Practising our faith

 

Wherever Christians are restricted in practising their faith, the experience of meeting corporately for worship seems to have much more intensity and meaning.  After - or sometimes before - a long hard day of work in an anti-spiritual environment, they are most desirous of meeting with the family of God to express their love, adoration and praise to their Lord.

"God of love, help us to remember that Christ has no body now on earth but ours, no hands but ours, no feet but ours.
Ours are the eyes to see the needs of the world. Ours are the hands with which to bless everyone now. Ours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good". - Teresa of Avila

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Power in Perseverance

“When my husband Allen was sent to prison in April 1958, I was told that I would never see him again. I felt completely miserable and continually blamed God. The future looked so terribly bleak. I had the care of six children and my mother-in-law. I was only earning 80 cents a day. How could I keep my family alive on that?
“When it all became too much for me, one night I heard a voice: ‘My child, I have everything in My hands. These things come from Me.’ I replied, ‘If these things come from You, please protect me and my family. Do not allow me to dishonor Your name. I want to serve You and glorify Your name’
“Then I received peace in my heart. I was encouraged by Psalm 68:19, Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens. In those difficult years, people let me down, but God never abandoned me. But he did put me through trials.
“The first trial was the struggle to survive. I was only earning 80 cents a day. How could we get by on that? But God took care of us, in the same way that he took care of Elijah. He promised to be my shepherd and provider.
“One evening, my mother-in-law said that there was no food anymore in the house. The next morning, at five to six there was a knock on the door. ‘Are you sister Alice?’ asked a woman in her sixties, whom I didn’t know. ‘God wanted me to give you this.’ She put a package in my hand and disappeared. When I opened the parcel I found there was rice in it and some other food and a banknote to the value of about four month’s salary of a professor! Praise the Lord. Where man comes to an end, God begins! This was only one of the many miracles which kept us alive all those years.”


If the disciplines of spiritual warfare are the Word and prayer, the central attitude for those in battle in faithful obedience.  In order to continuously walk in the Spirit and produce the fruit of the Spirit, we must have that quality which we call perseverance.


The enemy's attempt to counter this quality is to create spiritual battle fatigue followed by spiritual lethargy - a general attitude we simply call giving up.


John Bunyan described it in Pilgrim's Progress as the Enchanted Ground --

"When saints do sleepy grow, let them come hither,
And hear how these two pilgrims talk together;
Yea, let them learn of them, in any wise,
Thus to keep ope their drowsy, slumbering eyes.
Saint's fellowship, if it be managed well,
Keeps them awake; and that in spite of hell."

 "Sometimes God calms the storm,Sometimes He lets the storm rage and calms His child."

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Pray Long

 Peter Wagner says, "The central, foundational activity for spiritual warfare is prayer. In one sense prayer is a weapon of warfare, and in another sense it is the medium through which all of the other weapons are utilised." Without prayer we will live defeated Christian lives. That is why Paul exhorts us in Ephesians 6:18, to put on the whole armour of God, "praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit…."

Pastor Ha's church in Vietnam grew from twenty-nine to over 5,000 in just a few years during the communist regime in the late 1970's. When asked the secret of this phenomenal church growth, Pastor Ha replied, "I have a very simple theology. When you have problems, pray! When you have more problems, pray more!" Every morning this church had a well-attended prayer meeting at six A.M. And the church grew and grew. Although they were constantly living under pressure, there was one Scripture text chosen for the wall of their sanctuary, "In everything give thanks."

And yet after his years of imprisonment, Pastor Ha said, “When I had my freedom, I worked with prayer sometimes in the background. In prison, I discovered that prayer is everything. It's like a pilot using a checklist before he takes off. If he skips the first item, many lives might be in danger. The first item on our checklist should always be prayer. If we skip it, the whole mission is in jeopardy.”


Vietnamese Pastor Cuong also spent over six years in prison. He says this about prayer:

“In my work I was so busy I had no time to pray. But in prison, I was thankful to God that He gave me time for prayer. I had about six hours of prayer every day. I had time to recall every member of my congregation to pray for them. Before that, although I served the church, I didn't have enough time to pray for them. I learned about the real presence of God in prayer there. When you kneel down and pray wholeheartedly with the Lord, you feel His answer right there.”

