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Among My BrothersI was raised meeting with the local church. My parents, originally from Montana, began to meet with the church in Seattle while my father was attending medical school at the University of Washington. After he finished, the family moved to Boise, Idaho, where I spent most of my childhood and adolescence. During our childhood my parents instilled in my twin brother and me a love for God, and by His mercy our hearts stayed soft toward Him. My mother also instilled in us a love for reading and history. Though we both read a lot on our own, academically we were not particularly diligent students. Running and other outdoor hobbies such as fishing, hunting, mountain biking, and backpacking occupied more of our time than studying. It was not until the end of our high school years that we both began to consider the meaning of our human life, especially in relation to God and the Christian life. As college approached, we began to ask the question, “ What should we do with our lives?” When we asked that question we realized that the things occupying our lives, though fun, were, in themselves, not very meaningful. We wanted something more. In 1996 between our junior and senior year of high school, my brother and I had the opportunity to attend a Christian conference for young people arranged by some of the local churches in Poland and other European countries. At this conference our eyes were opened to see God's love for human beings and for His church in particular. Though newly saved, these young people loved the Lord fervently, and genuinely cared for one another. For the first time in our lives, we realized that as believers in Christ, our real family encompasses believers around the entire globe, not in doctrine or ideal, but in reality. Upon seeing this, we realized that we are living on earth for only two things: Christ and His church. Our realization at this conference can be encapsulated by a stanza from one of the hymns that we sang: “How blinded we have been, Shut in with what concerns us While God's house lieth waste-- Lord, break through overturn us... We'll never say, `Another day!' It's time! We'll come and build.” Hymns, #1248 In college our paths began to diverge for the first time. My brother chose to study civil engineering, and I decided to major in Spanish and also study Russian. Eventually this opened the door for me to spend my junior year in Russia studying at St. Petersburg State University. This was the most memorable year of my life. I rented an apartment with several Russian students and another American, all Christians, meeting with the church in St. Petersburg. We called our place the brothers' house. Though I was on the other side of the world from my twin brother, I was still with my brothers. Every morning we would read the Bible and eat breakfast together, and every evening we would have dinner together, finishing the evening off with a cup of tea. One evening as we were drinking tea, we began to share our testimonies of how we became Christians. It was fascinating! One brother, a sophomore from Murmansk, had confessed his sins and prayed to receive the Lord after reading a Christian novel he found on a train. Another received the Lord in the midst of a life of crime, but was only fully recovered from such a life by spending several years in a Ukrainian prison where he met a number of newly converted prisoners. Within our apartment we had six very different stories, ranging from quite complicated to very simple. Yet the Lord had brought us all together. That night I saw, at least in part, how God's multifarious wisdom is made known through the church (Ephesians 3:10). Not only had God brought together such a diverse group of young men, but also He had made us genuine brothers, sons of God, putting in us real love and care for one another. Some have said that the ministry of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee regarding the local church is not practical. I would say that it is not only practical, it is quite enjoyable! This is something worth living for. Jonathan Hoekema | Back to List |
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