God Doesn’t Waste Anything: Lessons from God’s Smuggler by Brother Andrew
Part One
Get your reader guide for God’s Smuggler here.
Summary
Christy Miller-Bell and Lori Behrens kick off the Well Worn Pages Book Club with their first discussion of God’s Smuggler by Brother Andrew, a Dutch missionary who smuggled Bibles into closed countries and founded Open Doors Ministry. They explore how God used every detail of Andrew’s early life to shape him for a ministry he couldn’t yet imagine.
Key takeaways:
* God begins drawing people to himself long before they are ready to respond.
* Surrender is both gradual and intentional. There is a process, but there is also a moment.
* Saying yes to God means dropping the “yes, but” qualifications.
* We often miss God’s movement because we are looking for something more spectacular.
* Faithfulness in small, ordinary assignments prepares us for larger ones.
* God uses unexpected people to move us forward.
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Who Was Brother Andrew?
Brother Andrew was a Dutch missionary born in Holland in 1928. He became famous for smuggling Bibles into countries where they were banned and went on to found Open Doors Ministry. His autobiography, God’s Smuggler, was first published in 1967. He passed away in 2022 at the age of 94.
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An Adventure-Seeking Kid Shaped by War
Andrew grew up dreaming of being a spy. That hunger for adventure never left him. When Germany invaded Holland in 1942, that restless personality eventually led him into the army.
Before he shipped out, his mother pressed her Bible into his hands.
Christy: “She says, ‘Andrew, will you take this with you?’ And of course I said yes. ‘Will you read it, Andrew?’ And he says, ‘Can you ever say no to your mother? You can do no, but you can’t say no.’ So he took the Bible, put it on the bottom of his duffel bag as far down as it would go, and forgot about it.”
The irony is hard to miss. The man who would later risk his life carrying Bibles across borders stuffed his first one as deep as it would go.
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God Was Always Drawing Him
Even before Andrew came to faith, God was weaving people and circumstances around him. A woman named Thile, a pen pal and believer, pushed him to read the Bible. When he was shot in the ankle and hospitalized, a friend named Jan quietly retrieved that buried Bible and left it at his bedside. The nuns caring for him pointed him toward it. One day he asked a nun why she was so cheerful. She replied, “It’s the love of Christ,” and tapped the little Bible sitting right there.
Lori: “Even in every little moment of his life, God was drawing him into a relationship.”
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The Monkey Story and a Moment He Ignored
One of the most striking scenes comes from his hospital bed. A nun named Sister Patrice told him how natives catch monkeys by placing a pebble inside a coconut with a hole just big enough for a paw. The monkey grabs the pebble but cannot pull his fist back out. He will never let go, so he is easily caught.
She looked at Andrew and asked, “Are you holding on to something, Andrew? Something that’s keeping you from your freedom?” Then she was gone.
Andrew knew exactly what she meant. His response? He got roaring drunk with army survivors to celebrate his 21st birthday.
He was still running.
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The Step of Yes
Surrender came gradually, then all at once. Andrew attended a church service, heard the song “Let My People Go,” and connected it to the monkey story. He dove into Bible study but still hadn’t surrendered. Then one quiet night, lying in bed staring at the ceiling, everything settled.
“All at once, very quietly, I let go of my ego. I turned myself over to God, lock, stock, and adventure. There wasn’t much faith in my prayer. I just said, ‘Lord, if you will show me the way, I will follow you. Amen.’ It was as simple as that.”
But the surrender kept going. Later, walking by a canal, he prayed through every excuse he had been clinging to.
“My yes to God had always been a yes, but. Yes, but I’m not educated. Yes, but I’m lame. And with the next breath, I did say yes. I said it in a brand new way without qualification.”
He called it the step of yes. When he stood up and walked forward, God healed his injured ankle.
Christy: “A pastor friend of mine used to say, ‘Put your yes on the table.’ Obedience is not you doing something. It’s you being willing to do the thing and letting God work.”
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Don’t Miss the Small Things
After surrendering his life to God, Andrew expected something grand. He took a job at a chocolate factory and dreamed the night before that coworkers would crowd around him, recognize he had something different, and kneel in repentance together. That is not what happened.
What did happen was quieter and more lasting. He met his future wife there. He led his first person to salvation there. He learned how to witness without making a show of it. That low-profile skill turned out to be essential for smuggling Bibles across hostile borders later on.
Lori: “Had he been seeking the grand thing and not gone to the chocolate factory, think of what he would have missed in the training God would use.”
This is the pattern throughout Andrew’s story. A magazine article about a youth rally in Warsaw caught his eye and launched his international ministry. An ordinary man named Karl De Graff taught him to drive when he didn’t even know he needed to learn. Small people in small towns doing quiet, faithful work made everything else possible.
As one mentor told Andrew: “Time and place are our own limitations, Andy. We mustn’t impose them upon God.”
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Next week, Christy and Lori ask: would you have the courage to follow God when all the evidence says no? Subscribe and share our podcast at wellwornpages.substack.com.
“Stand by the roads and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” — Jeremiah 6:16
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