God's Faithfulness

Today in our office devotions (which we have every day with a different staff member leading each time) we watched a video about a Russian man who was severely persecuted for being a Christian while he was in the Russian army. I couldn't get the exact date, but I believe it must have been shortly before the fall of communism. While these things don't happen very much right now--an hopefully not at all, but...--being in the army here in Ukraine or Russia (it's mandatory for a couple of years) is usually not a fun time for the young men, esp. the Christian young men.

This man was beaten and imprisoned for 3 months in a tiny windowless cell. Among other things. Then they took him out and stuck him in the back of a truck which had two gas tanks. It was the middle of December in Siberia. Bitterly cold. They drove him way out into the middle of nowhere until the tank of gas was gone (in the far east there is a lot of middle of nowhere) and dropped him off there, telling him that if he believed in God he could call on his God to help him now! He had no matches and was not dressed above basic winter wear. Eventually he was able to build a shelter and warm up a little there. He prayed and prayed and God showed him some animal tracks and gave him an idea about how to set a trap for them. He desperately needed the fur to keeps his toes and fingers from freezing. He caught a number of the animal in his trap and used them to beef up his clothing so he wouldn't freeze. He later found out that these animals (I'm not sure what they were because it was all in Russian) were the most rare and expensive ones in that area! During his time there he caught over 300 of them! Bit by bit he was able to make his way back to civilization finding hunter's huts on the way that had provisions in them that he was able to eat a little from.
He eventually, after 7 and a half months, made it back to Khabarovsk and found the officers that had dropped him off there. They were of course terrified to see him and played it off that it had just been a joke and they had intended to go back to get him, but of course he knew this wasn't true since he stayed in the same place for several weeks and no one ever came back. He ended up selling the 300 furs that he had and making a small fortune off of them.

This man underwent a terrible year or two as a young man (probably between 18 and 20), but he stayed true to God and God also stayed true to him. Think of the delight God must have had in showing him these animals and helping him catch them, the most rare fur in that region!

God truly doesn't promise that it will be easy, but He does promise He will always be there with us.