I have prayed this morning to you, who
are my sisters, we will be willing to
meet with the Lord Jesus, because I believe
that God has given us a most amazing
privilege, but a most wonderful responsibility.
Surely there has never been a time such
as this in which we find ourselves living,
when anything can happen any moment, when the
world sweeps forward and wonderful things just come
into the news and into our very lives.
But at the same time, you and I
have this challenge, not only to meet the
time, but to meet God in those times.
And it is something of this that has
prompted me and made me accept this invitation
from World Vision to come out.
You will find that I do not know
very much about the outside as a western
civilization.
My life has been lived away in the
middle of China, and when we came out
from China itself, I went to live on
a little island for most of us, and
that has been my interest, my life.
There I believe God put my life.
But I haven't been able to just sit
on that small island in the all around.
From every point there are these terrific challenges.
And just to emphasize to you, not in
just a theoretical way, but in a way
of fact, these places that to you are
Southeastern Asia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaya, China, Formosa,
Japan, Korea, and those, that area represents a
terrific challenge.
Because you see, dear sisters, their young people
are way ahead of yours.
They're more clever, they read more, they do
more, they're far more energetic, they don't expect
to be spoon-fed, they know where they're
going and they're going to get there.
And as I see it, just in the
way in which they live, and now I
come and see the way you live, friends,
you're on the losing side.
And the challenge is for Jesus Christ, because
I truly believe that only in Christ is
there freedom, or can we keep and hold
our freedom, or can we get anywhere of
any value at all.
So you'll find that this morning is not
just a talk, a sort of little story,
it is a challenge from my own heart
to yours.
That's why I ask that we, as women,
should meet together.
Because although I have never really lived a
woman's life as you have, I've never had
a home, I've never had a husband, and
I never have had children of my own.
But I have brought up more children than
I suppose any of you have ever thought
of.
And so there has always been in my
life the problem of eating, and wearing clothes,
and room enough for the family, and what
to do with the next one, and how
to settle their quarrels, and being alone without
a father.
And all these things have brought into my
life and into my heart not just ideas,
I'm not going to give you tips on
how to manage your family.
I would that you got what I have
got, the love of Jesus Christ, so that
you will pass on that to your children.
Of the patience that only he can give,
so that in your home, in spite of
all that turmoil and confusion, you will be
perfectly happy.
And spread a sort of comforting feeling because
of that patience through the people who you
have to live with.
I'm going to read one verse.
Now I will explain, it is not because
I do not believe the middle of the
verses, these two that I'm leaving up, but
they don't just happen right this morning to
come into our talk.
And the verse is the 17th verse of
the fifth chapter of 2nd Corinthians.
Now if you know your Bible, I hope
you do, these words won't be the same
because mine is Chinese, sorry that's all I
read, but I will turn it round as
I understand it from Chinese to you.
A person inside Christ is new.
That person's old affairs are behind that person's
back.
Everything is changed.
A person inside Christ.
You and I right now are inside this
building.
We as individuals, as persons, are inside our
clothes.
And so there is a sort of limit,
isn't there?
We just don't do as we please in
being in this building.
We are consigned by these walls.
And in our clothes, well we're just not
quite as free as we would be without
them.
We are inside.
And I believe in the same way, in
theory, in spirit, you and I have to
get inside of Christ so that although we're
limited, we're limited by Him, by His love,
by His patience, by His great almighty mercy
and salvation.
We're inside of Jesus Christ.
This person then has to do something.
It says a person inside Christ is new.
Now friend, I do not believe that you
and I, when we believe on the Lord
Jesus, we join a church or we get
confirmed or baptised, we gradually become a little
nicer, our tempers are a little better and,
well, altogether we're just going forward, aren't we?
No.
The Bible doesn't imply that.
A person inside Christ is, and this is
present, new.
And so you and I, if we really
believe in Jesus Christ and we are willing
to get, as it were, inside of Him,
to listen to His voice, to do as
He asks, we are new creations.
Right now.
We don't have to wait till we get
to heaven.
We don't have to wait till we've got
a little better, a little older, or done
a little more good work.
No.
This is entirely through faith and trust in
our wonderful Jesus Christ.
And now this new creation does something.
Immediately throws overboard all the old ideas.
Are all your old ideas out?
Friend, do you still read those same silly
books?
Still dream the same silly dreams?
Well, when we were girls in our teens,
we dreamed dreams, but we shouldn't be dreaming
dreams of when we are fourteen.
We should be acting.
We should be living in reality.
Romance is for youth, not for age.
We should have gone forward.
We should have thrown overboard those things which
we know as we grow older are of
no value.
A person inside Christ is new and all
the old affairs are behind His back.
Before I went to China, I was connected
with the stage.
That's what I went up into London.
That's what I left my home for, to
go and study for the stage.
And so all my friends knew how interested
and taken up I was with the theatre.
And then after I was paid and I
went to China, of course this all went
and I forgot all about it.
But as I was on my way back
from Red China to Great Britain, twenty or
more years had gone by and suddenly the
thought came into me, now what am I
going to do?
I suppose my dear aunt and my relations,
they were all Russian, were next invited
to the theatre.
I just didn't know.
You know, dear friend, no one's ever asked.
