“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!” (Romans 11:33.)

Without any doubt, we are living in a superficial and artificial age. It is all tinsel, veneer and glittering chrome. In the event of any disaster or accident, all that remains are only bits and pieces and an unrecognizable mass of twisted steel. But most people stake everything on the short-lived glow and glitter of their earthly possessions.

Unfortunately, this shallow veneer has overtaken many churches too. Most of the preachers and churches today preach a conversion which requires no repentance. It hurts to dig deep, to uncover the wicked motives that rule one’s life and confess hidden sins. It is something which human nature revolts against. We hate to be exposed, to be searched to the depths of our hearts. But this is what the Lord Jesus does. Exposure and diagnosis are essential for treatment.

You never try to mislead your doctor by stating symptoms which do not exist. You want to be as exact as possible in narrating the symptoms in order to help the doctor to locate the problem.

St Paul cries: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!”

Yes, there are depths in Christ, depths in purity, power and perfection. It only reveals our shallow desire when we look around and see the state of affairs of Christians today. The early disciples were men who could face any situation with deep assurance that their risen Lord would deliver them through and through. Jesus was more than adequate for them. Such was their faith and they were more than conquerors in the midst of an idolatrous and immoral society.

Christ is adequate even today. His promises are enough for you. As you get deeper into the Word of God and the riches in Christ, your heart is thrilled with a new vision and hope. You are right there in the mine shaft and the cable car plunges you deeper and deeper into the solid veins of gold in the quartz around you. It is all yours. He is your wisdom. He is your salvation. He is your sanctification. In Jesus Christ you have all these riches. He gave Himself for us holding nothing back.

My father was a man of great spiritual depth and he sought depth in others. In his lifetime he was enabled by God to bring literally thousands into the deep experience of conversion. Nearly all of them learned to pray and cultivated the habit of getting alone for prayer every day. No wonder they were mightily used of God in healing the sick and in casting out the demons. The Word of God prevailed over all the works of darkness.

On the other hand, the shallow Christians are always characterized by the light-hearted way in which they speak of deep men of God. The very Son of God was not spared from criticism. They called Him as a wine-bibber, friend of sinners and Beelzebub. They belittled Him as the son of the carpenter. But Jesus steadfastly set His face towards Jerusalem where He must suffer and die on the cross.

Now, tear off the old paper and scrape away the thin veneer with which you disguised your true nature. Come to the cross with true brokenness. Call upon the Lord Jesus for a new life. There are depths of His love and riches which are still unexplored.

“Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment” (John 12:3).

Here is a worship going on at a dinner time. The sister of a man raised from the grave had made a great feast for Jesus. It was a great celebration of the triumph of faith. A home that listened to the Word of God which came from such perfect lips could not help becoming a home as could believe a man four days in the grave could rise again. They were full of gratitude in their hearts. Mary took the costly ointment which had been preserved in the family to be converted into money at the time of an emergency. She brought it and [broke] it. Why? She had found the Saviour. She was full of faith. It was an act of worship, praise, honour and adoration. Everyone felt the impact of that worship. She belonged to the Kingdom of God. But there was one present who was not at all happy. He belonged to the kingdom of Caesar. He stepped out of the Kingdom of God into Caesar’s dark kingdom. He did not know the possibility of faith. He only looked at the purse and how much he could pilfer from it. He was still in darkness and sin, while a man in Caesar's service reached out to belong to the Kingdom of God.

The Centurion definitely belonged to the Kingdom of God. He had so much affection and concern for a servant. This is typical of the Kingdom of God. He certainly did not belong to the kingdom of Caesar. He could see how much was possible through faith. Judas was dead as a door nail to faith. He could not believe that without selling Jesus he could square up his financial affairs. Thirty pieces of silver could bring him above his trouble, he thought.

Men who belong to the kingdom of Caesar calculate everything through money and are no good for God. Do you believe that God can use you? Are you growing in faith? Have you risen above the kingdom of Caesar where all calculations are made in money? Have you stepped out into the Kingdom of God where the limited man becomes an unlimited being by believing in God?