Even in the difficult conditions of imprisonment, Irina Ratushinskaya continued to write poetry, scratching out verses on a bar of soap and committing them to memory before washing them away. Later she said that writing helped her to survive her ordeal. While still at home in Kiev following her release, she was interviewed over the air by Chicago radio station WBEZ. Asked if she would consent to read one of her poems, she replied: "I will read a poem which I wrote already in freedom . It is dedicated to all those who thought and remembered about my fellow prisoners or about me." The following is a literal translation of the poem, submitted by one of our readers.

Believe me, so it happened often:
In solitary confinement, on a wintry night
Suddenly an embrace of warmth and happiness,
And a note of low would sound.
And then I sleeplessly know,
Leaning against the ice cold wall-
Now, now they are remembering me,
They are begging the Lord for me.
My dear ones, thank you
All, who remembered and believed in us
In the cruelest prison hour.
We, surely, could not have
Gone through all from end to end,
Not bowing our head, not faltering,
Without your lofty hearts
Illumining our way.

“I am a part of the fellowship of the unashamed. I have Holy Spirit power. The dye has been cast. I have stepped over the line. I am a disciple of HIS. I won’t look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past is redeemed! I’m finished with low living, sight walking, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, mundane talking, and dwarfed goals! I don’t have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I now live by faith, lean on His presence, walk by patience, lift by prayer, and labor by power! My faith is set. My gait is fast. My goal is heaven. My road is narrow. My companions few. My Guide reliable! My mission clear! I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, or delayed! I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of the adversary, or negotiate at the table of the enemy! I won’t give up, shut up, let up until I have stayed up, stored up, prayed up, paid up, preached up for the cause of Christ! I am a disciple of Jesus! I must go until He comes, give until I drop, preach until all know, and work until He stops me. And when He comes for His own, He will have NO problems recognizing me. My banner will be clear!” --  this text was found on a scrap of paper in the home of an African pastor shortly after he was martyred.


At the beginning of 1935, Rees Howell had a new burden to pray for world missions. He shared this with staff and friends at SIM and they agreed to intercede for any nation and country, as well a missionaries, as the Lord indicated.


With the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, Rees and his intercessors were called to ‘stand in the gap’ in prayer; as prayer warriors they were to have no more claim on their lives, time or possessions than if they had been drafted into the forces. Particular prayer was made for Ethiopia when Mussolini invaded. Rees experienced a great trial of faith when Addis Ababa fell, but the outcome of their intercession was seen when in later years S I M missionaries returned to Wallamo Province, where they had anxiously left 48 young believers, to find a church of 10,000 Christians.


Two sisters in southern China came to Christ in a house church meeting. Twenty months later a friend from Hong Kong visited them and asked what they had been doing since their conversion. "Starting home meetings," was their timid response.
"How many home meetings?"
"Only thirty," was their halting reply.
"How many attend your meetings?" was the next nonchalant question.
"Well, at the smallest one about two hundred and eighty!"
Now the questioner was totally involved and quickly continued,
"How many attend your largest meeting?"
"Not even 5000, only about four thousand nine hundred!"
The Hong Kong Christian was flabbergasted. And in his excitement quickly asked, “How do you ladies—both new Christians—know what to do?"
They simply replied, “We pray. And after we pray, the Holy Spirit tells us what to do!”






Paul Youngi Cho, of South Korea, has one of the world's largest churches, with over one million members. When asked about the secret of his success, he says, "I pray, and I obey." His whole ministry is marked with prayer. They have a whole mountain for prayer, not just a room in the church. It is called Prayer Mountain. The mountain is covered with small caves where people from the church will go and hide themselves to pray for days at a time.

Every morning, Cho prays for five hours before starting any other work in the church. Many have asked him how he can find time to pray that much. He answers, "You don't understand. If I don't pray for five hours, I don't have enough time to do everything. But when I do, then God does everything I need."