No one ever invited.
You see, they didn't.
I had no question as to what I
was going to say.
They knew the very attitude that I took,
the very way I walked in.
I was a new creation.
I hadn't just gone to China and grown
up.
I hadn't become a missionary.
Oh no, I looked at things in a
different way.
And now the girl of twenty had grown
up and she was looking at things in
a different light.
Friend, are you looking at things in a
real square right in the light of Jesus
Christ?
Because you are a new creation in him.
And then as the old affairs, the old
things you know that really don't count, do
they?
They go overboard.
Everything's changed.
Oh, you don't move house.
You still have to sweep the old floor
with the same old broom.
You still have to cook the same kind
of dinners because your family liked that kind
of cooking.
But it's new.
You live a new life.
You're new.
You talk in a new way.
You've joy in your heart.
You live a new life because Christ is
yours and you are his.
And friend, it doesn't have that we alter
the place where we live or our circumstances
are either better or new.
It is as we are inside of Jesus
Christ.
I lived in the middle of China for
nine and a half years in one of
the miserablest places on earth.
You could have walked right round our city
in twenty minutes.
That's how big it was.
You could have seen everybody.
There were five shops.
They all sold the same thing.
They had five or six things for sale,
nothing of which I wanted to buy, simply
because every single one of those five things
was something to do with idols.
Paper to burn to idols.
Incense to burn to idols.
Candles to burn to idols.
Belts to tie around cow's neck.
And rope to tie up your cows with
to the post of your door.
Now what did I want those for?
So there were no shop gazing, no shopping.
But friend, I lived in that little city
and I can honestly tell you God gave
to my heart a most amazing joy in
watching one by one the men and women
of that small city and the people outside
come and find Jesus Christ as their savior.
Not because I could preach wonderful sermons because
they didn't come to listen if I but
because they saw living in an inn just
outside the city gate somebody who was a
new creation.
And this afternoon I pray that to you
something of this challenge will come into your
heart that you may go out to do
what God wants.
Because if we leap over in the same
chapter to the 20th verse we read this
and therefore or so this person becomes Christ's
representative.
You and I inside Christ representing him.
We're not out just to talk about our
own affairs or even the affairs of our
church or our family.
We are there to represent the Lord of
Glory and friend it's the greatest the most
glorious privilege and something that fills us with
joy.
And now I would like to give you
all as it were mixed up you'll find
something that represents to me the mission field
and your and my part in it.
Because this isn't a call to the mission
field you can't just get up and run
off can you?
No you've got your family and you're as
it were tied down and you have responsibilities
to those families.
But I truly believe that every single soundly
born again child of God that is those
who have the witness of Jesus Christ in
their heart should be doing something for the
kingdom of God.
We should be new creations representing him somewhere.
Now where that particular place is I wouldn't
know in your case I could only know
in mine.
I only know that as we get inside
of him seek to find out his will
he never asks us to do something we
can't.
He never tells us to go to somewhere
he knows we cannot go.
He doesn't put us if we're he is
a great almighty God and he I believe
in that great plan just made the place
that you and I should fit perfectly in.
When I was a little girl in school
this was a little country school outside in
a few miles from the city of London.
There were I suppose about 200 odd little
girls beside myself and I was the only
one in that school among those little girls
with this colored hair.
This old black knob.
You know I hated it.
We do because we don't like being different.
Every other one of those little girls had
sort of golden colored or fair hair or
some other color and I don't know the
colors you'd call them but anyway they were
not like mine and I didn't like this.
And so there were many tears shed over
what the boys in the school called old
black knob oh golly what.
The Lord Jesus must have a purpose somewhere
in giving you this black hair.
And then the next thing was that the
rest of the family and of course all
those other little girls they didn't stop being
little.
They grew up and I just stopped in
the middle.
But I didn't and nobody seemed to be
able to add any more inches on.
And so the tears went and I didn't
realize until years later when one day I
was walking up the main street of a
port city in China.
Tianjin.
And all of a sudden my heart began
to beat and I began to feel warm
and excited all over and I looked all
around and I said well why my hair's
the same color.
I could see everything.
I was the same size as all of
them.
And when I went up into inland China
into a place where they had never seen
anybody from the outside.
Friend I am positively sure that had some
rather tall nice looking girl with pretty golden
or yellow hair had gone there they'd have
chased her out.
Oh but they didn't chase me out.
The rest of me was the same as
them.
Friends don't worry that God is going to
ask you to do something you can't.
He is love.
But he does ask us to do something
that we can't.
Stand as his representative straight honest uncompromisingly true
where he has put us.
And then not only ourselves find joy but
our family and those we love and I
truly believe our nation.
Now I went to China as you know
as a girl in my 20s and for
those first few years I lived in a
little tiny mountain city right down not far
from the Yellow River and God opened wonderful
doors filled my heart with amazing joy and
did things that I had never dreamed he
would ever do for anybody let alone me.
I lived my first year with an old
scotch lady and although we had planned to
have in this small city the first mission
station we didn't.
We had a mule inn and this was
because we found that that was the best
way to get the people in.
From that mule inn came the first Christians
who were mureteers who traveled over the mountainside
and had to spend the night in the
inn.
