The Sufferings of a Reformed Galley Slave

Today, I finished reading The Huguenot Galley-Slave: Being the Autobiography of a French Protestant Condemned to the Galleys for the Sake of His Religion by Jean Marteilhe. I started this book two days ago while vacationing in Arizona. Prompted by my church's sermon series in 1 Peter, I started studying 1 Peter on my own last month. In his commentary The Message of 1 Peter, Edmund Clowney mentions a museum display in the mountains of southern France that refers to "the words of a Reformed Christian galley slave: 'My chains are the chains of Christ's love.'" Motivated to learn more about these Huguenot martyrs, I discovered the aforementioned autobiography, which provided a fascinating and humbling glimpse into the suffering of fellow believers. I set out to better understand the nature of suffering for the faith through the eyes of this galley slave, and I achieved my goal. This galley slave wrote, "…the more we suffer afflictions, the more we remember God." 

Throughout his account, Marteilhe shows a steadfast faith that exceeds any faith that I could imagine in the face of such dire circumstances. As a prisoner of the state for 13 years, half of those serving on a French galley, he never waivered from his conviction as that all his steps were in accordance with God's will, even when he missed an opportunity as a 16-year-old to avoid arrest: "But it was God's will that we should remain in this ignorance, so that our constancy and our faith should be put to trial during thirteen years of the most frightful misery in dungeons and in the galleys, as will be seen in the course of these memoirs."

His account should motivate Christian parents not to neglect our responsibility to instruct our children in the Lord: "We replied, that we placed our whole confidence in God, and that we resigned ourselves to His holy will; that we did not expect any human help and that by God's grace, which we should never cease to implore, we would never deny the Divine and true principles of our holy religion; that he must not believe it was through obstinacy or infatuation that we continued steadfast; that it was, thank God, through a firm conviction of the goodness of our cause, and that our parents had taken all possible care to instruct us in the truth of our religion and the errors of the Roman faith, that we might boldly profess the one, and avoid falling into the dangers of the other." Later in the book, he affirms the role of his parents once more: "…thanks to God and to my parents, I have been brought up and very well instructed in the principles of the reformed religion…"

The behavior of Marteilhe and his fellow Reformed prisoners reminded me of Paul and Silas in prison. While in prison, these Frenchmen "had prayers morning and evening," read sermons, and sang psalms, "so that [their] prison was something like a little church." In fact, their witness reversed the so-called conversions of many recent converts in Hayre-de-Grice to Roman Catholicism, who, after visiting these prisoners, recognized their own hypocrisy and, convicted by the actions and attitudes of the prisoners, came to a true faith in Christ.

If these men could face and endure bastinados (lashings to the brink of death), starvation, long marches carrying their 150-lb chains, endless days chained to a bench in a galley, and endless abuse and deceitful neglect by their captors, and yet affirm God's power, grace, and mercy on their behalf, what prevents me from giving all of myself for the sake of Christ, no matter what nature of persecution may follow? As Marteilhe so aptly states, "for when I consider that Jesus Christ, his apostles, and so many faithful Christians have been persecuted, according to the prophecy of their divine Saviour, I cannot but believe myself to be in the right road to salvation, since I am persecuted as they were."

Our "Faith" Story

This post will be a lot longer than usual. Today, Sarah and I gave a five-minute "testimony" in church about the priorities in our home over the past 17 years. The text of that speech is below in its entirety.

Recently, during a dinner table conversation, we were reflecting on our transition from the innocence of youth to a more complete awareness of the responsibilities of adulthood. For us, this happened around the age of thirty, coincidentally with the arrival of our second child. In many ways, this eye-opening transition was a realization of our personal call to make our entire lives an act of worship of our Creator. Today, we would like to share our passion for a lifestyle of worship in our home.

We have attended this church since 1994. We have two high schoolers, Luke and Leah. Our story is one of God’s faithfulness and our human, imperfect efforts to be obedient to His Word.

You may recognize me as the guy who sometimes plays the piano or keyboard on Sunday mornings. You may be thinking, “We can’t ‘do’ worship in the home – I don’t have the musical skills.” Before you tune out (pun intended), we want to be clear: worship is not just singing songs of praise. While we certainly can and should worship God using His wonderful gift of music, this is only one element among many facets of a lifestyle of worship.

Jesus commands us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30) He labeled this as the most important commandment. How do we do this? In our experience, parenthood confronted us with the practical challenge of creating an environment where worship of God is more than an ideal, where we truly love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

A key component of our worship at home during the preschool years was turning off the TV and memorizing scripture instead. You might be thinking, “Wait a minute! I thought you were talking about passionate worship in the home, not teaching and training children. Instead, you speak of turning off the TV and memorizing scripture.” Remember the most important commandment? Jesus was quoting the writings of Moses, inspired by God. In Deuteronomy, where God commands us to love Him with all our heart, soul, and strength, the very next verse commands us to keep His commandments in our hearts. We are to impress them on our children, to talk about them when we sit at home and when we walk along the road, when we lie down and when we get up. We are to write them on the door frames of our houses and on our gates. So, our worship is expressed in our keeping and memorizing of His commandments.

One thing we learned is that you cannot start too soon. When Luke was four and Leah was two, we thought we were drilling him on a particular verse when she chimed in with her cute two-year-old voice. We soon discovered that, if we fill a child’s mind with scripture early, he will be better equipped to filter the trash that this world will try to dump into his mind. Then, as he matures, he will be able worship God with all of his thoughts.

In our home, worship included a lot of planned family time focused on teaching our kids some scriptural principle. Over the years, the how and what have varied as our kids have grown, but the purpose has been the same: fulfilling our commission as parents to talk about these things when we sit at home, when we lie down, and when we rise up. We pray together, we read the Bible together, we read good books aloud together, and we sing together. Two very important decisions we made along the way included observing the Sabbath in our home and teaching the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

Dads, my commitment to this was important. I remember realizing as a young father that I needed to figure out how to switch gears from my current R&D project to my family worship leader responsibility during my 10-minute drive home. But, how and when was I going to choose the right devotional, plan the scripture memory program, or decide on the next family worship activity? In our case, this is where the power of teamwork between husband and wife plays a big role.

Moms, I worked hard to become my husband’s helper. I was careful not to usurp his role. I didn’t do his job, but I made it easy for him to succeed. I left that devotional book on his chair at the dinner table. I took care of the laminating for those shower verses. I worked with the kids to memorize and review their scripture verses and their catechism answers.

If you feel challenged but ill equipped, rest assured that we did not start this process with a host of programs and activities in place. Rather than being overwhelmed with the concept of making our home a place of worship 24/7, we took one step at a time. Every 6 to 12 months, we would merely add one new worshipful practice to our family’s schedule. In some cases, we would eliminate one activity or commitment to make room for another one. Once we established a pattern of obedience in that one small thing, we would take the next step.

We are thankful that God has chosen to reveal His will to us through His Word and through godly counsel in the form of mentors and good books. Looking back, our lives are pointed in a very different direction than where we started. Yet, there was no single event, no single decision, that led to a drastic change. Rather, God worked in our lives through the successive accumulation of small but important choices and decisions. Soon, our kids will be on their own. It is our prayer that God will continue to build on the foundation of His Word in their families so that their children will teach their children to live a life of worship to our God.

In closing, we want to encourage you to be purposeful in choosing an attitude and lifestyle of worship in your home, regardless of your family situation and personal giftedness. We can safely say that it is never too late to start choosing to worship God every day.