James declares that prayer is powerful and effective" (James 5:16) John assures us that "God hears and answers" (1 John 5: 15). In the book of Acts there are 36 references to the church growing. Fifty-eight percent [i.e. 21 of those instances) are within the context of prayer. We would all love to see growth in every church in the world like it was at Pentecost and immediately thereafter. The key to what happened is found in Acts l:14 when it says: "They were all joined together constantly in prayer. They were all joined together - one mind, one purpose, one accord. That is the prerequisite for effectiveness. Then, they were all joined together constantly in prayer. The word used there means to be "busily engaged in, to be devoted to, to persist in adhering to a thing, to intently attend to it." And it is in the form of a present participle. It means that the practice was continued ceaselessly. The same word is used in Acts 2:42: "They devoted themselves ...to prayer." Over in Colossians 4:2 Paul uses the same word again in the imperative form "Devote yourselves to prayer. Most significant expansion movements of the church through its history took up that imperative.

Pastor Cho from South Korea also shares this story - "The place where I went to plant my church - there were already shrines, and the priests from the shrines tried to intimidate me. They tried to burn up the tent churches. So to combat this, I spent five hours every day praying. But now a days I usually spend three hours every day praying, and if I don't keep praying regularly in such a way then I can't maintain the fellowship with the Holy Spirit. I believe ministers cannot maintain their ministries without the anointing of the Holy Spirit. For me, that means three hours a day to maintain my intimacy with the Holy Spirit."

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A Strong Family Likeness

Make me a captive, Lord, and then I shall be free.
Force me to render up my sword, and I shall conqueror be.
I sink in life’s alarms when by myself I stand;
Imprison me within Thine arms, and strong shall be my hand.
My heart is weak and poor until it master find;
It has no spring of action sure, it varies with the wind.
It cannot freely move till Thou has wrought its chain;
Enslave it with Thy matchless love, and deathless it shall reign.
My power is faint and low till I have learned to serve;
It lacks the needed fire to glow, it lacks the breeze to nerve.
It cannot drive the world until itself be driven;
Its flag can only be unfurled when Thou shalt breathe from heaven.
My will is not my own till Thou hast made it Thine;
If it would reach a monarch’s throne, it must its crown resign.


It only stands unbent amid the clashing strife,
When on Thy bosom it has leant, and found in Thee its life.

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Willingly Suffer

Here is a thought from an unnamed Chinese Christian:


Where there is no cross, there is no crown. This lesson cannot be learned from books, and men do not usually taste this sweetness. This rich life does not exist in a comfortable environment. If the spices are not refined to become oil, the fragrance of the perfume cannot flow forth; and if the grapes are not crushed in the vat, they will not become wine.

 Another pastor shared this request - “We don’t ask that you pray for the persecution to stop, but that we will be faithful and stand strong in the midst of the persecution.”

Sister Pasqualita spoke at the “Mexico, I Love You” Congress. She had suffered severe ostracism in her small town in the very southern part of Mexico because she had become an evangelical. Other Christians had already been forcibly driven from the town.

One night a group of her persecutors surrounded her grass-roofed home setting it on fire. As she opened the door, someone fired a gun at her. A co-worker shares her story in his own words:

“When she was sharing her testimony she was crying. She said, ‘I thank the Lord that only twenty-one ammunition bits touched me.’ She had been shot all over her body and even in the neck. She was still able to run and fell into a hole where her persecutors couldn’t see her in the dark. She was losing blood quickly but some other townsfolk somehow took her out through the mob to another nearby town’s clinic. She survived but three other family members in the house were murdered.
“She complained to the Lord saying, ‘Lord, why now that I’ve given you my life and my family am I suffering this way?’ The Lord reminded her of a song that she used to sing very often, ‘I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back.’
“She continued, ‘Then I understood that when I decided to follow Jesus, it was in the midst of any situation, any persecution. My life now belonged to Him. I gained strength in that song. I am preaching again and I am encouraging the rest of the believers that when we decide to follow Jesus there is no turning back.’”

Today Pasqualita continues to be a strong Christian leader and teacher in her community and she still loves to sing, “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back.”

We will be led into difficult times. We are perfected by our suffering, when we suffer like Jesus did, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Don’t waste your pain or your suffering. Use it for a witness, use it for the gospel. Christians are like nails—the harder you hit us, the deeper we go.

