Corrie Ten Boom's Story: "A Living Sacrifice"

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship” (Romans 12:1, NIV).

One Sunday in Copenhagen, Corrie ten Boom, eighty, spoke from Romans 12:1-2, urging her audience to present their bodies to Christ as living sacrifices. After church two young nurses invited her to their apartment for lunch, and Corrie went with them – only to discover they lived on the tenth floor, and there was no elevator.

She didn’t think she could mount the stairs, but as the nurses were so eager for her visit she decided to try. By the fifth floor, Corrie’s heart was pounding, her breath coming in gulps, her legs buckling. She collapsed in a chair on the landing thinking she could go no further, and she complained bitterly to the Lord. Looking upward, the stairs seemed to ascend to infinity, and Corrie wondered if she might die en route. “Perhaps I am leaving earth to go to heaven,” she thought.

But the Lord seemed to whisper that a special blessing awaited her on the tenth floor, so she bravely pressed on, one nurse in front of her and another following.

Finally reaching the apartment, Corrie found there the parents of one of the girls. She soon discovered that neither parent was a Christian, but both were eager to hear the Gospel. Opening her Bible, Corrie carefully explained the plan of salvation. “I have traveled in more than sixty countries and have never found anyone who said there were sorry they had given their hearts to Jesus,” she said. “You will not be sorry, either.”

That day both prayed for Christ to enter their lives.

On her way down the steps, Corrie said, “Thank you, Lord, for making me walk up all these steps. And next time, Lord, help Corrie ten Boom listen to her own sermon about being willing to go anywhere you tell me to go – even up ten flights of stairs”*

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

*Quote from Robert J. Morgan, From this Verse (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, Inc., 1998), October 16.