And then after the old lady Jeannie died
I accepted a job under the national government
which I then knew nothing about.
All I knew was that every single woman
around me had bound feet and now this
custom of binding little girl's feet was against
the law and the government needed somebody to
go out and stamp this custom out in
those mountain villages and this opened to me
a most wonderful door.
The villages were mine, the hamlets were mine
I could knock on any door day or
night and go in.
Now I was supposed by uh because I
was earning my living uh through being an
official of the government to stamp out foot
bindings and explain the evils of growing and
smoking opium and I did well I earned
my money but I had gone to China
for Jesus Christ and so to me the
first the most important thing of all was
that they knew Christ and I discovered in
a most amazing way that although you could
talk you could make laws you could make
rules and you but it didn't go where
love went.
I wonder to how many of us we
are going to learn that as we get
inside of Christ it isn't following a law
it isn't making rules it is allowing the
Lord Jesus to pour his love through you
so that oh there will go something to
that other person or persons that will draw
those seedings in a different way whereas a
law says you must or you mustn't and
the heart of man just resists whereas love
draws.
I remember going out into a small village
to find a man who had bought which
of course you could do in those days
a little girl of four years old.
His intention was that she should be later
on the wife of his son.
She'd never had her feet bound so he
proceeded to order his wife to bind the
little girl's feet up.
I went found out and he had to
unbind them.
I fined him meant a lot to a
man who had very little money.
Some week later I had an idea I
ought to go to that village again.
He'd gone back and bound them up so
I dragged him in.
He served two months in prison.
The moment he was left out he went
back and did the same thing all over
again and this time I went out and
he came in again and went through a
very horrid sort of punishment that was on
in China in those days which means that
the person the prisoner is dragged through the
street absolutely naked and anybody can come out
and throw what they like at them.
It's a horrid thing and this man had
this and yet at the end of he
went back and bound up his little daughter
-in-law's feet and I didn't know what
to do.
I prayed, I pleaded with the Lord.
So hard, so cruel and then one day
in an entirely different place and standing preaching
the gospel in the middle of a fair
a man shot his hand up and he
said, can I believe on your that dear
God?
Yes brother, come out here and kneel down
and I'll tell you how to worship my
God and there with the tears streaming down
his face he recognized Jesus Christ and as
he got up he said, would you come
to my village with me?
You've been there four times.
What am I going to come to your
village for?
And as I looked at the man here's
the baby who'd gone through all that that
now love had drawn and I went to
his village with him and had the wonderful
privilege of unbinding for the last time the
little daughter-in-law's feet.
Friend, I wonder to how many of us
we're going to realize that God is a
great loving God but then God is also
a just God and so as the time
went on to me there were terrific challenges
and the district became so big and so
complicated that I now believed that God would
have me long and pray and seek to
draw somebody as a fellow worker.
There was only one Christian from the outside
in the area that was me and so
I prayed and I pleaded with the Lord,
would you challenge somebody?
Would you draw somebody?
Would you bring them right here?
And then together we will climb mountains for
you.
But no one came and I got rather
disappointed and wondered why if this God is
a God of love if he's a God
of justice why doesn't he answer our prayer?
Is that what you are?
Friend perhaps you've prayed and you've prayed for
something you've pleaded with the Lord and you
still haven't got the answer to your prayer?
Well I believe it's because of two or
three things.
One you might not be praying in his
will.
He might not want to answer in the
way in which you expect and so you
have to let that prayer down and as
it were put it on one side.
A person inside Christ is new and perhaps
it's an old affair.
That is something that's nothing none of your
business and God is never going to answer
it.
Should we get inside of his will and
his power and find out if we're really
praying right?
And then it may be that in his
plan he isn't ready and that he has
still a way to draw you.
That's I believe what happened to me because
although disappointed and frustrated and wondering why if
he was a God of love he didn't
answer my prayer and send somebody.
I was to find before long something that
was to fill my heart with a wonderful
joy as that I would have never planned
or even dreamed of planning.
I walked down the street of our little
city one day and I saw sitting on
the side of the road an ordinary mountain
woman.
Leaning against the woman's knee was a little
child and on looking at the child I
discovered it was dirty and it was sick
and so I went to tell the woman
to take it from the street and wash
it and love it.
I learned on talking to the woman she
was there for one purpose to sell it.
I bought it.
Now I didn't buy the child because I
then loved children or I didn't love the
child because then I loved China.
I bought the child because I believe God
was asking me to and although I cannot
explain all that went on in my heart
this morning all I know is this that
I was positively sure that I had got
to do this.
Now dear friend I'm going to tell you
I am a woman as much as you
are the same kind of woman as you
are women and deep down in my heart
there was going on the battle that went
on in your heart one day and what
I wanted was what most of you have
already got.
I wanted a husband.
I wanted a home.
I wanted babies of my own.
Belonging inside us as women is for security.
It's for love.
Inside us God has created a great heart
and it is made to pour out love.
Now I do not believe that our husbands
and our brothers possess this in the same
way.
God has given to us this privilege and
I wonder to how many of us are
going to use it in the right way.
The world has taken a hold of this
and it brings it down into the dust.
It makes it sexy and filthy.
It throws it on the screens in films.
