Stories of Faith - Episode 71

Birmingham is a post-Civil War city founded in 1871 in response to the discovery of one of the world’s richest mineral deposits of iron, coal, and limestone. The abundance of these raw materials led to a thriving steel industry, and Birmingham became the “Pittsburgh of the South.” In the early twentieth century, the leaders of Birmingham commissioned a statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and the forge, to represent the city at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. Today, Vulcan stands 56-feet tall high atop Red Mountain overlooking the city, a symbol of Birmingham’s history. Colossus-like, Vulcan is the largest cast-iron statue in the world, welcoming thousands of visitors every day from near and far.

But Birmingham is also known for another statue, one less prominent and auspicious. It is not the image of a Roman deity standing tall and proud, looking upward at the sky with a spear in his hand. No, this statue depicts an older man, shoulders slumping, hat in hand, kneeling in prayer. The man is James Alexander Bryan (1863-1941), who was known affectionately as “Brother Bryan.” For more than fifty years he served as pastor of Birmingham’s Third Presbyterian Church. Catherine Marshall once referred to him as “the patron saint of Birmingham.” If anyone ever deserved that title, it was surely he.

Though well-trained at Princeton Theological Seminary, Brother Bryan was not known for heady sermons or church politics. Rather, he was dearly loved as the tender shepherd of the entire city. He ministered to everyone who crossed his path, rich and poor, black and white, the mighty and the meek. He reached out to students, nurses, and factory workers. He was the unofficial chaplain to the fire and police departments. His heart went out especially to the poor, the destitute, the jobless, the hungry, the lonely, the lost. In the spirit of Francis of Assisi, Brother Bryan served those on the margins of society. Born in South Carolina during the American Civil War, he grew up in the era of segregation and Jim Crow laws. He knew injustice when he saw it and he determined to treat everyone he met with dignity and respect. As a minister in the city that later would be called “Bombingham,” Brother Bryan became an apostle of racial reconciliation. He believed that every person was an image-bearer of God and thus infinitely dear and precious in the sight of the heavenly Father.

What was the secret of Brother Bryan’s ministry? By all accounts, it was the spirit and practice of prayer. Hunter B. Blakely, whose book, Religion in Shoes, tells the story of Bryan’s life, reports that “Let us pray” were the words most frequently upon the lips of this beloved pastor. “No man has ever believed more implicitly in prayer than he, and never were prayers more unconventional. Prayer seems to him as natural as for a man to breathe the air. Why not, he would reason, for is God not the most real thing in the universe?”

Brother Bryan was a promiscuous pray-er who prayed with thousands in hospitals, prisons, and halfway houses. He prayed with countless others at weddings and funerals, over the telephone, on the sidewalk, in the mills and factories of the city, and in his pastor’s study, which was known as Birmingham’s “confessional.” It was said that “the fragrance of his prayer life permeated the whole city.” His prayers were often short and to the point, but they were more than pious platitudes. He knew that prayer was a vital component of what St. Paul called “the full armor of God” (Eph. 6:11). Every prayer involved spiritual combat, and one of his most characteristic prayers was this one: “O Lord, help us to fight the devil!”

One of the most interesting prayer stories from Brother Bryan’s life came from one Thursday night when he was walking home alone after dark. Suddenly, a man jumped out of an alley, pushed a gun into his face, and said, “Hands up.” Brother Bryan complied as the man rifled through his pockets, taking his watch and the little cash he had on him. When the robbery was done and before the thief could depart, he heard the minister say, “Brother, let us pray.” As Brother Bryan prayed, the thief lowered his gun and placed the watch and stolen money back into the hands of his victim.

Brother Bryan died in 1941, but his legacy still lives on in many ways: in the church he served, which is still a dynamic center of Christian witness in the heart of the city; in Brother Bryan Mission, which reaches out in Jesus’s name to homeless and displaced persons in Birmingham; and in the silent witness to the power of prayer seen in the statue of Brother Bryan, well placed for all to see at a busy intersection “where cross the crowded ways of life.” Today, in the valley far below the feet of the great Vulcan kneels the humble pastor. His life’s work is inscribed at the statue’s base in bronze and stone: 

Fervent in prayer,

Consecrated in life,

Sympathetic in counsel,

Friend of the friendless,

the sorrowing, the poor and rich:

He went about doing good.

What does the god of fire have to do with the man of prayer? The true God is called a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24, Heb. 12:29). In the Bible, fire and prayer often belong together, as when the prophet Elijah prayed and fire fell from heaven on Mount Carmel, and when the distraught disciples prayed in the Upper Room and Pentecostal fire set the place ablaze. God’s work is done in the context of such prayer. Surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses—including Brother Bryan—God’s people are given to know that, in the words of James, “the effectual fervent, fiery prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James 4:16, KJV).

Source: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/01/god-of-fire-man-of-prayer

Stories of Faith - Episode 70

The Man With 2,347 Names on His Prayer List

I’ve come across the account of a man named Ding Li-Mei, whose story will inspire your prayer life. Ding and his family were reached for Christ in the 1800s by the foreign missions efforts of American Presbyterians. As a child, Ding was responsive to the Gospel and was mentored by a woman named Julia Mateer, who wielded great influence over many Chinese students of that time.