—N. Daniel

“But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared” (Psalm 130:4).

We do not have any share in His nature if we are not born again. We do not have the capacity to understand Him and obey Him. If the grace of God does not enter people, how can they obey the truth? A sinner has no place in the presence of God. It is through the grace of God you get humility and brokenness.

Psalm 51:17 [“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.”]. We need a broken spirit to appear before God. Doctors will not allow us to enter into the operation theatre – they will not use our tissues. They are so careful to use only sterilized material. Yet we enter into God’s presence and demand His presence even though we do not deserve it. “Lord, I am unworthy, teach me to know my sins.” Pray like this. A math teacher does not give you up because you worked out one sum wrong. He forgives you. There is forgiveness with the Lord.

Many times we go into God's presence with complacence. God bears with you. God does not expect you to be perfect immediately. There is purifying grace at the Cross. Those rays of light from the Cross never discourage you. At the Cross, you understand your weakness. God knows that you are below zero, yet He forgives you. Do not be discouraged. He has got great plans. You will grow. God hopes to fulfil His plans in you. A boy once got a zero in math. Soon he came round and stood second in the class. Jesus looks at timid Peter and says he will be a rock. I do not know what new name He will give you. He will make you like the name He gives. When St. Francis was young he was vain. But God saw humility in his heart. He made him a humble man. He once was proud about his father, his houses and his clothes. He was a vain fellow. But God saw a great personality and a humble man in him. You do not know yourself. In order to make you perfect, step by step, there is forgiveness in God. Every day God will show you your mistakes. Confess and repent immediately. God’s Word acts on your thoughts. You need purifying. The Word is a purifying agency. It cleanses your thoughts. Take care of your friends. Your admonition for them must be modulated by God.

Psalm 78:36,37 [“Nevertheless they did flatter Him with their mouth, and they lied unto Him with their tongues. For their heart was not right with Him, neither were they steadfast in His covenant”]. God gave me these verses about a missionary who came to me for counsel. You say that God is loving. Can you show to people God's love? God does not want flattery. Very often our heart is not right with God. Genesis 18:7 [“And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee”]. God does not want to hide anything from you. God showed me that my father passed away while I was in Usilampatti a thousand miles away.

He sees in you a saintly woman and a reformer. He will “perfect that which concerneth you”. There is forgiveness in Him to make you perfect and like Him.

Danny Velasco worked as a successful freelance hairdresser and make-up artist in photo studios around the world for nearly forty years. In his early thirties, he moved to Paris because he wanted to be at the centre of where fashion was. Within two months of being in Paris, he got his first cover of Vogue magazine. Subsequently, his career exploded! He had as much money as he wanted to spend on drugs and that included cocaine followed by heroin.

One day, Danny was on a photo shoot in New York City and a model, Wanda, began to talk to him about Jesus. “God loves you,” she told him. To Danny, this young female was a religious fanatic; he did not have much to say to her and just let her talk. Before she left, she said, “Hey Danny, do you mind if I pray for you?” In the studio, she took his hands and began to pray out loud. Danny had never been around anyone praying out loud and thought she was nuts! Before she walked out, Wanda said, “Look, you know you’re in trouble. I know who you are, I’ve seen your work and magazines for years, and I know you work with all these famous celebrities but you’re in big trouble. So I just want to let you know that the day you call on the name of the Lord He’s [going to] set you free.”

“Oh really?” replied Danny. “You don’t understand, I’ve gone way too far.”

“Oh, no, no, there [are] no hopeless cases with Jesus.”

“Okay, whatever, but listen, I will never call on the name of the Lord. That won’t happen, and I won’t ever come to your church.”

“I just want you to remember that,” she said.

