Would I continue to love Him?

I (Mike) am reading a book entitled, In God's Underground. It is a biography of Richard Wurmbrand, a Lutheran minister in Romania at the time of the Communist takeover, and details his life in the Communist prisons in Romania from 1948 until his release in 1964. He had undergone starvation, deprivation, disease and horrible torture, yet in all of this he continued to minister to his fellow prisoners and many, even some hardened athiests, had given their lives to the Lord in the midst of this darkness.

At one point, though, Richard Wurmbrand was placed in solitary confinement. It was during this time that he began to do some soul-searching. I would like to share some of his comments from the book:

I was kept in solitary confinement in this cell for the next two years. I had nothing to read and no writing materials; I had only my thoughts for company, and I was not a meditative man, but a soul that had rarely known quiet. I had God. But had I really lived to serve God -- or was it simply my profession?

People expect pastors to be models of wisdom, purity, love, truthfulness; they cannot always be genuinely so, because they are also men; so, in smaller or greater measure, they begin to act the part. As time passes, they can hardly tell how much of their behaviour is play-acting.

I remembered the deep commentary which Savonarola wrote on the fifty-first Psalm, in prison, with his bones so broken that he could sign the self-accusatory paper only with his left hand. He said there were two kinds of Christian: those who sincerely believe in God and those who, just as sincerely, believe that they believe. You can tell them apart by their actions in decisive moments. If a thief, planning to rob a rich man's home, sees a stranger who might be a policeman, he holds back. If, on second thoughts, he breaks in after all, this proves that he does not believe the man to be an agent of the law. Our beliefs are proved by what we do.

Did I believe in God? Now the test had come. I was alone. There was no salary to earn, no golden opinions to consider. God offered me only suffering -- would I continue to love Him?
(In God's Underground pp. 49-50)

Richard Wurmbrand, by his actions, proved that he would continue to love God. He was a light of Jesus' love in a very dark place. This is a question we also should ask ourselves: Even if God offered us nothing else but suffering, would we still love and serve Him? (Phil. 3:10)