Beeson Podcast, Episode #692 Nik & Ruth Ripken Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I am your host, Doug Sweeney and I am joined today by Nik and Ruth Ripken who just spoke during one of our Global Voices events. The Ripken’s have interviewed more than 600 believers in persecution in more than 72 countries. Sitting at the feet of these gospel witnesses, they have learned from the suffering church how to thrive amidst suffering. They’ve also created resources as gifts from the church to the church, including articles, books, a music cd, a documentary, workshops, other tools that allow the church and persecution to teach the church in the west about its biblical heritage of both crucifixion and resurrection. Thank you, Ripken’s, for being on the podcast today. >>Nik Ripken: Oh, it’s our joy. >>Ruth Ripken: Thank you. >>Doug Sweeney: So, some of our listeners will know about you already. Others maybe won’t. So, why don’t I begin with an introductory question. Would you tell us just a little bit about how you came to know the Lord and how you got involved in ministry to begin with? >>Nik Ripken: Well, I’ll say my one statement and then you can take it from there. >>Ruth Ripken: Sounds good. >>Nik Ripken: Ruth and I are both PKs. She’s a pastor’s kid and I’m a pagan’s kid. >>Doug Sweeney: Okay, different kinds of PKs. >>Nik Ripken: So, I come with a heart for people, and she does too, but I just know what it’s like to be lost and no one looking for me. And from an early age, well she can take it from there. >>Ruth Ripken: Yeah. From a very early age as a pastor’s daughter, I knew about Jesus. I loved Jesus. But the really neat thing is my parents’ loved missions and loved the nations and we had missionaries in our home. My dad would lay a map of the world on the breakfast table, and we’d talk about different places. So, I knew about the world. And as a nine-year-old, when I met a missionary from China, I said God, that’s what I want to do, and I want to do it with you. I want to go to the world. And so, that was part of my journey. Always sharing with the church, always sharing with people in my school that I was going, and I always thought I was going to Africa. And so, that was it. As a junior in college, I got to go to Africa for the first time and I fell in love with Africa. >>Nik Ripken: I raised the money. >>Ruth Ripken: He did. And so, then when I came back, that’s when Nik and I began to think about we might want to do this together. >>Doug Sweeney: I think we skipped over how you met to begin with. >>Ruth Ripken: Oh well, we met at college. >>Nik Ripken: I and a friend of mine, I’m still getting over my pagan background, but for freshman orientation, I was a sophomore, we set up a table to invite people to campus ministry. But we only talked to the girls that walked by. And so, when she walked down the hallway, this beautiful, young, freshman and as she came and I invited her to campus ministry events and she walked away, I said I’m going to marry that girl. And my friend just blew it off and laughed at me and said that’s what you say about a lot of the pretty girls. But I actually followed her upstairs where she was going for freshman orientation. But it’s like her dad had eyes in the back of his head and he’s this big intimidating guy and he turned around and stared at me and I just thought, well they’ll be going home soon. I’ll pursue this later. >>Doug Sweeney: Alright, so you met at college, you started really to feel like the Lord was moving you in the direction of cross-cultural ministry. Is that too specific, too early in your story? >>Ruth Ripken: No. That’s totally true. >>Doug Sweeney: Alright. And how did you get from here to actually working in ministry cross culturally? >>Nik Ripken: Well, we had, both of us, I was, I came to Christ in a cheese factory. My dad came and got me off a baseball field and he said to me, son, I’ve got good news and bad news. My dad’s a rough guy, not a Christian. I said, “What’s the good news?” He said, “The job you applied for at the cheese factory, you got so you’ll be able to have enough money to go your first semester of college.” I said, “What’s the bad news?” He said, “You start tonight.” I said, “I have 11 weeks of high school left.” He said, “Don’t be stupid, I know that.” So, I worked from seven to three thirty in the morning, went to school every day, and in August, I was working, they had advanced me where I’m working by myself in the middle of the night doing what I do, and I heard a voice that said. “Nik, are you tired of running from me? Are you ready to follow me?” And I jumped around because I thought somebody snuck up on me, scared me to death, and no one there. That happened a second time. I turned quickly. The third time, I really recognized the voice and the presence of God, and I’d had those vacation Bible school and some Sunday school stories and I just knelt in that factory, gave my life to Jesus, and the next day went home and told my parents. And I went through two pastors that told me I wasn’t a Christian because God doesn’t speak to people direct. Didn’t bother me. I knew what happened in that factory. Found a young pastor that started mentoring me and told me to read one verse in the Old Testament, one chapter from the Old Testament, one chapter from the New Testament. And I asked him, what’s an Old Testament, what’s a New Testament. He introduced me to Genesis and Mathew. I thought I’d failed him because I read them in one setting. But when I got to the Great Commission, I learned later on where God commanded us to go to all the