One of Danny’s contracts was for a clothing manufacturing company and they were shooting in the Caribbean. After Danny overdosed on heroin, he was sent back to America and the company pulled his contract. Yet he did not care; all he wanted to do was shoot dope. So one day he pulled up a garbage can between his legs and began to cut up everything that had his name on it, including his passport and driver’s license. He put the keys on the table, walked out, closed the door behind him, and never went back. He began to live on the streets.

Day-to-day existence on the streets of New York meant waking up, being sick, and wanting drugs. Danny had gone down to weighing around 108 pounds and developed hepatitis A, B, and C. Every once in a while on the streets he would go to a pay phone and call Wanda: “Look, I need some money.” She would say, “Well, if you would come by the church today, we have choir practice tonight.” She could give him some money then. Wanda never gave up on Danny.

Danny did not know it at the time but Wanda had a whole team of friends praying for Danny, and they would pray for him in prayer meetings where there were thousands gathered together crying out to God. They would pray and pray for him.

Danny started to develop a lot of phobias living on the street. He began to hear voices in his head, constantly accusing him and telling him he would mess up. Another voice would start up and just curse and spew out filthy language. A third voice would continuously laugh. One day when riding the trains, a man, a drug addict, said, “You look like you’re dying. There’s a hospital next stop. You should go to the hospital.”

“Oh yeah, maybe I will,” said Danny. He did not want to die on the street and went into the Emergency department. When he woke up in a hospital bed, he was lying in his own vomit. All the voices were screaming in his head.

There was one moment when Danny heard a sweet little voice in the midst of all that craziness and it said, “The day you call on the name of the Lord, He’s going to set you free.” It was at that moment that Danny cried out to God: “Jesus, help me. Save me. You’re my only hope. I have no other hope.” It was as if the Spirit of God just swept into that hospital room; it was as if He were all around Danny and in him, healing him, and loving him, and changing him. The experience was overwhelming. Immediately all the voices in his head stopped—and never returned. The fears and phobias dropped away from him.

When Danny was in rehabilitation, he began to devour God’s Word like a hungry man feasting on the Word of God. He also wrote to Wanda and told her what had happened. She replied with three big letters: “WOW”.

What blew Danny away is that God goes so much further than we ever dare to ask for. God gave him a new life and stood him up before thousands of people so that others would know that they too could obtain mercy. It was like he was God’s trophy that he wished to show off to the world and say, “I can do this in somebody’s life.” 

“And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Joel 2:32; Acts 2:21).

—Danny Velasco’s testimony is available to watch online

Mimosa had turned from Hinduism to God the Loving One while growing up in India. For many years, during which she married and had children, Mimosa received little teaching by man of His ways—yet God’s Spirit taught her.

Mimosa longed for her sons to be able to choose the worship of the living, true, and holy God. Yet how? She gave herself to prayer, to prayer streaming through the busy day, flowing far into the night. Her prayers were not always in words, for the longings that consumed her could not wait for words. “I am a prayer” might have described her.

Her educated brother taunted her: “Thou thinkest that thou canst pray! From whom hast thou learned? Thou who canst not read, thou the ignorant who canst not even read the first letter (and he named it), thou thinkest that thou canst pray!”

Mimosa, humble, in poverty, was deeply pierced; what if her concept were a mistake?

The prophet Jeremiah once addressed God in his sorrow: “Wilt Thou be indeed to me as waters that fail?”

Yet Christ drew near, the Christ who told His disciple Peter, “I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.”

“Have I been a wilderness unto thee?” (God speaks, Jeremiah 2:31).

A glow of joy came to her; Mimosa knew what He had been to her all through the bitter years. “You know Him by learning,” she later told her Christian sister, “but I know Him by suffering.” It was not that her sister had not suffered—yet she had a Bible and many books, and Mimosa, ignorant of the first letter of the Tamil alphabet, had learned Him through suffering.

Who but Christ, the crucified, risen Redeemer, is enough in the place of the fellowship of His suffering?