It writes dirty, sexy, horrible books and mother
to die.
Something that God gave you is clean and
pure but only as you keep Jesus Christ
in your life and I believe that this
is what you and I have to pass
on to our children.
That they too might be clean.
That those things that the world says are
the done thing shall in your home be
turned out and if you've got sexy books
in your home mother, burn them.
You have no right to be a mother
and not be able to throw out that
book that you don't agree with that is
under your daughter's pillow or bed.
My children might not be my own children
but I have watched what they read.
I know where they go even today and
I challenge you as mother to teach your
children truth.
I bought the child because I believe God
asked me.
That in spite of all this battle that
was going on in here God had come
in and I wonder to how many of
you you've made your up your mind of
what you're going to do.
You've planned it all out.
You've organized it all and this morning God
is going to challenge you because that plan's
not going to work mother.
That organizing isn't your business.
What God has given to you and me
in this heart of ours is a love
for truth and honesty and purity which you
and I should be instilling into our children
and I am sick of listening to filthy
conversations in ladies waiting rooms even on planes
and there are times when I just blush
with shame because beside me is a young
man.
Women get down to earth and be clean.
Talk about things that are clean.
How can you expect your children to be
clean if you're not?
A person inside Christ is new and the
old affairs should be behind our backs.
Throw out some of this silly nonsense and
be truthful and straight.
Read some good books.
Read the word of God.
Learn how to pray.
See what God wants you to do and
then you will find it will be poured
out onto these you love.
You'll know where they go.
They'll love you and you'll love them and
God will be in contrast.
To me this little girl was the beginning
and as the months and the years went
on there came into my life and into
my heart these who were to be my
family.
Now they haven't all grown up and done
what I would have liked.
I do not believe they've all done maybe
what God would have liked but I have
been terribly proud of them.
From that one little girl there came during
those first few years five and then as
the five came my heart sort of longed
for all those lonely children out in the
mountainside and the door being opened God gave
courage, wisdom, understanding and love to receive.
Not everyone that was left on my doorstep
but everyone that I believed God wanted me
to take.
When the war came I had got 40
and then during the war there came down
from the north 40 more.
These boys and girls were not just orphans
they were my sons, they were my daughters.
I loved them and they loved me and
then when the enemy came and we were
swept out across those mountains and the yellow
river to make a new home miles and
miles away from where we lived in the
province of Shintse.
I sometimes with breaking heart watched them go
out to earn their living, watched the boys
have to go and join the army, watch
the girls have to go and do war
work but always with a sense of pride
that these were the boys who one day
were going to stand for Christ somewhere.
These were the girls who were going to
be straight and true where one day I
would not be able to go for Jesus
Christ and mother this is what I believe
God gave them to me for.
Not that I might just love them and
spoil them, let them do what they like
and twist me around their finger but that
I might love them with the love that
Jesus loved me with.
To make them straight, honest, true, Chinese citizens
for Christ.
I did not expect what you ought to
expect from yours because there were not the
privileges of that where we lived that you
can give to your children but I truly
believe that God expects all that you can
give and pour out on this your child
and your family that God might be honoured
in your family and that your child one
day might be his witness as you I
pray today are here.
And then we were separated and down between
us comes an iron curtain.
Some of us happened to be on one
side and some on another side.
This was not of our own choosing, this
was simply because of what had happened and
we had just got to make the best
of it and see how God was going
to prove us, test us and use us.
And in those early days when China had
become red, there were times when my heart
broke, when I've laid out on the floor
and pray to die, the hopelessness of it
all, the aching heart, the misery, the cruelty
as they stripped us bit by bit of
everything we possessed.
Mother keep your freedom and give it to
your children.
I plead with you get Christ because only
in Christ is there freedom.
There is no freedom outside of Christ and
only in this book is there truth.
May you never have to watch what some
of us who are mothers had to watch
in that today you willing to be inside
of Jesus Christ can be his testimonies and
keep that freedom not only in your own
lives but in the lives of others.
And then as we came out, out to
something that we didn't know, no money, no
clothes, no future, no hope, no nothing.
And I would like you to try and
realize just what you would do if you
were suddenly lifted from your home and thrown
out with absolutely nothing.
Who are you?
You know your name but nobody's going to
believe it.
You've no proof of who you are, you've
no money and probably you don't understand all
that everybody says around you and that you've
come from a different part of that particular
land to everybody else.
And then perhaps mother you will pray for
some of these young people who are facing
up to these sort of problems and if
you think you've got problems with your young
people then you have a way of stopping
those problems from coming into being something like
this.
We didn't choose to be refugees, no more
than you will one day when you may
become a refugee if you don't get Christ.
We were made them.
And so here out on this side are
these hundreds and hundreds of young people who
don't know who they belong to, who don't
know anything of the place where they were
born.
No roots, nothing to hang on to.
Longing for something that we believe is only
to be found in Jesus Christ.
I came out, breaking my heart for my
family, for my home and all I knew.
It was all now behind an iron curtain
and didn't belong to me.
And I went to a little island for
Moses.
I wasn't very happy, I didn't know what
to do and I thought well I suppose
I could preach a sermon.
Oh well I'll just put up my name
and I'll fill in here and there for
some minister if he's sick or goes on
a vacation.