world. I’d been a Christian for a matter of weeks, and I said, wow, cool. You mean I can go and get out of rural Kentucky and go anywhere I want to go? But I’m like Ruth, I had no mechanism until I met her in college my sophomore year. And a surgeon from Thailand came and did devotions and I finally could figure out the mechanism, but he sort of was strange. He was a surgeon in Thailand. His name was Dr Butcher. >>Doug Sweeney: Oh, my. >>Nik Ripken: Oh, yeah. >>Doug Sweeney: That’s true? >>Nik Ripken: That’s true. But I talked to him, and I said, “You mean I can go anywhere in the world and you Baptist will pay me?” He said, “I’ve never been asked a question like that.” And he said, “The short answer is yes.” I said, I’m ready.” He said, “No you’re not. And he mentored me but set my feet on the path to where I knew there was a direction I needed to work toward. >>Doug Sweeney: Alright. Did it take any persuading one way or the other to sort of develop this relationship and do this together? >>Nik Ripken: Her parents thought that she had brought home the worse hillbilly in the light of her family and- >>Doug Sweeney: Were they right about that? >>Nik Ripken: They were right but they were very, very aloof. And we went in to ask for, I went in to ask her parents if I could marry her. They didn’t acknowledge that I was in the room. >>Ruth Ripken: No, but they looked at me and my dad said, “Ruth, what about that call that God put on your heart as a nine-year-old? What are you going to do about it?” And I said, “Dad, that’s what we’re heading toward, and we want to do it together.” And my dad then said probably the most sweet thing he could say. He said, “If you’re going to obey God, I bless this marriage.” >>Doug Sweeney: Oh, wonderful. Alright, so, a lot of people have read your book, The Insanity of God, seen the movie about your ministry and so on. But again, just because we’re introducing you two to some new folks, can you just give us a thumbnail sketch of the overall arch of the ministry that you were involved in after that time? >>Nik Ripken: Well, in Somalia, we were so far in over our heads in the civil war and famine, watching 150 believers out of 10 million Muslims trying to live out their faith. And by the time that we got kicked out seven years later, only four of them were left alive. I came back to the states, we came back to the states, we went to churches, we went to our seminaries, we went to our college, we went to organizations that report on persecution, we went to the US government, a special council on that. They’ve got a thing that they do in congress that monitors human rights and persecution. Basically, our question is how you make Christ known, how you plant house groups in a place where being our friend could get you killed. And we found no answer. No answer. >>Doug Sweeney: So, what did you do? >>Nik Ripken: So, we muddled through, watched all these believers killed. They killed four of my best friends in one day, but we’re feeding 50 thousand people a day, we’re burying around 20 kids a day, doing mobile medical clinics, doing freshwater wells, we see refuges, just trying to keep people alive. And God gave me a vision in the second year of that because I kept asking our mission board and they finally, one of the guys that mentored us the most said, Nik, Ruth, we’ve never done what you’re doing. Figure it out. Well that freed me. But since we went everywhere we could in the western world, when we got kicked out of Somalia in two months, we got kicked out of Somalia. Our 16-year-old son died eight days after his birthday on Easter Sunday morning from an asthma attack. Two months to that, Ruth’s mother died of cancer she’d been fighting a long time. And so, we came home, had to do some healing, put our oldest son in this college. He came to Samford. He’s now a mistral physicist with NASA. And so, we just revisited what God had commanded us to do when we were working 80 hours in Somalia, is to develop the cyber resources for those of us who work in places like that. And the only place we knew where to go was to try and get the believers in persecution, no one knew how to do that. We didn’t know how to do that. But we spent full time, we had to go on leave of absence from our job, so for the next four years and part of 10 years, we went throughout the communist world, the Hindu world, the [inaudible 00:10:52] world, atheist world, working our way back to Islam, setting at the feet of believers and say listen, we’ve watched people like us get believers killed in environments like Somalia. Please, mentor us. And they did. >>Ruth Ripken: And I think the beauty of that was we realized we didn’t know, and we got to go to the source of people who really did know and that didn’t realize how much they knew. But they were willing to help us. >>Nik Ripken: And we’re not just asking them for salvation and what or how they were treated. We want to hear their first memories, especially all of them, but who mom and dad is, educational things. We want to know, like, when is the first time you heard of a Bible, what were you told, what did you think first time you heard Jesus’ name, what did you think, what did you feel? And then you see all the intercedence of their faith leads up to the persecution event. And then we want to know how did you do or how did your house group do in China, and then did you grow, did you fall back, did you deny like the disciples? And when Judas showed up, did you stay in that oh, I can’t do this mindset? Or did you focus on the resurrection rather than oh Judas and go forward into