“When You were on earth, You made blind eyes see,” Brother Andrew prayed in 1957. “Now, I pray, make seeing eyes blind.” Then he drove up to the Yugoslavian border with a car full of Bibles. At the time, the Communist country didn’t allow any printed materials to be brought in, so Andrew was understandably nervous as the seemingly-friendly guards poked around his car.

A soldier looked through Andrew’s suitcase, uncovering some Christian tracts. “How was God going to handle this situation?” Andrew wondered. A few minutes later, the guards waved him through and Brother Andrew entered “closed” Yugoslavia — with a carload of illegal Bibles and tracts.

These days it seems like everyone has a strategy for the current state of national (and international) affairs. We pass around ideas for preserving our rights or standing up for what we believe in. We share lessons learned from people who made a difference in other times and places.

In an earlier time — that may not have been as different as we think — Brother Andrew had a plan, too. A plan best summarized by the old hymn, “Trust and Obey.” For Brother Andrew, the best course of action was to do whatever God asked him to do, even if it didn’t make sense. Even if it meant learning to drive.

Learning to trust

Andrew was an unlikely convert. As a child he would slip out of church to play outside, and he did everything he could to avoid the Whetstras, his outspoken Christian neighbors. After WWII he fought in the East Indies as soon as he was old enough to enlist, then returned from battle injured and guilt-ridden.

But when he surrendered his life to Christ, Andrew changed. He spent hours reading his Bible and attending church services, and soon he traveled to Scotland for missionary training.

After Andrew’s return to Holland from training, a prayer group host told Andrew that he believed God wanted him to learn to drive. This was Holland, Andrew reasoned. He could walk or bike for miles, or ride a train whenever he needed to go farther. Automobiles were a rarity in his small town during the 1950s. Why would he ever need to drive?

But his friend refused to listen to Andrew’s objections. “That’s the excitement in obedience,” he reminded Andrew. “Finding out later what God had in mind.” The man coached Andrew until he got his license.

Andrew’s life mission

During his missionary training days, Andrew had attended a Communist youth conference in Poland. While he was there, Andrew slipped away from the crowd to find churches.

Those first of many church visits opened Andrew’s eyes to the loneliness felt by Christian believers under restrictive governments. The fire was lit. Andrew couldn’t wait to travel again.

A visa for Yugoslavia came next, and Andrew’s childhood neighbors, the Whetstras, gave him their car for his travels. Andrew, of course, was already a licensed driver.

Brother Andrew began making trips into other Communist countries, carrying Bibles — sometimes without even hiding them — to churches trying to survive under oppressive governments. Again and again, God prevented border guards from finding his forbidden Bibles. And again and again, Andrew met Christians who had sacrificed for Christ. There was a prominent professor forced to resign, a pastor who had no Bible of his own, believers who had been imprisoned and tortured, and even a little girl expelled from school for praying before lunch.

One couple knew they would likely lose their farm due to unreasonably high production quotas. Andrew questioned why they stayed when things were going so badly. “We stay because,” the man paused, “because if we go, who will be left to pray?”

Thimbleful of willingness

Years later, Andrew spoke with a former KGB officer and offered him a copy of Andrew’s story, God’s Smuggler. “Thanks, but don’t bother,” he said. “God’s Smuggler was required reading at the KGB. Just about every agent had a copy. We knew what you were doing.”

Then how did it work? Andrew’s friends wondered. “I believe the real answer is that the KGB could not stop us,” he told them. “Literally could not. God made seeing eyes blind, hearing ears deaf, so His isolated people could receive encouragement.”

Andrew, his wife Corrie, and their little growing family lived in Andrew’s hometown in Holland. When Andrew realized they needed to print their own pocket-sized Bible in the Russian language, they had no idea where they huge sum of money would come from.

Andrew and Corrie agonized and prayed over the problem, finally coming to the conclusion that God was leading them to sell their beloved little house to raise the funds. They put their house on the market, but despite the post-WWII demand for housing, no one came to look at their house for several days.

The Dutch Bible Society asked Andrew for a meeting, where they informed him that they had decided to fund the Russian Bible printing upfront as long as Andrew bought the Bibles from them at half-cost, whenever he needed them. Would that work, they wondered?

“I could scarcely believe what I had heard,” Andrew wrote. He and Corrie wouldn’t need to sell their house after all. “I could hardly wait to tell Corrie what God had done with the thimbleful of willingness we had offered him.”

Indeed. And what might God choose to do with ours?

*all quotations taken from God’s Smuggler, by Brother Andrew

Image credit (Brother Andrew with car): Open Doors