (1988). She reports that Betty's alma mater, Wilson College in Pennsylvania, took over baby Helen's support and covered the costs of her college education. She added: "Helen is living in this country (USA) with her husband and family but does not wish her identity and whereabouts to be made known."
Resources:
Huizenga, Lee S. John and Betty Stam; Martyrs. Zondervan, 1935.
Pollock, John. Victims of the Long March and Other Stories. Waco, Texas.: Word Publishing, 1970.
Taylor, Mrs. Howard. The Triumph of John and Betty Stam. China Inland Mission, 1935.
How to Recognize the Holy Spirit
Of all the blessings that are ours in Christ, is any greater than the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit? The Spirit is “the sum of the blessings Christ sought, by what he did and suffered in the work of redemption,” Jonathan Edwards writes (Works of Jonathan Edwards, 5:341). The Spirit illumines our Savior’s face (John 16:14). The Spirit puts “Abba! Father!” in our mouths (Romans 8:15). The Spirit plants heaven in our hearts (Ephesians 1:13–14). For all the blessings the Spirit brings, however, many of us labor under confusion when it comes to recognizing the Spirit’s presence. As a new believer, I was told that speaking in tongues and prophesying were two indispensable signs of the Spirit’s power. Perhaps others of us, without focusing the lens so narrowly, likewise identify the Spirit’s presence most readily with his miraculous gifts: visions, healings, impressions, and more. “Of all the blessings that are ours in Christ, is any greater than the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit?” To be sure, the Spirit does reveal himself through such wonders (1 Corinthians 12:8–11), and Christians today should “earnestly desire” them (1 Corinthians 14:1). Nevertheless, when Paul tells the Galatians to “walk by the Spirit” and “keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16, 25), he focuses their attention not on the Spirit’s gifts, but on the Spirit’s fruit. So if we want to know whether we are keeping in step with the Spirit, or whether we need to find his footsteps again, we would do well to consider love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Fruit of the Spirit In order to understand the Spirit’s fruit, we need to remember the context in which it appears. Paul’s list came at first to a community at odds with each other. The apostle found it necessary to warn the Galatians not to “bite and devour one another,” nor to “become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another” (Galatians 5:15, 26). The Galatians, in turning from God’s grace in the gospel (Galatians 1:6), had evidently begun to turn on one another. In this context, the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit describe two communities: the anti-community of those in the flesh, seeking a righteousness based on their works (Galatians 5:19–21); and the true community of those in the Spirit, justified through faith alone in Christ alone (Galatians 5:22–23). As we use Paul’s list to examine ourselves, then, we need to ask if these graces mark us, not when we sit in peaceful isolation, but when we move among God’s people. I may appear patient, gentle, and kind when alone in my apartment, but what about when I am with the church? Who we are around others — baffling others, irritating others, oblivious others — reveals how far we have come in bearing the Spirit’s fruit. Now, what are these nine clusters of fruit that manifest the Spirit’s presence? To keep the survey manageable, we will include only one or two angles on each virtue, and restrict ourselves mostly to Paul’s letters. Love: Do you labor for the good of your brothers and sisters? When God pours his love into our hearts through the Spirit (Romans 5:5), our posture changes: once curved inward in self-preoccupation, we now straighten our backs, lift our heads, and begin to forget ourselves in the interests of others (Philippians 2:1–4). We find our hearts being knit together with people we once would have disregarded, judged, or even despised (Colossians 2:2; Romans 12:16). Our love no longer depends on finding something lovely; having felt the love of Christ (Galatians 2:20), we carry love with us wherever we go. “Who we are around others reveals how far we have come in bearing the Spirit’s fruit.” Such love compels us to labor for the good of our brothers and sisters (1 Thessalonians 1:3), to patiently bear with people we find vexing (Ephesians 4:2), and to care more about our brother’s spiritual welfare than our own spiritual freedom (1 Corinthians 8:1). No matter our position in the community, we gladly consider ourselves as servants (Galatians 5:13), and are learning to ask not, “Who will meet my needs today?” but rather, “Whose needs can I meet today?” Better by far to carry even an ounce of this love in our hearts than to enjoy all the world’s wealth, comforts, or acclaim. For on the day when everything else passes away, love will remain (1 Corinthians 13:7–8). Joy: Do you delight in the Christlikeness of God’s people? For Paul, the fellowship of God’s people was not peripheral to Christian joy. He could write to Timothy, “I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy” (2 Timothy 1:4), or to the Philippians, “In every prayer of mine for you all [I make] my prayer with joy” (Philippians 1:4). To be sure, the joy of the Spirit is, first and foremost, joy in our Lord Jesus (Philippians 4:4). But genuine joy in Christ overflows to all who are being remade in his image. By faith, we have seen the resplendent glory of our King — and now we delight to catch his reflection in the faces of the saints. The pinnacle of our horizontal joy, however, is not simply in being with God’s people, but in seeing them look like Jesus. “Complete my joy,” Paul writes to the Philippians, “by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” (Philippians 2:2). What would complete your joy? When we walk by the Spirit, the maturity of God’s people completes our joy. We rejoice when we see humility triumph over pride, lust fall before a better pleasure, the timid speak the gospel with boldness, and fathers lead their families in the fear of the Lord. Peace: Do you strive to maintain the unity of the Spirit, even at significant personal cost? The Holy Spirit is the great unifier of the church. Because of Jesus’s peacemaking work on the cross, the Spirit makes Jew and Gentile “one new man” (Ephesians 2:15); he gathers former enemies as “members of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19); he builds us all “into a holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2:21–22). No matter how different we seem from the person in the next pew, we share a body, we share a home, we share a sanctuary — all because we share the same Lord, and will one day share the same heaven (Ephesians 4:4–6). “Kindness receives an offense, refashions it in the factory of our souls, and then sends it back as a blessing.” Those who walk by the Spirit, then, do not grieve him by tearing down what he has built up (Ephesians 4:29–30), but rather “pursue what makes for peace” (Romans 14:19): We ask for forgiveness first, even when the majority of the fault lies with the other person. We renounce unwarranted suspicions, choosing rather to assume the best. We abhor all gossip, and instead honor our brothers behind their backs. And when we must engage in conflict, we “aim for restoration” so that we might “live in peace” (2 Corinthians 13:11). Patience: Are you growing in your ability to overlook offenses? As a fruit of the Spirit, patience is more than the ability to sit calmly in traffic or to wait at the doctor’s office well past your appointment time. Patience is the inner spiritual strength (Colossians 1:11) that enables us to receive an offense full in the face, and then look right over it. Patient people are like God: “slow to anger” (Exodus 34:6), even when confronted with severe and repeated provocation (Romans 2:4; 1 Timothy 1:16). Patience is integral to one of the church’s primary responsibilities: discipleship. When Paul exhorted Timothy to “preach the word . . . in season and out of season,” he told him to do so “with complete patience” (2 Timothy 4:2; cf. 3:10–11). Ministry in the church, no matter our role, places us around people whose progress is much slower than we would like. We will find ourselves around “the idle, . . . the fainthearted, . . . the weak,” and instead of throwing up our hands, we must “be patient with them all” (1 Thessalonians 5:14). We must come alongside the plodding, stumbling saint, and remember that he will one day shine like the sun (Matthew 13:43). Kindness: Do you not only overlook offenses, but also repay them with love? It is one thing to receive an offense and quietly walk away. It is quite another to receive an offense, refashion it in the factory of your soul, and then send it back as a blessing. The former is patience; the latter is kindness (Romans 2:4–5; Titus 3:4–5; Ephesians 4:32). Spirit-wrought kindness creates parents who discipline their children with a steady, tender voice; sufferers who respond to ignorant, insensitive “comfort” with grace; wives and husbands who repay their spouses’ sharp word with a kiss. This fruit of the Spirit has not yet matured in us unless we are ready to show kindness, not only to those who will one day thank us for it, but also to “the ungrateful and the evil” (Luke 6:35). The kind are able to give a blessing, to receive a curse in return, and then to go on giving blessings (Romans 12:14). Goodness: Do you dream up opportunities to be helpful? Outside the moment of offense, those who walk by the Spirit carry with them a general disposition to be useful, generous, and helpful. They do not need to be told to pitch in a hand when the dishes need drying or the trash needs emptying, but get to work readily and with a good will. “Just as no one can sit beneath a waterfall and stay dry, so no one can gaze on this Jesus and stay fruitless.” Such people, however, do not simply do good when they stumble upon opportunities for doing so; they “resolve for good” (2 Thessalonians 1:11), putting their imagination to work in the service of as-yet-unimagined good deeds as they seek to “discern what is pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:8–10). They follow the counsel of Charles Spurgeon: “Let us be on the watch for opportunities of usefulness; let us go about the world with our ears and eyes open, ready to avail ourselves of every occasion for doing good; let us not be content till we are useful, but make this the main design and ambition of our lives” (The Soul-Winner, 312). Faithfulness: Do you do what you say you’ll do, even in the smallest matters? The faithfulness of God consists, in part, of his always doing what he says he will do: “He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:24). The faithfulness of God’s people consists, likewise, in our making every effort to do what we say we’ll do, even when it hurts. The Spirit makes us strive to say with Paul, “As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No” (2 Corinthians 1:18). The faithful build such