church planting. And believers in persecution just biblically made the Bible alive for us. And so, from experience for 37 years overseas and believers in persecution, we say to churches all the time because they don’t believe this, but everything that God has ever done in the Bible, he’s still doing. He hasn’t rested. He hasn’t ceased. He’s still the God of miracles of changed lives and he can do the impossible. >>Doug Sweeney: That’s right. Just because you don’t see it right now doesn’t mean he’s not doing it somewhere. >>Nik Ripken: Or maybe, maybe because you don’t go where he’s doing it. >>Doug Sweeney: Yep. >>Ruth Ripken: That’s so true. >>Doug Sweeney: Aright, so I want to ask you more about what you’ve learned from persecuted Christians over the years, but before I do, maybe Ruth, I can ask you this one. I’m thinking about students and maybe even perspective students, Christian young people thinking about a college or a seminary they feel like they Lord’s moving them into missions somehow but they’re not exactly sure how this works. Can I ask you just a pragmatic question about were you with the International Misson Board? I mean, we start listening to you talk about how the Lord’s used you and you’re all over the world with all kinds of different people, but just practically, how does that work? How would a young person who is interested in getting involved in the kind of ministry you’ve been doing start doing it? >>Nik Ripken: Well, we’re so old, we started out with- >>Ruth Ripken: We were in the days of the Foreign Mission Board, but I think that’s something that young people today have so many more opportunities and options than we had. And so, I think if you are a student and you really have, you just feel like God may be touching your heart, find internationals where you live. Get to know them. See what stirs in your heart. Who are those people that all of a sudden, God’s giving you an affinity for? Find opportunities to go overseas and get a taste of what is it like to get on an airplane and go to a new culture? Do some things that put you in situations that maybe make you a little uncomfortable and see what God does. And then begin to talk to people. Find these people like Dr Buther who can say yeah, this is an avenue for you. For us, for me, I didn’t have as many options as they have, but I think it’s so vital. Don’t push that feeling that you have down and say, oh, that’s not anything I’m interested in. But explore, see what God wants. And I think one of the things you’ll want to do as you’re in college and university, get some skills, find some things that you can do that when you do get on the other side of the world or wherever, you have some skills and some abilities that are vital for the people that you’re going to serve. >>Doug Sweeney: And you’re talking about kind of mundane practical, like, right? >>Ruth Ripken: Yeah. >>Doug Sweeney: You’re talking about nursing skills. >>Ruth Ripken: Desperately need it. Nurses, physical therapists, everything that you can do on this side of the globe is needed. And so, put your life into the hands of the Lord and see all the pieces he’ll weave together. >>Nik Ripken: Our culture raises up and gets an A+ for raising up pastor teachers. And I would give us, at best, a D- for raising up evangelist and church planters. We don’t do it. I don’t want to ruin podcasts. You can edit this out if you want to, but I think the Mormons are right. Everybody does a mission trip. And I think it should be in the DNA of those who believe in the Great Commission that everybody goes. Just get that mindset, well there it is, but you leave your community. And we’ve been in airports in Utah when their young missionaries come back and they’re clapping, the body is there, their family is there. That’s what they do, they do so well. What we ask churches to do, they ask us how to change the DNA and for years, we could get any to do it. Now many are doing it. Say that when you dedicate your children, most of us do, well just wretch it up, but now you got to talk to parents because some parents are not going to agree with this. You get them the Bible in front of the congregation. You give them a passport application. You set them up a savings account. The church puts three, four, five hundred dollars in it. And Sunday school teachers, family members can put money in that. Special days, birthdays, Christmas, whatever. So, when that child is 12, 13, 14 years of age, they have their first mission trip paid for. But you got to say to parents, we will do everything we can to get your child cross culturally and if that’s not what you’re about, you need to find a different church. >>Doug Sweeney: Wow, that’s a great idea. >>Nik Ripken: It works. >>Doug Sweeney: Alright. So, now let’s get to learning a little bit about some of the things you have learned yourselves from persecuted brothers and sisters around the world. This has got to be a terrible difficult question for you to answer briefly because it’s been your whole life, basically. But what are some of the things you’ve learned about being a disciple, being a cross cultural minister, being just a good brother and sister in the Lord, from the people that have been your main teachers over the years? >>Nik Ripken: Well, it’s not a sermon. But what pops in my head is the three things that they just spiritually beat into us, and one is in the Bible, persecution is normal. And there’s a reason why God had Joseph in Pharaoh’s prison. And our emotions and our tender hearts does everything they can to get Joseph out of Pharaoh’s prison by