When he was in his twenties, the Boxer Rebellion broke out, which was a time of great suffering, especially for Christian believers. Ding was arrested for his faith and carried off to the magistrate, where he was given 500 stripes with a cane that left his back a mass of raw bleeding flesh. Suffering unspeakable pain, he was carried back to his filthy cell to die. But an army of prayer warriors interceded for him, and he was rescued.

Recovering from his wounds, Ding enrolled in a Chinese university where, in February 1910, during four days of meetings he conducted, 116 students offered themselves to the Lord for fulltime vocational service. As Ding saw God using his efforts, he realized the Lord was calling him to devote his life to working with students. In the summer of 1910, he was instrumental in forming the Chinese Student Volunteer Movement for the Ministry, and he became its first traveling secretary. His impact on Chinese university students was so great that Dr. John Mott said, “In recent years he has influenced the largest number of students to devote their lives to the Christian ministry ever secured by one mam during the history of the Church in Asia.” He came to be called the “Moody of China” and was said in his lifetime to be “the greatest evangelistic force that missions in China have ever produced.”

In February 1918, Ding wrote an article for The Missionary Review of the World, entitled “The Prayer-Life of Chinese Christians,” which described the prayer habits of Chinese Christians.

“The Gospel has now been preached in China for over a century, in her twenty-two provinces… Christian believers and inquirers number more than half a million. God has opened very wide the door for preaching the Word and for winning men to Him. Western and Chinese Christians alike will unite in acknowledging that the chief explanation of this is to be found in the great volume of prayer for China’s redemption…. The prayer-life of Chinese Christians has commanded my closest attention from my youth up.”

Ding Li-Mei went on to describe some of the prayer-practices of the Chinese church, including how cottage prayer meetings occurred across the nation the first week of every year; prayer retreats held by various Christian organizations; and the personal prayer habits of many godly men and women. He gave the example of an elderly woman named Mrs. Liang who lived in Shantung, and who was uneducated and very poor. When she came to Christ, she was the only Christian in her family or village, but she prayed with exceeding zeal. “Now more than eighty in her family and over twenty others in her village are Christians,” he said.

He told of a Methodist woman in Peking, Miss Pan Yuan Ying, who was much given to prayer. Every morning she prayed for at least 135 people by name. “She has a weekly cycle of prayer which she follows day by day….”

Then Ding wrote:

“That brings me to my own personal testimony. From boyhood I have taken delight in conversing with my friends on prayer and Bible study. Even when in school I joined two or three of my most intimate schoolmates in secret meetings for prayer and the study of Holy Scripture…. I spent three years in theological studies, giving myself wholly for a search for Truth. During these years the number of fellow-pray-ers grew, until by 1899, my prayer list included 105 names. This list has continued to grow until now, in 1917, it numbers 2,347...”

“As I think back over twenty years of experience in intercessory prayer, the longer I practice it, the more its importance grows on me. I do not know all the benefits which others may have received through these prayers, nor does it matter that I do not. I cannot refrain from enumerating ten out of the uncounted blessings which I myself have experienced in the practice of this habit:

1. I am so much with the Lord that He seems my closest Friend.
2. My spiritual life is refreshed like the sprouting grain with rain.
3. Justice, peace and joy constantly fill my soul as the light fills the heavens and I get uncommon strength.
4. When I study the Bible, I seem to see heaven opened, and realize that I am having communion with the heart of Christ Himself.
5. When I talk about the Gospel in private or in public, I have an unshakable confidence that the hand of the Lord is supporting me.
6. My love has steadily expanded until I now am conscious of no man in the universe whom I cannot love.
7. When I fall into sin, whether secret or open, whether great or small, I experience an immediate rebuke of conscience, which drives me at once to confession and repentance.
8. In all my work for the Lord, although the results are not alike evident or immediate, I do not know of any effort that has been in vain.
9. Intercessory prayer has greatly enlarged my circles of friends among God’s co-workers, and through the Lord’s kind care these friendships will never cease…
10. And best of all, I am not the only one who is trying to persevere in intercession. Others in my own and in other Christian organizations, both men and women, in church school and ministry, have likewise banded together in similar covenants of prayer these same twenty years.”

A Presbyterian tract about Ding’s life said, “What is the secret of his influence and power? It is neither scholarship nor rhetoric, but prayer. Hours every day does he spend in prayer. He has a book he ever carries with him, in which he has the names and addresses of over 2000 persons, with whom he has covenanted to pray each for the other by name every day. While sitting on the platform during a service, walking on the street, riding in a rickshaw, boat or car, he uses these otherwise unoccupied minutes to pray for these 2000 people…. While in my home, I had occasion to pass his bedroom; it was long past midnight, and I found the light of his lamp still streaming through the transom. When, the next morning, I playfully chided him for keeping such late hours, he replied, ‘When we separated last night, I still had 500 friends for whom I had not prayed yesterday, and I could not go to sleep without first carrying them, by name, to the throne of God in prayer.’”

In reading about this man, I don’t feel compelled to have 2000 people on my prayer list. But I am powerfully motivated toward greater faithfulness toward those who are on my prayer list and to maintain ever-closer constancy in my walk with God. I’m eager to meet Ding Li-Mei in heaven, though I suspect I’ll have to wait in line a while.

Source: https://www.robertjmorgan.com/uncategorized/the-man-with-2347-names-on-his-prayer-list/