a trustworthy reputation that, when they fail to follow through on their word, others do not say, “Well, you know him,” but are rather surprised. If we say we’ll come to small group, we come. If we commit to cleaning the bathroom, we clean it. If we agree to call someone on Thursday at 4:00, we call on Thursday at 4:00. We labor to be faithful, even if our areas of responsibility right now are only “a little” (Matthew 25:21), knowing that how we handle little responsibilities reveals how we will handle big ones (Luke 16:10; 2 Timothy 2:2). Gentleness: Do you use your strength to serve the weak? Gentleness is far from the manicured niceness it is sometimes portrayed to be. “Gentleness in the Bible is emphatically not a lack of strength,” but rather “the godly exercise of power,” David Mathis writes. When Jesus came to save us sinners, he robed himself with gentleness (Matthew 11:29; 2 Corinthians 10:1). When we do our own work of restoring our brothers and sisters from sin, we are to wear the same clothing (Galatians 6:1). Gentleness does not prevent the godly from ever expressing anger, but they are reluctant to do so; they would far rather correct others “with love in a spirit of gentleness” (1 Corinthians 4:21). “In making our home with him, Christ makes our hearts a heaven.” No wonder Paul pairs gentleness with humility in Ephesians 4:2. As one Greek lexicon puts it, gentleness requires “not being overly impressed by a sense of one’s self-importance.” In the face of personal offense, the proud unleash their anger in order to assert their own significance. The humble are more concerned with the offender’s soul than their own self-importance, and so they channel their strength in the service of gentle restoration. Self-control: Do you refuse your flesh’s cravings? Scripture gives us no rosy pictures of self-control. Paul writes, “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. . . . I discipline my body and keep it under control” (1 Corinthians 9:25, 27). The Greek word for discipline here means “to give a black eye, strike in the face.” Paul’s use is metaphorical, but the point still holds: self-control hurts. It requires us to say a merciless “No!” to any craving that draws us away from the Spirit and into the flesh (Titus 2:11–12). The need for self-control applies to every bodily appetite — for sleep, food, and caffeine, for example — but in particular to our sexual appetites (1 Corinthians 7:9). Those governed by the Spirit are learning, truly even if fitfully, to hear God’s promises as louder than lust’s demands, and to refuse to give sexual immorality a seat among the saints (Ephesians 5:3). Walk by the Spirit The Spirit of God never indwells someone without also making him a garden of spiritual fruit. If we are abounding in these nine graces, then we are walking by the Spirit; if these virtues are absent, then no spiritual gift can compensate for their lack. How, then, should we respond when we find that the works of the flesh have overrun the garden? Or how can we continue to cultivate the Spirit’s fruit over a lifetime? We can begin by remembering three daily postures, the repetition of which is basic to any Christian pursuit of holiness: repent, request, renew. Repent. When the works of the flesh have gained control over us, we must go backward in repentance in order to go forward in holiness. Confess your sins honestly and specifically (perhaps using Paul’s list in Galatians 5:19–21), and then trust afresh in “the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Remember again that we are not justified by fruit, but by faith. Request. Apart from the renewing, fructifying presence of God’s Spirit, we are all a cursed earth (Romans 7:18). If we are going to bear the fruit of holiness, then, we need to ask him “who supplies the Spirit” to do so more and more (Galatians 3:5). “Those governed by the Spirit are learning to hear God’s promises as louder than lust’s demands.” Renew. Finally, we renew our gaze on Jesus Christ, whom the Spirit loves to glorify (John 16:14; Galatians 3:1–2). Here we find our fruitful vine: our Lord of love, our joyful King, our Prince of peace, our patient Master, our kind Friend, our good God, our faithful Savior, our gentle Shepherd, our Brother who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet with perfect self-control. Just as no one can sit beneath a waterfall and stay dry, so no one can gaze on this Jesus and stay fruitless. Heaven in Our Hearts Of course, renewing our gaze on Jesus Christ is more than the work of a moment. When Paul said, “I live by faith in the Son of God” (Galatians 2:20), he was speaking of a lifestyle rather than a fleeting thought or a brief prayer. We must do more than cast an eye in Jesus’s direction; we must commune with him. We cannot commune with Christ too closely, nor can we exert too much energy in pursuing such communion. If we make nearness to him our aim, we will find ourselves rewarded a hundredfold beyond our efforts. The Puritan Richard Sibbes once preached, Do we entertain Christ to our loss? Doth he come empty? No; he comes with all grace. His goodness is a communicative, diffusive goodness. He comes to spread his treasures, to enrich the heart with all grace and strength, to bear all afflictions, to encounter all dangers, to bring peace of conscience, and joy in the Holy Ghost. He comes, indeed, to make our hearts, as it were, a heaven. (Works of Richard Sibbes, 2:67) This is what we find when we walk by the Spirit of Christ: in making our home with him, he makes our hearts a heaven. Article by Scott Hubbard