And one evening I was down in the
Baptist church taking the place of the minister
who was sick.
And at the same time something was happening
outside, not very far from that very church,
that was to alter my life and give
me an entirely new idea of things.
Fill again my heart with love and start
me off all over again and give me
courage even to come out here.
We have a bus station and down the
edge of the bus station runs a long
wooden seat.
On that bus station the cleaner who was
sweeping the floor noticed that somebody had left
a paper parcel.
And he, looking at the paper parcel as
he swept the floor, saw it very very
gently move occasionally and he decided it was
a chicken.
This is because we don't carry chickens and
ducks around dead where we live, we carry
them around alive.
And so he thought well now if I
keep my eye on that parcel then that
chicken will be mine.
And so when two or more hours had
gone by he went over and picked up
the chicken believing that the person who owned
it had gone on a bus.
But to his utter horror and amazement when
he took it in his hands it wasn't
a chicken or a duck, it was a
little baby, a newborn baby, just born, picked
up, put in the parcel, paper and rolled
out.
You can imagine what it was like.
Well he was very frightened and he took
it out to the police station and the
policeman said oh I don't want it, oh
I can't do anything with it, I've got
nowhere to put it, nothing to feed it
on, you know, I'll tell you what I'll
do, I'll give you a list of names
and you go and visit these people and
one of them will take it in.
And so a police officer and the little
cleaner from the bus station with the baby
in the parcel did the round.
Nobody wanted it.
And then somebody said I don't want it,
in fact I've nowhere to put it and
nothing to feed it on but have you
ever heard of it?
And do you know one day in the
paper I read that she just laughed and
you take it along to her.
And so they came to my door.
I was not in but my landlady who
was not a Christian and not a very
nice woman opened the door and they said
here's a parcel for that woman who lives
in your back room.
Oh yes, well just lay it in there.
And so they went in, put the baby
in the kitchen, let themselves out and went.
I came home.
I didn't go to the kitchen, I've nothing
to go to the kitchen for.
I go to bed.
But when I am laying comfortably in bed
I can hear on the other side of
the wall my landlady talking.
I tell her two important looking gentlemen came
this evening with a gift for you and
because you weren't in I told them to
put it in your kitchen.
Oh thank you very much I'll see it
tomorrow.
Oh I wouldn't wait until tomorrow because it
looked to me like a nice watermelon.
And you know if you leave watermelons in
your kitchen rats will come.
And I a little irritated and crossed the
yard because I don't like spiders and rats
in my kitchen.
And that's what happens if you leave food
there.
And oh looking down I found in the
washbowl the baby and it was still alive.
And I said oh lord no.
Oh no I've already brought up two families
for you.
Now what do I do with this?
And I truly believe that God's Holy Spirit
put into my heart the fact that only
down the road was a heathen woman with
a newborn baby.
I didn't even know which house.
But I went out down the road and
I knocked on the right house and a
little heathen woman sat dropping her baby's milk
into the mouth of this poor dirty little
thing.
And the tears streaming down her face she
suddenly looked up and she said if it
still breathes when I've nourished it shall we
wash it?
Yes.
And as I took it back in my
hand after it had been washed now wrapped
around in a piece of cloth I said
Lord Jesus what do I do?
I have nothing to feed newborn babies on.
And I know where to put newborn babies.
Oh said the Lord Jesus you were going
home to bed weren't you?
Well why don't you go?
It's awfully late at night.
I did.
And the baby came too.
Hasn't died you know.
They don't.
Little lives are very strong inside them.
And another door is open.
Oh Lord I'm nearly 60.
I don't want to start a new family.
This is the time when I sit on
the sofa and put my feet up.
Oh no says the Lord you're not the
time hasn't come to put feet up on
sofas.
Eh because you see oh well this is
just the beginning.
They have come and they have come and
in the same way as the first family
came and God looked after them and poured
out love so this one has come too.
And then in the most amazing and wonderful
way God does as we go forward and
trust him I come out.
You know who I leave this new family
with?
Well the old family.
After all they're grown up and they should
be doing something shouldn't I?
Well you take care of this new family
and then we'll have three families and we
will all praise the Lord together.
Friend I wonder is God speaking to us?
Shouldn't we be doing something for Jesus Christ?
It isn't as he asked me but is
he asking you?
I believe dear friend that to many of
you God has got to teach you how
to pray.
Do you really know how to pray mother?
Pray so that your heart is burdened and
it's breaking.
Pray not only for your own sons and
your own daughters but others.
Pray for the young men and the young
women who today know nothing of Christ.
I wonder how many are going to accept
that challenge.
Pray for my babies.
I don't know who they belong to but
I know they belong to me now and
I'm going to pour all the love I
can get from God on them.
But would you pray for it?
Pray for the thousands who we probably don't
know anything about and will never be able
to find.
Pray for the men and the women who
are gonna die without Christ.
And I don't know about you mother but
have you ever prayed for the women of
Russia?
All the degradation, all the stinkingness of sin.
Woman I believe communism came from hell.
I don't care who you are I know.
I hate it with every breath I breathe.
Because it is the enemy of Jesus Christ.
And mother is in your house pray it
out.
If it's in your family pray it out.
