The path down which God led my wife and me here in Brazil was not dissimilar from the road I had taken years earlier in Germany, when I gave up my career in business to work in factories and mines. As previously mentioned, the resulting first-hand experience of the workers’ lifestyle enabled me to serve the congregation in Essen with a greater understanding of congregants’ concerns than if I had only been a businessman.
God’s path for us in Brazil served a similar purpose, as we would likely not have been very successful in understanding and supporting the settler-heavy communities without being settlers ourselves. In fact, people would probably have said, “He can’t understand us,” or “That’s easy for him to say, but if he were the one working all day among tall corn or sugar cane—and in this heat—he would speak differently.” We had to become the same as our colonist brothers and sisters, suffering alongside them, in order to understand them in their struggles and to empathize with them. We did this work for many years.
Could a woman from the city really understand, for instance, what a settler feels while milking when a cow hits her in the face with a dirty tail, or when it escapes, or when it gives a kick and knocks over the milk or injures her? Life in the jungle entails many such experiences. Looking back today, I thank God for His wonderful guidance in allowing us to share them as well. Everything the Lord does is good.
I am strongly in favor of future preachers learning a secular profession before beginning to work in God’s Kingdom. If nothing else, it is an opportunity to demonstrate diligence and expertise, thereby showing that they can become capable preachers.
As Jesus says in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:15), “he gave…to each according to his own ability.” The wider and deeper a riverbed is, the more water can flow through it. Similarly, servants of God are the channels through which God’s blessings, the water of life, flow to other people. For God to best use His servants, their natural abilities need to be refined, for instance through a good education. Provided they are purified from the sinful self and are entirely dedicated to God, people who have developed their skills through education or training are often of greater use to God than people who have not done so.
That is one reason why God allowed Moses to be pulled out of the water by Pharaoh’s daughter and to be brought to the royal court to be instructed there “in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” and thus to become a man who “was mighty in words and deeds” (Acts 7:22). This education enabled him to lead the people of Israel later on.
We see the same dynamics at work in the case of Joseph, who was unjustly sold to Egypt by his brothers. In Egypt, he came into the house of Potiphar, a royal minister, where he eventually became his secretary and deputy. In this position, he got to know Egypt and its people, language, and government—all things that would be necessary for him to become a ruler in Egypt when God decided the time was right. His time in prison was educational, too, in that it taught him to empathize with people in similar circumstances.
Just as Moses and Joseph needed practical preparation in order to be able to carry out their divine missions, those who want to enter the ministry today need to prepare as well. This can begin with how parents raise their children, but it also includes the education the children pursue themselves, following in the footsteps of men like Moses and Joseph or even Paul, who studied at Gamaliel’s feet to earn that era’s equivalent of a university degree.
Nonetheless, despite all the wisdom and education Moses had, it took him 40 years in the desert to grow beyond his sinful self and reliance on his own skills. Joseph needed 13 years to achieve the same; for Paul, it was around 17 years. Only after completing this lesson could God use them for the service to which they were called.
This is reflected in the answer Jesus gave when His disciples asked who was the greatest in the kingdom of heaven: “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:1–4). On another occasion, the Lord said, “What is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15).
During our years of service in South America—with the help of the Lord, with much prayer, and through the power of the Holy Spirit—we tried to spread the teachings of the Lord and the Church of God through assemblies, congregations, camp meetings, pastors’ meetings, Bible schools, and Bible courses. One of our priorities was to share Biblical truths, to the extent allowed by God’s grace, with the people working for God’s Kingdom alongside us. We continue to follow this approach, which we had previously applied in Germany and other European countries.
Thanks to God’s grace, our work was not in vain. Our path was certainly not easy, and the many blessings were joined by the many battles all messengers of God can expect to encounter, but our attitude and resolve never wavered from the time we left Germany in 1936.
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