Christians are like flowers. The more you crush us, the sweeter the fragrance.



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I am always with you

Gul Masih was a Christian in Pakistan and was condemned to hang on a charge of blasphemy.  In prison he wrote this as a response to a Canadian woman:

"First of all, I am thankful to you that you have encouraged me. My Lord has come to me twice in my prison cell. One day, I was sitting in my cell thinking about this injustice in a sad and hopeless mood. Suddenly the cell filled with light and my body trembled. I saw my Lord. Four days after this, my Jesus came again and overshadowed me by raising His hands & blessing me. From that day on, I have been happy & at peace. My Lord is with me in Jail. He doesn't leave me alone. We are five members in our family. We have a great love for each other. I am very grateful to my Lord. He has fulfilled all my needs in the best possible way. I am also thankful to you and my other brothers & sisters who have supported me. I hope that by the grace of God we will see one another. Let us not forget the power of prayer."

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Power in Chains

The apostle Paul commented on a few occasions that being in chains was not necessarily a bad thing.

That's because God can turn anything into good - everyone in that prison system, including the palace guard learned that Paul was in prison because of his love for Christ.

More importantly, from Paul's perspective, he saw a change in the Christians.  It seemed that his chains inspired them to speak God's Word more courageously and fearlessly than before.

Here is a testimony reflecting some of this from Pastor Matta Boush in Sudan --

However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace. Acts 20:24

In a Sudan prison, Pastor Matta Boush was depressed as he faced 30 years on false charges. A visit from an Irish Catholic sister helped change his outlook. There were others in prison, she said, whose cases were far worse than his. She told him never to ask himself why he was there, but instead to ask for what purpose he was there. From that point Matta Boush began to minister to his fellow prisoners.

He began prayer meetings for non-Muslims and numbers grew quickly. One event at the prison made an especially strong impact. A prisoner, just prior to his execution, rather than being fearful, was calm and gave his testimony. He said he was not afraid to die because he knew he would go to heaven. This made such an impression that some of the Muslim guards became Christians.

He was transferred to another prison in the city of El-Obeid. Some Muslims objected to his ministry and prayer meetings so he was placed in solitary confinement for several months. Away from his God-given work and with too much time to think, depression overtook him again. But the encouragement of friends helped him through the hard times. Returning to the general prison population, he helped lead between 150 and 200 people to Christ.

Later Matta Boush was transferred to El-Khobar prison in Khartoum. There he was able to help build a prison chapel as well as continuing his ministry. In the next ten months, 200 people came to the Lord.

His sudden release indicated that the person ordering it had great authority. As a free man, he contacted churches and visited Nuba refugee camps. He was reunited with his three daughters. His wife, however, had married a Muslim man.

He began providing pastoral care for nine regional churches. He was faithful in sharing the Lord both in and out of prison. No sacrifice was too great to accomplish the goal.

An Open Doors-Africa co-worker named Solomon was assigned to find out if there were many Christians in prison or labor camps in Mozambique during the communist regime there. While researching, he was arrested himself:

“In prison, all my possessions, including my Bible were taken from me. Then I was subjected to a cross-examination for six hours, after which I was thrown into a cell, exhausted. I had to sleep on a concrete floor. I did not even get a blanket…
“Knowing that my heavenly father would never forsake me, I directed all my attention to my fellow-prisoners. Although I still had to sleep on the floor and was harassed by malaria, bugs and gnawing hunger, I tried to talk about my faith as much as possible…
“I had the opportunity to preach to my companions. I prayed for the sick and the Lord heard my prayers and healed them. That was of great support to them and during my stay in prison, I led fifteen people to the Lord.
“Unexpectedly, I found out that there were more Christians in prison. Now it became clear to me why I had to be arrested. In the first place, to bring the message of salvation to the lost ones in prison. And secondly, to strengthen my fellow Christians."

 Check out this prayer for generosity from Ignatius of Loyola --

Lord, teach me to be generous.
Teach me to serve you as you deserve;
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labor and not to ask for reward,
save that of knowing that I do your will.

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Abandonment

I remember submitting a poem to my corporate Christmas newsletter and it made the third page.  I tried to go through the process of explaining what Christmas really was. 

