Stories of Faith - Episode 18

Culled from Living With Eternity In View narrated by Gbile Akanni

"I have learnt not to struggle with men for anything. I remember one incident when I was a lecturer. The Registrar of my college decided to allocate the house where I was living to another colleague of mine, without even notifying me. I was sitting in my living room when the man came in with his wife. He was very arrogant. He said they had come to inspect the place. I showed him round the house. He said he wanted to see the bedroom. I took him to my bedroom and he nodded his head as he looked around. When they were through, I served them some beverages for refreshment. They were surprised because they expected me to be hostile to them.

After they left, I went to God in prayer and He told me that my time in that particular house was over. I asked Him what to do about it and He told me to do nothing. He said I should go and take a meeting for Him in another town that weekend. He told me that by Monday, a house would be ready for me. When I came back, it happened just as the Lord told me. By Monday, the Registrar called for me. He apologized to me that they have to move me from my present residence. He said he knew I must be very upset. He called for the Estate Manager and directed him to look for another place for me. I told him I was not upset at all.

I don’t know how the Lord blinded them all. They had planned to move me to an inferior house. But the house the Estate Manager gave us was far better than the one I was leaving. The sitting room was very large, very suitable for my Bible study classes with some of the disciples. It had three bedrooms and a study. The furniture was new and also very good. If they had taken a good look at that house, I know they would not have given it to me. But they were not the ones who gave it to me. God used them to give me the house. Their intention was to victimize and humiliate me. But the Lord used them to promote me instead."

Stories of Faith - Episode 17

Narrated by David Shestakov. Culled from "Ready to Suffer: One Pastor’s Story of Persecution"

I was known by the nickname “Nightmare” to the young people who knew me. After becoming one of the leading water polo players in my native Uzbekistan as a young person, I wandered from athletics after the collapse of the former Soviet Union and fell into the drugs, gangs and crime that were rampant in that period of the early 1990s.

I grew up without a father. My mother, a communist, was so concerned about my downward turn into drugs and crime that she went to an evangelical church and prayed for me: God, if You exist, save my son.

At my mother’s insistence, I went to church. A missionary from America who was at the church later told me: “I thought you came to kill me because of the demonic look on your face.” In the church, many could not believe I had come. But Jesus touched my heart. I cried for about 30 minutes, with many in that congregation of 70 people also shedding tears. I gave my life to Jesus that day, and I covenanted with God that I was ready to suffer for the sake of the Gospel. But I had no idea what lay ahead.

Within six months of my conversion, in 1993, my wife and I went as missionaries to Andijan, Uzbekistan. Andijan is one of the most Islamized cities in Uzbekistan, where more than 96 percent of the people are Muslim, according to Pew Research. Evangelicals comprise less than 1 percent.

We started a church in Andijan and it began to slowly grow. The authorities immediately became concerned and began to call me to the local prosecutor’s office to discuss what we were doing. By 1997, the authorities issued a decree requiring churches to register with the government. We didn’t register, and I had to go underground. At that time, many churches went into hiding as local imams and mullahs were attempting to report unregistered churches to the police.

In 2005, with a president who had singled out Christian missionaries as a harmful cultural influence, the government passed a law prohibiting Christian evangelism, missionary work, the distribution of religious literature and gatherings in homes.

Amid increased persecution, I was arrested in 2007, charged with “extremism and proselytism” (winning converts from Islam), and “illegal religious formation.” I was sentenced to four years in prison.

Almost every day, it was evident God was supernaturally helping me.

As hard as it was for me, it was harder on my wife, Marina, and our daughters—Masha, Sasha and Vera. They had to travel more than 600 miles to visit me, but they never missed a visitation. Marina had memorized many Psalms and would recite them to me, a blessing because the Bible was forbidden during my four years in prison.

Psalm 118:17 comforted me from my first days in jail: “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.” Often, I was on the verge of death, and at several points I wished I could die. But God’s mercy prevailed.