“I have in my study pictures of Millet, Goethe, Tolstoy, Beethoven, and Jesus Christ in the garden of Gethsemane,” wrote a Chinese student, not yet a Christian, to his friend in Paris. “After seeing a beautiful picture, reading some wonderful poetry, or hearing some exquisite music, my spirit goes out, not to Jesus, but to the pictures of the other famous men. But when my heart is in trouble, these can no longer charm: only my contemplation of Jesus in His agony in the garden seems able to bring me peace.”

No picture reconciles us to God—but Jesus Christ does. “Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:4-6).

—See Amy Carmichael, Mimosa: A True Story

William Wilberforce, the great British politician, abolitionist, and philanthropist, came to a saving faith in Jesus Christ some five years after his election to Parliament. In the winter of 1784, he invited Isaac Milner, his former schoolmaster, to go on holiday with him, his mother, and his sister. Milner was a Christian and they talked for hours about the Christian faith.

In the house where they were staying, Wilberforce saw a copy of Philip Doddridge’s The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul and Milner suggested they read it on the way home. It had a huge influence on him. When he arrived home in February 1785, he had come to an intellectual agreement with key beliefs in the Bible.

That summer, Wilberforce had opportunity to discuss the Greek New Testament for hours with Milner and “intellectual assent became profound conviction”. With “the great change”, his conversion, came contempt for his wealth and the luxury in which he lived. He gave away a lot of his income in subsequent years.

Having wasted his time at University and early years in Parliament—“My own distinction was my darling object,” he later claimed—Wilberforce was ashamed of his earlier life. Yet what did his new Christianity mean for his public life? He went to see John Newton, an evangelical minister and trusted follower of Jesus Christ. Not only did he encourage Wilberforce in his faith, but he also urged him not to cut himself off from public life. “He told me,” wrote Wilberforce, “he always had hopes and confidence that God would sometime bring me to Him. ... When I came away I found my mind in a calm, tranquil state, more humbled, and looking more devoutly up to God.” Two years later Newton wrote: “It is hoped and believed that the Lord has raised you up for the good of His church and for the good of the nation.”

On October 28, 1787, Wilberforce wrote as follows: “God Almighty has placed before me two great Objects, the Suppression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of Manners [morals].” He soon began to labour for the abolition of the slave trade in Parliament, a process that took twenty years (until 1807) in the face of many obstacles. Slavery was not abolished until 1833; the decisive vote of victory came three days before his death.

For four decades of political action, Wilberforce overcame many obstacles—financial interests and other concerns in favour of slavery, slander, the spiritual position of his children, the death of his daughter, and a range of physical handicaps. He endured. Beneficial to this was his group of close friends, dubbed “the Saints”, who together assisted the cause of righteousness. Moreover, he was firmly grounded in the truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and in the joy that comes from His Holy Spirit as our “bounden duty”. He too would face “the dark night of the soul” and disappointments with his own failures, but the hope of victory kept him and restored him to joy again and again.

Prayer was crucial for Wilberforce. “[A]t chosen seasons,” he wrote, “the Christian exercises himself, and when, from this elevated region he descends into the plain below, and mixes in the bustle of life, he still retains the impressions of his retired hours. By these he realizes to himself the unseen world: he accustoms himself to speak and act as in the presence of ‘an innumerable company of angels, and of the spirits of just men made perfect, and of God the Judge of all’” (Heb. 12:22-23).

Christ was central to Wilberforce’s understanding of change at the individual and national level. Reconciliation and a righteous standing with God came first and grounded the Holy Spirit-given enabling for practical holiness. Only faith in Christ could make a man just in God’s sight based on the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. That brought privileges, including a degree of Christ-likeness on this earth. “If we would . . . rejoice in [Christ] as triumphantly as the first Christians did,” Wilberforce wrote, “we must learn, like them to repose our entire trust in Him and to adopt the language of the apostle, ‘God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Jesus Christ. . . . who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.’”

—See John Piper, Amazing Grace in the Life of William Wilberforce