If it's in your nation pray it out.
You lose every shred of freedom once it
gets a grip.
And have you ever prayed for the women
who through no fault of their own have
got to live under it?
The women of Poland?
The women of Russia?
The heartbreaking women of China?
And as you in your freedom rejoice and
watch your children grow.
Break your heart for the women who can't.
I believe God is going to ask some
of us that although we might be busy
he's going to expect more of us.
We're going to do a little more for
Jesus Christ and maybe a little less for
ourselves.
Because you know dear mother God isn't going
to ask for all those dustings of chairs.
He isn't going to ask for about all
the time that was spent on doing that
one particular thing.
There is not one of us here who
hasn't at least 5, 10 or 15 minutes
to give to God.
You're not all that hard work dear friend.
I come from the east and I know.
We work out there and if you think
you work well I'm sorry but you don't.
Oh no you don't.
Not according to our set.
Where we have got to do every single
thing and yet we do far more for
our God than you do.
Will you wake up?
Laziness, selfishness, self-willedness, jealousy and criticism is
there instead of something which should be love
and joy and peace.
Throw them out dear friend.
Throw overboard these old things that shouldn't be.
Stop criticising.
Get out and pray.
Stop picking holes in your neighbour.
Pray for us.
Do a good deed for us.
God put you and I on earth not
just to eat, drink and mind your own
business but to love and pour out love
and to go out as his representative in
a world that is sick with sin.
God might ask us to go and do
something.
Where?
How?
I don't know.
I don't know you enough to even suggest.
All I know is that my God is
love and he longs that love should be
poured out.
A person inside Christ is new and that
new creation belonging to God does what God
tells them.
It may be back in your own home,
in that office, in that school, wherever God
has put you as he has put me
but it will be for his glory and
it will be so that he can give
us an understanding and what I call a
vision of what to pray for and how
to pray.
And this morning to us shall we accept
the responsibility that God has given to us?
There used to be a saying when I
was a little girl, I don't know whether
it still goes, the hand that rocks the
cradle rules the world.
Mother, you have a tremendous power.
You hold in your hand a future president
or a future great woman for God or
the reverse.
Don't blame your government.
Don't blame the times in which you live.
Don't blame your church or your minister if
something goes wrong in your child's life or
in yours.
Blame yourself.
God gave to you and me this morning
power.
The power that I have tried terribly hard
to tell you if only in a story
that I claim.
I claim for my children the power of
God.
They shall be what you want Lord.
They shall tell the truth.
They shall be those witnesses for you where
I cannot stand.
And may you be as proud of your
children today as I am proud of mine.
Not because they have done what you or
their father wanted but because they have done
what God wanted.
Mother, one of the last places I visited
in Red China not so very long ago
was a filthy, stinking, horrid prison.
It was to see what was once a
pretty little girl.
She is my daughter.
She has already been there for nine whole
years.
I'm terribly proud of my girl in prison.
She needn't be there of course.
And then you say why doesn't she get
out?
She refuses to bow to any but Christ.
Mother, are you going to be as proud
of her as I am?
I won't.
If you want to be, give your girl
her.
She might not find the husband you long.
She might not do what you hoped.
You will break your heart over the longing
for her and for the love that you
want her to endure.
But you'll be so proud because you will
know God has chosen her and you will
know that in that filthy prison there is
at least one witness for Christ that only
death will wipe out.
Mother, I stood one day on an open
market square which is now the execution ground
in the middle of a very large city
in the southwest of China.
I stood with a group of men and
women and we're breaking our hearts because in
the middle of that market square are our
sons and our daughters, 15 of them.
They're only just over 20 and they are
there to die.
Friend, they don't shoot them in red China,
they chop off their head.
Mother, wake up!
Communism is evil, it's wicked.
Let it in and you will go with
it.
You shut up!
Communism came from hell.
Speak Chinese and go and live in Peking.
Go to Peking and live there.
Enjoy yourself.
Get caught in a prison and you'll know
what I'm saying is true.
Women, wake up!
Listen to the truth.
I stood on the market square and I
watched.
Did you watch your son die, woman?
Did you watch your son die?
Because I did.
Get up and say so.
I defy you.
Get up!
A person inside Christ is new and only
in Christ is there truth and unity.
Friends, as we pray, would you let God
challenge you?
Would you let God speak the truth to
you?
Would you take it from the heart of
Clarice Hayward who defy anybody?
The communism is of the devil.
Only in Christ is there freedom.
I'm willing to die sooner than give in
and not defy anybody, whoever they are, wherever
they are, to defy Christ.
Women, this is the truth and today you
give to your child what you choose, lies
or truth.
Shall we bow our heads and shall we
before the great almighty God ask him to
speak to us and show us truth?
I'm not here to argue.
I love the Lord Jesus Christ with all
my heart and I hate the ideology of
communism with every breath I breathe because I
know it is evil, it is stinking, it
is sick, it is devilish and I long
for you who are mothers, the freedom that
only Christ can give.
And as we pray, would you give yourself
to him?
Would you ask him to teach you how
to pray?
Would you ask him to teach you how
to give?
Would you ask him to teach you the
right sense of values?
The things of earth count for nothing.
It is your soul and Christ.