bringing financial sanctions, military threats or whatever, and we spring and we’re successful and we get Joseph out of prison and two months later, Pharah has a dream. And there’s nobody there to interpret his dream and it leads to the death of the Egyptians and the Jews in Egypt. We have a hard time believing, as the persecuted church teaches us, that persecution in the Bible is normal. And secondly, this is another hard one, is that the number one cause of persecution is people coming to Jesus. Where there’s a broad witness, there’s going to be a broad harvest, and there’s going to be an equally intense persecution. Where there’s little witness, there’s little harvest. And we’re in a culture where 93 percent of the people we baptize are born in the church. Satan’s not going to wake up if he’s shut us up. And so, again, we’re not letting the persecutors off the hook, but what we are saying is that believers in persecution are suffering in chains because they did two things. They came to Jesus, and they give Him away. Neighbors, friends, colleagues at work and school. So, the way that we and our colleagues identify with believers in persecution is by giving our lives to Christ and witnessing. The dividing line between almost no persecution and massive persecution is witness. It’s not the government. It’s not a bill of rights. It’s not our magna carta. It’s witness. And where there’s little witness, there’s almost no persecution. So, the absence of persecution is not something to brag about. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. So, Ruth, one thing I think about when I read Voice of the Marters and think about and pray about persecuted brothers and sisters in other parts of the world is mothers with children. And I don’t want this to sound funny, I care about brothers just as much as I care about sisters. But often times, your heart breaks when you see moms and little ones suffering in these ways for the Lord. Surely your heart has broken over the years. What have you learned from your experience working with, particularly women, who are young enough to have little ones where they go and their efforts to be clear, faithful, gospel witnesses, how much of it is driven you to despair? How much of it has just been an inspiration to you watching them, listening to them? What have you learned from your experience with that? >>Ruth Ripken: I think the first thing is the inspiration. These women and we could talk about that up until just recently, it was mostly men who were coming to faith, and partly because men can read- >>Nik Ripken: In Islam. >>Ruth Ripken: In Islam, but even in other parts of the world. But we’ve also seen bold women who came to faith in very dramatic ways, as was Nik was talking about, through dreams and vision, through just someone telling them a story from the Bible, and they began to question. We’ve challenge men across the globe to witness to their wives because that’s not part of their DNA to do that in most of their cultures. It’s the woman’s job to do these things and the men to do these things. But I think, as you were talking, I was thinking about a young mother who was put in a prison. She had her baby while she was in prison, but she refused to deny Jesus. And because of that, she stayed in prison for a long time and finally they released her. >>Nik Ripken: The baby spent its first six months in prison. >>Ruth Ripken: And yes, that is an inspiration to me that she didn’t deny her faith. And we know of a man who gave up a lot of his jobs when we challenged him that in their people group, there were lots of men believing but no women. And he has brought his wife to Christ but never thought, I could be discipling my wife to witness to all these other women. He quit some of his jobs, went home, asked her to forgive him and then he began to mentor her. And now, in that county, there are almost equal numbers of men and women who are followers of Christ. So, that’s a big challenge and I think the thing that I’ve had, I’ve struggled with, but I’ve clung to is that a believer reminded me in one of these countries, there’s no such thing as a free church and a persecuted church. There’s just the church. And if we realize that we’re always free and we’re always persecuted, and this believer reminded me of a picture that I hope your listeners really grasp as I did, he said you know, there’s things on your body you see every day. Your eyes, your ears, your face, your arms, your legs. He said, there’s parts of your body you’ll probably never see. Your kidneys, your liver, your heart. And he listed a lot of those organs and things inside. And he said that’s what the persecuted church is. We’re the part of the body that you’ll probably never see. But he said we’re so vital to you. And I think if the church grasps how vital they are, they’re gong to pray harder, they’re going to be willing to go, they’re going to be willing to send their sons and their daughters, and they’re going to get excited about what’s happening in the church here. And worship will never be the same once you’ve worshiped with believers in persecution. >>Doug Sweeney: You had me thinking about the phrase that Christians have talked about over and over through the centuries, that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the faith of the church, and I imagine there would be some people listening to us now who think of themselves and their own lives as fairly comfortable. And they understand that Jesus teaches in the Bible, those who want to live a godly life in Christ will be persecuted. And suffering really is part