Richard Wurmbrand wrote a book called, “With God in Solitary Confinement,” which describes how Christ ministered to him while he endured three years of solitary confinement in a prison cell.

I haven’t read the book, but I came across this staggering quote from it today…

And what if I am tortured? Christ saved a robber while He was on the cross. My brethren to my right and left have sometimes brought their torturers to Christ. A Communist officer, beating a Christian prisoner with a rubber truncheon, put his stick aside and asked, ‘What is it about you? How is it that your face is shining? You have something like a halo around your head. How can you look at me so lovingly? I would never love a man who jailed and beat me. How is that you can obey the foolish commandment of your Christ to love your enemy?’

The Christian answered, ‘I am not obeying a commandment. It is not hat I love you only because Jesus orders me to. Jesus has given me a new heart and a new character. If I wanted to hate you, I would no longer be able to do so. A nightingale cannot sound like a crow, because it is a nightingale and not a crow. So a Christian can only love.’

That rubber truncheon has remained put aside forever.

A new heart… that’s no fluffy thought.  It’s a world-shaking type of force, and it appears to be available to us all, if we are open to the Heart Re-Maker.