Shall we pray?
Dear loving heavenly father, you who are love,
you who are peace, you who came down
from heaven to die on Calvary that men
might live, break our hearts before thee, that
we may know that only in thee is
truth, only in thee is peace.
Oh God we cry to thee this morning
for thy love that it may pour through
our hearts that we might be willing to
get inside of you and become your new
creation, that over and through us there may
be thy holy spirit in such a way
that we can go out and spread it
to others.
Oh God we bring these we love to
thee, we bring our sons to thee, how
we long that they might be straight, true,
loving men for thee.
Oh God break our hearts for them that
we may give them thy truth.
We pray thee for our daughters, for our
little babies, oh in thy love Lord teach
us how to pray, give us strength, courage
and wisdom to put their feet on this
thy book that they might go out straight,
firm, true, men and women whom others will
look up to and trust because we've not
only loved them but given them truth in
thee.
Oh Lord Jesus hear our prayer, we pray
thee today for the women who in their
thousands behind those iron curtains break their heart.
Oh God to those who are mothers break
and pour upon us so much love that
we can pour out to them.
We think of those lonely mothers in China,
we think of the mothers through Russia, we
think of those in Poland and Hungary.
Oh God we truly know you love them,
then teach us how to pray for them
and in spirit stand by them.
We pray thee for the young people who
know nothing of thy love.
Lord Jesus may we get moved and alerted
and challenged that they to know today might
know thou art God.
There is a Jesus who loves them.
We are on this side pleading and praying
for them.
Lord Jesus as today we stand in freedom
give to us as women courage to stand
and keep our freedom and God teach us
how to pray and to work and to
do and to be and to give that
this land might retain its freedom.
God we pray thee keep Australia free.
All we plead with thee show us truth
and keep these my sisters free.
May they never have to know what we
have had.
May they never have to watch what we
have watched.
Oh Lord let them keep their babies and
we plead with thee keep their freedom.
We ask this because we know thou art
a God of love, a God of justice
and a God of peace and that one
day we shall stand with ease we laugh.
Who will come from behind iron curtains into
the freedom and liberty of your love to
give thee honour to give thee all that
is thy due of glory and praise and
we will thank thee and praise thee for
Jesus sake.
Amen.
Dear friends I pray that this morning God
in his own way will speak to you.
To us who are mothers we have already
broken our hearts.
I pray that to you that will never
be this same kind of experience.
That to you who are free you might
remain free and that as a new creation
in Jesus Christ you will be willing to
go out as his and his alone representative.
That somebody through you might find Jesus Christ
and the joy that will fill your heart
will then flow onto theirs and you will
know that God has done for you what
you ask and I know the joy as
it spreads to your family and through your
family to those fellowships and those churches and
out into this your nation and your people
and may God bless you and may you
never have to experience the heartache the sorrow
the loneliness of the mothers of China of
the young people of China who are not
free.
The following story was given by Gladys Alwin
before her address in the Albert Strait Methodist
Church.
To some of us there had been given
great joys but also great heartaches and there
was a time when some of us wondered
how we would be able to stand some
of the testings and the trials that God
was putting us through but I wonder how
many of us have really come down to
rock bottom with Jesus Christ and been able
to prove that he and he alone can
hold and does hold.
When the red authorities came in to take
over China some of us were in a
very large university city in the west and
in that particular city and there were quite
a number of universities but in one section
of one of those universities there were 500
students and to each one of those students
the life in the university represented learning a
future a hope they were there for the
same purpose as our young people go to
our universities here in these lands of yours
and to each one of those students there
was handed out by the authorities a large
form much larger than this piece of paper
on it there were rows and rows of
questions I could tell you those questions if
I wanted to I know them but the
student has to sit down and answer them
all now they're very confusing some of them
are embarrassing and many of them the student
does not know the answer but he's got
to find an answer that's what he's there
for and so as you go down and
down and down perspiring and worrying you can
almost miss a little row of words right
along the bottom of the form so small
looking so unimportant but the most important question
of all and as near as I can
give it to you back from Chinese into
English this is what it says and at
this moment right now what position are you
in if for put a circle if against
put a cross now you're not asked are
you a Christian they're not as clever as
that or as stupid maybe no what position
means just what manner are your thoughts and
your heart in if for is for the
government and to you who have had no
indoctrination this needs just a little explaining I
suppose to you it would be quite easy
oh put your little dot why I didn't
put that government into power and I may
not agree with it but I can't help
it being there and after all God who
is God must have allowed them to get
that power so I suppose I better just
put my little dot and be full now
friend be very careful with your thoughts do
you really believe it's as easy as that
do you believe in men who deny God
you're going to stand for men who say
Christ never lived you're going to stand for
men who everything they touch flows with blood
cruel and horrible are you going to put
a dot going to have courage enough to
put your cross and go outside them and
defy them friend it takes an awful lot
of courage they're only students remember of all
500 students every single one had begun their
educational life in a Christian school in the
old days there were no others if they
had ever been sick then they had been
attended to in a Christian hospital because in
the same way in the old days there
were no other kind of hospitals only those
opened and kept by the missionary but that
doesn't mean to say they were all Christians
when the authorities took in the papers and
counted them there were 300 circles or little
dots there were 200 cross 200 boys and
girls in their late teens or early 20s
had dared to defy the government well we'll
see and so the authorities they called their