of the Christian faith for everybody, but they wonder how come I haven’t suffered much or enough. And then if they’re kind of comfortable westerners, they probably wish that suffering and persecution would just cease everywhere. Maybe you’re making them a little uncomfortable by saying look, this is just a normal biblical part of the Christian life. How do you want us to think about the role of suffering, the role of persecution positively in the life of a disciple and in the building up of the body of Christ around the world. Is it that positive a thing or should we feel bad about it? How should we feel about it? >>Nik Ripken: It’s a mixed bag. You should never blow off the suffering of the body of Christ. But I think what Ruth was saying, when they cry, we cry with them. When they say to us, if your finger is crushed, the rest of your body knows it. But if your finger is crushed and your body feels no pain, it’s because that finger’s not attached to your body. And yet, what Tertullian says, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, where there’s a critical mass of believers emerging and the body of Christ is forming, the blood of the martyrs, they are encouraged by that. They grow through that because they’ve got someone to pray for them. They’ve got someone to take care of their family if they don’t come back. They’ve got someone to go into persecution with. But when you go into what I call pre-Pentecost, before Acts 2, before Acts 4, where believers are scattered, often alone and are prayed, when severe persecution comes before the formation of real bodies of Christ, serious persecution is the death of a church. It keeps it from forming. But if there is a cohesive body and biblically strong, then persecution will bring growth. And I’ve interviewed probably five since, set of security policeman who came to Christ who tortured Christians who loved them in turn. >>Doug Sweeney: Oh, my. >>Nik Ripken: It’s a big deal and then their persecution was tremendous because they were from inside that system. And so, there’s not a one size fit all but Americans and the church has such tender hearts, but what has been devastating is the rescue of we don’t suffer ourselves and so we won’t extract, if we can, believers in persecution. We had one body of Christ come in a north African country where we had 30 some emerging bodies of Christ with pastoral leadership and they extracted to their country 18 of them. We started over. They killed almost everything. And so, what we want to do is the way that we, again, identify with our brothers and sisters in chains is by coming to Christ, sharing Christ with others, but when I come to Christ, this is what believers in persecution have taught us that’s so hard, when I come to Christ and keep Him to myself, share with my family, my colleagues at school or at work, not only am I failing to identify with my brothers and sisters in chains on the[inaudible 00:29:01], identifying with the ones who chained them, the persecutors, because the worse persecution on Earth is to have no access to Jesus. >>Doug Sweeney: A couple more questions. One, we talked before we began to record, about how you’re getting a little bit older these days and just physically, it’s a little bit harder to travel than it used to be and do some of thing that you’ve done that we’ve been talking about during the podcast. And I know some of the people who will be listening to this recording are going to be seniors who feel less mobile than they felt before but are going to want to be involved in serving brothers and sisters around the world doing what they can for the sake of the body of Christ and people being persecuted for their faith. Any advice to people like that? >>Nik Ripken: Yes. Because of physical limitations that brought us off the mission field and they’re getting worse, not better, our ministry has changed from being able to travel the world. We’ve been to 80 countries. There’s quite a few more that we haven’t been to, but are, lost my train of thought momma. >>Ruth Ripken: And we can’t travel. >>Nik Ripken: Yeah, but our advice to the church is one of the things that eastern European leaders who have been decades in prison said the one debt we can never repay the western church is the debt of prayer that they offered on our behalf. But then he got in my face and said, “Don’t you dare give up in freedom what we’ve never given up in persecution, and that is our witness to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.” >>Ruth Ripken: And I think another thing I would challenge anyone, especially those who maybe can’t do as much like us, is find someone that you can bless to go and to be and to do what God’s asked them to do. We have so many young people who desperately want to go, but they need someone to say, I believe in you, I know that God can use you and I’m going to hold onto you and help you and mentor you. And that’s what we need desperately is people to step up and bless those who maybe don’t have parents who are like my mom and dad who said we’re going to bless you if you will be obedient to what God’s called you. But I want to be that blessing to somebody else who will go because we have lots of young people ready to challenge all that we’ve talked about in places of persecution. >>Nik Ripken: Non-believers bless their children to go overseas more than believers because non-believers like my dad will make up this fantastic story how his son, and he told the whole community, I came home, they’re patting me on the back, they’re giving me free food in restaurants, they’re saying we’re