I turned 40 years old in jail, praying that day for a gift from God but not telling anyone about my birthday. I was compelled against my will by the prison staff to go to the library with the other inmates that day. I thought I’d read everything worth reading there. While scouring the shelves, I spotted a book titled The Path to a New Life. I looked at it and my heart began to beat faster. It was the New Testament, concealed enough by the title that the censor must have mistaken it for a self-help book.

When I came to the checkout table, the librarian asked me: “Have you decided to mend your way?” I said: “Yes. Yes I have!” That day, I received the best birthday gift ever! For the next eight months, I read the Word of God secretly before it was finally confiscated. I carry thanksgiving in my heart for all the Christians who prayed for me. I received thousands of letters with words of comfort. And during this period, I received fewer beatings and punishments.

After the New Testament was confiscated, which was near the end of my four-year sentence, I was sent to a disciplinary cell, which is usually a sure way to lengthen one’s sentence by several years. I was expected to receive another three years in prison. I hardly had any strength in my body, and the disciplinary cell was nearly as frigid as the sub-zero temperatures outside. I couldn’t sleep at night because of the cold; sleep wasn’t allowed during the day. In my misery, expecting death to come knocking, I was saying my goodbyes to my family in my mind. I recall using all my energy to repeat the Lord’s Prayer.

Then one day the cell door abruptly opened and the officer took me to the commanding officer, who sent me to a ward. The next day I met with my wife, and then I was released. I was free!

The men who escorted me to meet my wife told me it was a miracle that I had been released after receiving disciplinary confinement so late in my jail term.

“There were no such moments in the history of this jail,” they told me, marveling. God again had helped me. After inquiring about who might have used political leverage to attain my release, we could find no answers. A U.S. congressman had written on my behalf, but so had European politicians and human rights advocates.

Finally, one pastor told me: “Why do you want to know? Maybe it was a call from Heaven!”

After my release, I was under surveillance for two years and couldn’t go to church, preach or attend a public meeting. I had to be home no later than 9 p.m. Also, I had to report to the police regularly, and our house was watched.

After learning that surveillance could continue another three years, my family and I fled to safety to the city of Kiev, Ukraine. We spent three years there waiting for U.S. refugee status. During that time, we started a church in Kiev. Today, the churches in Andijan and in Kiev are growing, led by pastors who preach the Gospel. God taught me lasting lessons during my persecution, not the least of which is this: He is always good.

It was not easy to understand then, but looking back I am full of gratitude to my Lord. I thank Him that He molded my character, gave me a loving family, true friends, a dedicated church and thousands of prayer warriors.

What am I learning today? As with each day, I am learning to trust my loving God. A few months into our new life in America, it is not easy. But we rest in this: “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

We dream about the ministry and are praying for opportunities to start a Russian-language church in America. And we continue to pray for safe houses to be available for Christians caught in persecution inside the former Soviet nations.

Stories of Faith - Episode 16

The Life of David Livingstone (as narrated and paraphrased by Ravi Zacharias)

David Livingstone was born in Blantyre, Scotland in 1813. He was born into a home where his father used to put him on his knees and read to him stories of great missionary exploits, particularly that of Karl Gützlaff, the Dutch missionary who doubled up as a medical missionary too. Young David used to look into his father’s eyes and say, “You know, daddy, one day I’ll be a man like that. I want to be a missionary. I want to be a doctor. I want to serve God.”

David Livingstone got to his knees one day and said this prayer, “Lord, Send me anywhere, only go with me. Lay any burden on me, only sustain me. Sever any ties, but the ties that bind me to your service and to your heart,” and the words of God came to him “Lo, I am with you always, even to the very end of the age.”

He packed his bags and went off to Africa. And when he took one glimpse of Africa from a distance, he penned in his journal these words: “The haunting specter of the smoke of a thousand villages in the morning sun has burned within my heart.”

He married a woman of the famous Moffat Family – Mary was her name. Her father was a great missionary. They went to Africa. But David Livingstone’s life was that of an explorer and he would move from place to place and his only goal was Jesus in the hearts and lives of men and women – thousands of them.