circolites as we call them together and in
a large place than the university campus they
gave them a talk they gave to those
students all the power necessary except take life
that means they weren't to kill anyone but
they had got within the next six weeks
to pull those Christians over on to their
thoughts and so for the next six weeks
other people outside watched nasty little teasing hurried
little tricks all those things that do happen
when young people are filled with fear and
then the forms were handed out again and
this time when they were taken and counted
the authorities from whom we know all this
discovered there were fewer circles there were more
crosses and so they said well now how
on earth did they manage that here we
gave them all the power possible they could
do exactly what they like except kill them
but they hadn't managed to pull one over
into our circle but those on the side
of the cross had managed to pull some
of our people into their plan and purpose
and so they set out to find out
how this had been done and they discovered
that if you had gone at we'll say
eight o'clock in the morning across that
very lovely university campus you would have found
groups of boys and girls these students with
their bibles under their arms and probably a
packet of books in the other hand making
their way to some place where behind a
lecture hall door or down a passage or
in some corridor of the little group met
they read from this the word of god
and they prayed and they poured out their
hearts to the great god and they worshipped
another awful day was going to begin and
they would fail this god whom they loved
and whom they knew loved them unless he
poured out help and strength and courage to
them well all went well for two or
three days and then are the other side
found us and they appeared behind the lecture
hall doors and down the corridors and so
there was only pandemonium there could be no
bible reading and no prep and so the
christian students decided to go at seven and
again all went well for a little while
until the other side went and so the
christian students decided to go at six and
again two days went by and the other
side went and broke up their little groups
and prayer meetings and so they went at
five and by the end of that six
weeks the authorities themselves discovered that many of
those boys and girls were spending two two
and a half three and at the most
four hours a night for sleep that at
all costs they had an hour with god
before the day began so the authorities said
oh well that soon settles well if it's
this bible reading of this praying business we'll
soon settle that divide them up separate them
and so out into that very lovely university
campus there was sent one christian student accompanied
by 10 communist students and for the next
three months all contact with the outside world
from that one little christian had got to
be made through 10 others who were against
him or her in every way and on
every point and to those of us who
watched we nearly broke our heart it was
so unfair it was so cruel the 10
they could take it in turns to eat
to sleep and to study and the little
christian was only one and we pleaded with
the lord to let them free or to
some way comfort and help we were not
allowed to speak to them or even to
see them and then there came a day
when the authorities did not again hand out
forms but when some of us found ourselves
lining the city streets and a few of
us found that we had very important places
and we were stood all along what was
once a market square which had now been
turned into an execution ground and our hearts
just failed us and we said oh lord
oh but crept it isn't what we think
and then we awoke to discover that standing
in a long line all down the middle
of the market square were these 200 odd
boys and girls and they're there not to
put a name a sign or a name
on a piece of paper there to answer
in person over on the other side of
the market square was a man with a
paper the list of their names why the
first name on that list happened to be
the name of a girl i do not
know a pretty shy little thing who i
could tell you all about if i wanted
to born in one of those lovely courtyards
up in peking come at the end of
five big brothers who'd all of course gone
to school a little sister wanted to go
to school too and the only school around
was a christian school and so in the
christian school she had found jesus christ and
drawn in one by one the five big
brothers and then mother and then father and
then the servant even to the tradesman who'd
come to the back door a lovely shy
little thing always away in the back somewhere
never quarreling or arguing one of those rather
dividend pretty little things 17 years old jong
hwa young stand forth answer in person what
position are you now in she was away
a long down almost at the end of
that last and as we watched we could
see this rather slim little thing coming very
calmly and quietly up past all of her
fellow students and we said oh lord it's
so unfair she's so small and so weak
why didn't you choose someone bigger and better
and more capable but he evidently hadn't and
before long here she was standing up all
alone facing thousands of people because to these
sorts of things in china every household has
to send at least one representative and for
the moment it looked as if she was
swaying perhaps she's going to cry perhaps she's
going to faint or give in it's just
too much for her simple little hat but
oh no in just two minutes with a
little toss of her head she had absolutely
command of the situation and this is exactly
what she said sir when i went for
my three months indoctrination i thought jesus christ
was real i thought this book was true
sir i returned from my three months indoctrination
i know jesus christ is real i know
this book is true and calmly putting the
bible under her arms down she got and
walked slowly calmly back into her place in
the last one by one by one each
in their own and separate and different way
they took their stand and friends they died
right there tonight that they died doesn't matter
to you how they died is beside the
point to you the challenge is do you
believe your god is real do you believe
this bible is true then friend you've got
to prove it to somebody away with all
your nonsense all your nervous ideas all your
little plans and organising that keep you tied
down all the conventions that you're afraid to
break all the habits that you've got into
i believe my god is real i believe
this book is true and dear friend i
pray that to every single one of you
tonight that little girl will not have died
in vain that the testimony from a little
chinese student in the Sichuan university might ring
over this earth for truth and freedom that
you might have courage to stand where god
puts you for the purpose that he asked
that somebody might know that god is real
and the word of god is true