Brother Andrew and the Power of Plainspoken Prayer

Sometimes God just gives you what you ask for.

The iconic Volkswagen Beetle that Brother Andrew used to deliver thousands of Bibles behind the Iron Curtain. Available at opendoorscanada.org.

When he arrived at the border of Yugoslavia in 1957, Andrew van der Bijl’s Volkswagen Beetle was “bulging with Bibles.” He intended to cross from Austria into the communist country. The Dutchman knew, however, that the border guards would never allow his trove of Scripture through.

So he prayed.

“Lord, in my luggage I have Scripture that I want to take to your children across this border. When You were on earth, You made blind eyes see. Now, I pray, make seeing eyes blind. Do not let the guards see those things you do not want them to see.”

At the border checkpoint, an official asked to look at a suitcase that contained gospel tracts mixed throughout the clothing. Andrew calmly handed it over. He watched as the guard opened it and lifted up the shirts on top. “Beneath them,” the missionary would later write, “was a pile of tracts in two different Yugoslavian languages.”

Andrew then looked away and casually struck up a conversation about the weather with the other guard. Moments later, they returned his suitcase and waved him through.

What exactly had happened? Was the guard sympathetic to Christians? Did he see the tracts but misunderstand what they were? Or was it simply a God-given miracle?

Astonishing moments like this abound in Brother Andrew’s¹ 1967 book God’s Smuggler. Bibles were the contraband he carried, and he was keenly that his ministry could get him jailed or even killed. Again and again, the Lord protected him. Later in Yugoslavia, he meets a mechanic who offers to take a look at the Beetle he’s been driving for his covert ministry. After the inspection, they had a conversation.

“Brother Andrew, I have just become a believer. It is mechanically impossible for this engine to run. Look. The air filter. The carburetor. The sparks. No, I’m sorry. This car cannot run.”

“And yet it’s taken us thousands of miles.” [Brother Andrew replies.]

The mechanic only shook his head. “Brother,” he said, “would you permit me to clean your engine for you and give you a change of oil? It hurts me to see you abuse a miracle.”

Brother Andrew recounts numerous acts of God’s providence during his travels. Often, they were a direct response to his straightforward prayers. Here are just a few of many examples:

• Entering Romania in 1959, he prayed and then decided to leave some of his Bibles out in the open on the passenger seat. “Then, Lord,” Andrew reasoned, “I cannot possibly be depending on my own stratagems, can I? I will be depending utterly upon You.” Even though the border guards had taken every single item out of the car in front of him, he passed through without an inspection.

• He crosses the Bulgarian border, arriving at Sofia, a large city, with only a single address for a Christian contact. Lacking a map, his first efforts to find one only aroused suspicion. Finally, he spots a “small hand-painted street plan” under the glass of the front desk at his hotel. First assuming it included only the names of the largest streets, he then noticed one exception—the very street he’s looking for. “Not one other street of similar size on the entire map,” he wrote, “bore a name.”

• Traveling home through West Germany in 1960, his car’s engine fails, and he doesn’t have enough money to get it replaced. At this point, he’s so confident in God’s provision that he requests the repair anyway, unsure how he’ll pay. Then, unprompted, a stranger approaches two of his traveling companions, giving them the exact amount of money to cover the shortfall. Knowing nothing of their circumstances, she insists that God wanted them to have it. Brother Andrew described such blessings as “occurring almost daily.”

“I’ve never lost one Bible in twenty years,” he later shared in an interview, putting an exclamation point on his experiences of God’s protection. Amazingly, he was never arrested either. His stories often feel like a modern-day version of the book of Acts. Miracles just seem to be in the air. And as with his friend and fellow Hollander Corrie ten Boom², who I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, his humble outlook and plainspoken prayers make his larger-than-life stories surprisingly relatable.

The clarity and specificity of Andrew’s prayers reminded me of something I read in a more recent book, Tyler Staton’s Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools:

In your asking, be brief and specific. We tend to pray wordy, vague prayers when asking, almost like we’re afraid to lay our requests before [the Lord] boldly. Resist the urge to cover for God or make it easy on him. He can handle your requests. Just ask.

Recall Brother Andrew’s prayer at the Yugoslavian border:

[Lord,] do not let the guards see those things you do not want them to see.

Where in your life do you need to pray with that kind of directness? Few of us will find ourselves in situations akin to Andrew’s smuggling adventures. Yet, we all have opportunities for bold, straightforward prayers.

Another aspect of Andrew’s life that we can draw from appears as his ministry expands. In the early 1960s, he was traveling 50,000 miles per year and lived two-thirds of his life away from his family. Under that strain, he began to pray for a ministry partner. Immediately, a name came to mind. That man, Hans Gruber, would join him on his first trip into Russia in 1961.

Open Doors, the ministry Brother Andrew founded, would only grow from there. Today it serves persecuted Christians in over 70 countries. Its mission still recalls Revelation 3:2 and its urging to “strengthen what remains” in struggling churches. That verse provided Andrew with his original conviction that the Lord had called him to ministry behind the Iron Curtain.

While growing an institution might not seem as thrilling as some of Andrew’s earlier escapades, it’s through Open Doors that his influence has been able to outlive him. And such groups allow far more Christians to have a small part in the kind of work that Andrew was doing. Although most of us will never start ministries, we can all pray for groups like Open Doors. Some can give or even serve.

Andrew’s legacy is a reminder that we’re all called to be part of something bigger than ourselves. For most Christians, the local church is going to be at the heart of that.

A verse that inspired Brother Andrew early in his ministry was 1 Corinthians 12:26-27, “If one member [of the body of Christ] suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” It’s understandable why those words would draw him to persecuted believers beyond the Iron Curtain. And Brother Andrew’s example will surely continue to lead some Christians halfway across the world. But many believers will find that the compassion and bold prayers he modeled are most urgently needed right across the street.

1. Under communist regimes, keeping last names a secret provided believers a small measure of protection. Thus, van der Bijl became Brother Andrew, the name he later chose to write under.

2. Brother Andrew met Corrie ten Boom in the 1950s in their shared homeland, the Netherlands. Andrew was just beginning his ministry at that time, while Corrie’s experience protecting Jews during World War II was becoming more well-known. They became friends and encouraged one another throughout their lives.