proud of you and it’s just like I’d come home from the Marine Corp after, you know, winning World War II or something. And I’d say, dad, what’s going on. He said, well, I told them what you done. I said, what did you tell them? That you were in Somalia, and you shamed the US and military so much with the story of how those people were suffering that you forced them to bring 32 thousand troops into Somalia to save those people. And I could not convince him otherwise. But Christian people, church people know, we only go for one reason and that’s who Jesus is and if they don’t believe that Jesus is worth their lives, the life of their partners, or their children, and their grandchildren, they don’t send. So, it’s about, really at the foundation of all of this is, is Jesus worth it? >>Doug Sweeney: Alright, one last question and this is the question that I ask everybody that I interview on the Beeson Podcast at the very end, and I conclude this way to conclude on a note of edification, encouragement, inspiration for those who are listening to us. What’s the Lord teaching you these days? And I like asking this question the best of veteran ministry people because I want to ask, after all these years walking with God, after all these years studying His word, after all these years serving Him in ministry, is He still teaching you some things? Is He still doing some things in your life and if so, what’s going on? >>Ruth Ripken: One of the things I try to do is each year, read through the Bible and I try to do it through a different translation every year. And this year, as I’m reading, and I don’t know if it’s the translation or if it’s just that I’m more hungry for it, but God’s word has come alive for me and I’m so excited. I’m doing two different studies. I’m finding that He is, He’s worth it and He still wants to work in my heart, and He still wants me to be His child and be committed and to know Him more. There’s a lot more I’ve got to go and so, yeah. >>Nik Ripken: This is a big change for me. Coming back to America has been the hardest move, we’ve moved 38 times. Learned four languages. Never knew that this redneck from rural Kentucky would love to learn languages and really get deep in cultures. But the move back to the states and somebody, a godly man helped us to buy a piece of property and another godly man helped us to build a house, and another godly man financed that house. But then all of a sudden, I find myself in a county that’s 83 percent White, 11 percent Hispanic, and the racism is so deeply imbedded. They’re not angry or mean about it, but there’s not way for them to become multicultural because they have a closed system and they have moved until others can’t move among them and so, there’s a lot of reasons why this has been a hard, hard thing for me. But I’m someone that wants to go, wants to do, wants to help and now I’ve come to a more time of, you know, doing like, podcasts and doing a lot of zoom things with workers around the world. And like Ruth, I’m having to, Ruth has a quiet time with God. I have a loud time. And so, I need to be outside. When I talk to you, I talk to Ruth, I don’t talk to you, she doesn’t come to me and say you haven’t spoken to me today. I say oh, I’ve been talking to you internally all day. Well, that doesn’t work very well. But for me, especially with all these health issues and changes, and not being able to speak in the lives of literally hundreds and hundreds of workers in hard places of all different backgrounds had been a terribly difficult adjustment for me to be still and know that I am God and that this is a different season of life and I am, like one doctor said to me unexpectedly, he said to me, it was a psychiatrist that deals with pain and medicine, and I just, a doctor just to have him meet with me as a favor and he said to me, Nik, Jesus loves you and is proud of you. This is a psychiatrist over all hospitals in our area. He said Jesus is proud of you. What you’re suffering in your flesh is because of your service to Jesus and what my word is for you is for you to suffer with joy whatever God brings for you because the crucifixion of today is preparing you for the resurrection that is to come. And he said, and he put that in my medical report. And that has done so much to witness to me and to let me know that the sufferings of this Earth are temporary, and Paul talked often about that thorn in his flesh. I think I got caught in a thorn bush. But still, people often times when we have done things with them, the two things that they talk about is our relationship and our love for each other and our putting one foot in front of the other and no matter the amount of pain or discomfort, we’re still going to fly and drive and walk and do as much as we can to deepen and extend the kingdom of God through others. >>Doug Sweeney: Wonderful. And as Paul said to the Corinthians, this slight momentary infliction is preparing for us an eternal weight to glory that is beyond all comparison. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for your lives of faithfulness to the Lord. You have been listening to Nik and Ruth Ripken. Check out The Insanity of God, their book and movie about their lives and ministries. Most importantly of all, please suffer joyfully for the Lord and be in prayer for those who are suffering for the Lord all around the world. We love you. We say we’re praying for you and goodbye for now. >>Rob Willis: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our engineer is Rob Willis. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes and Spotify.