It surprised me for a moment, but with more thought, I knew this was probably normal thinking - in Mongolia.  Someone responded to a radio program and shared their thoughts on Christmas like this --

"When I think of Christmas the first thing that comes into my mind is its significance, especially in relation to the lives of myself and those about me.  I think of what Christmas originally cost, of what its significance costs myself and others today."

Oswald Chambers, in the first of the daily devotions in My Utmost for His Highest, shares this same attitude of complete surrender to God --

  "I am determined to be absolutely and entirely for Him and for Him alone."

Giving yourself in true abandonment to Him means refusing yourself the luxury of asking questions.  We have no ends of our own to serve.  In fact, it never produces the consciousness of its own effort, because the whole life is taken up with the one to whom we abandon ourselves.  He then works through us all the time.

"One of the greatest hindrances in coming to Jesus is the excuse of temperament. We make our temperament and our natural affinities barriers to coming to Jesus. The first thing we realize when we come to Jesus is that He pays no attention whatever to our natural affinities. We have the notion that we can consecrate our gifts to God. You cannot consecrate what is not yours; there is only one thing you can consecrate to God, and that is your right to yourself." (Romans 12:1)...I don’t throw my life away, but I willingly and deliberately lay it down for Him and His interests in other people. And I do this for no cause or purpose of my own. Paul spent his life for only one purpose— that he might win people to Jesus Christ. Paul always attracted people to his Lord, but never to himself. He said, “I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22).  Chambers

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Patiently waiting for God

Paraphrase of Habakkuk by Dr. Jim Cunningham --

    "Though the job offers do not come

    and there is no employment on the horizon.

    Though the stock investments decline

and my RRSPs produce no income.

    Though there are no savings in the account

and minimum cash in my pocket.

    Yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

    I will be joyful in God my Saviour.

    The Sovereign Lord is my strength.

    He makes me walk on the edge with sure feet

    and calms me to enjoy the view."

http://youtu.be/LuEFdtIv4lo

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Reckless Abandonment

Here are some thoughts from a letter that might encourage you --

'You know around here we are experiencing hardships.  but thank the Lord He is supporting us and comforting us and caring for us in every way.  When we experience misfortune, adversity, distress and hardship, only then do we see the real blessing of the Lord poured down on us in such a way that we cannot contain it.  Hallelujah!

We have been obliged recently to leave our modest apartment and for over two months have been living on a balcony.  The rain has been beating down and soaking us.  Sometimes in the middle of the night we are forced to gather our blankets into our arms and run to seek refuge in a stairwell.

do you know what I do then?  I'm happy, I laugh, I praise the Lord because we can still take shelter in the stairwell,  I think of how many people are experiencing much worse hardships than I am...

...I don't know what words to use in order to describe the love that the Lord has shown to our family.  I only can bow my knee and my heart and offer to the Lord words of deepest thanks and praise.  Although we've lost our house, we've lost our possessions, we have not lost the Lord and that is enough.  With the Lord I have everything.'

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Loving God

I found this quote --

"God created people with free will, meaning that we can choose to love and obey God or not. It wouldn't be very meaningful if we loved or obeyed God because we were unable to choose otherwise. A computer or talking doll can be made to say "I love you," but it doesn't have the same meaning as when a human freely chooses to love. Thus, in order for anyone's choice to love and follow God to be meaningful, God permits everyone to choose freely what they will do"

 No sooner do we decide to love the Lord with all our being then we hear Jesus' words - and one of the most difficult commands is to love even our enemies.




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More than Family

Even when it comes to family, our love for God is to be challenged by no other.

There is no way in the world that most of us get this.  So many of get upset when they hear people choosing to follow God rather than their families desires.

Abraham has to be my role model in this area - even though I know that I could not have done what he did.  He waits until kingdom come for a son, a heir, and then gets tested by God.  God wanted to know if Abraham loved Him more than Isaac.  So there was a command to sacrifice.

 Abraham submitted and in his absolute trust of God, not knowing what God intended for such a plan contributed to all of us God's incredible love for us too in preparing a substitute...a foreshadowing of His own Son, the ultimate sacrifice.

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