Finally his wife and his young family couldn’t keep up with him anymore. Some of his children were dying out of sickness and disease so he said to his wife, “Mary, why don’t you them home, and I will see you shortly and spend some time with you. It’s too dangerous for us to go on.”

So he sent his dear wife Mary back home and letters would take months to exchange, but some of the fondest letters of love and romance were sent between David and Mary and you know when he saw her the next time? Not five weeks. Not five months. Five years.

Five years later when he set eyes upon his wife, she could not recognize him because at one stage in his jungle travels going to preach he walked into a branch of a tree that had completely blinded him in one eye and marred the other. His face had been burned under the African sun to a crisp of leather and his skin, which had not been pigmented for it, had been roasted to the point that his body could not take it any longer. His face marred and scarred and his eye blinded and at one time he had been attacked by a lion that had torn one of his shoulders apart. He miraculously escaped.

Now she saw her husband hobbling in with a marred face and a disfigured physical countenance. Hours before he arrived, they had buried his father. David wept because he had longed to tell his dad firsthand of the stories his father had only told him thirdhand.

Biographical sketches tell us that when David Livingstone walked into any university in the British Isles, students and faculty would rise to a standing ovation because they knew they were standing in the presence of a giant of a man.

Finally he went back to his wife one day and he said, “Mary, the haunting specter of the smoke of a thousand villages in the morning sun is still burning within my heart. We need to go back.” She decided that he should go – she had to be with the children. She said, “When they are all old enough I will join you again, David.” And he set off on his lonely journey to preach to the African people who was so much within his heart.

Finally after a long time, Mary joined him and the day she set foot on African soil, she contracted a disease they had so dreaded she would contract. The very day she set foot on Africa, she got that disease and a few days later, he was burying her.

Lowered into the soil of the African earth there, an eyewitness said David Livingstone knelt beside the grave, weeping his heart out, and they overheard him praying, “My Jesus, my king, my life, my all, I again consecrate my life to thee. I shall place no value on anything I possess or in anything I may do except in relation to thy kingdom and to thy service.”

Through it all came the words of God to my heart, he said, “Lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.”

He picked up his belongings and walked back to his hometown village of Ujiji. When he arrived and went into his little home there, he found that someone had played a cruel joke on him and had stolen his medication that he so needed because his body was racked with pain, untold pain. He walked in constant agony. And they said in one of the very few points in his life, he prayed for himself, he got on his knees and said, “God, you promised you would always be with me! I need that medication if I am to continue preaching the gospel!”

As he prayed, he heard steps, and as the story goes, he saw a pair of feet planted in front of him and his countenance lifted for the first time in a long while – he was looking into the face of a white man who didn’t live in Africa. He said, “Who are you, sir?” And the man replied, “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?” (Those famous words) He said, “Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Livingstone, I’m a press reporter, I’ve been consigned to do a story on your life. I want you to know two things about me. Number one, I’m the biggest swaggering atheist on the face of the earth. Please don’t try to convert me. Number two, somebody sent some medication for you.”

David said, “Give me the medication please.”

So Mr. Henry M. Stanley started to travel with David Livingstone. Four months later, the biggest swaggering atheist on the face of the earth knelt down on African soil and gave his life to Jesus Christ.

One of the best biographies you’ll ever read on David Livingstone – two volumes entitled “Livingstone of Africa” by Henry M. Stanley. Stanley said, “The power of that Christ life was awesome and I had to buckle in. I could not hold out any longer.”

Finally his body began to shrivel with high temperatures and pain (they used to carry him around from village to village on a stretcher). One day, preaching from a stretcher, literally trembling, he finally looked at two of his national brothers and said, “Please take me back home. I am very very ill. I’m very tired, I need some sleep.” They brought him back to his home and were about to spill him on to the bed when he said, “No, please help me on to my knees.”

Livingstone buckled down to his knees by the side of his bed and clasped his hands and started to pray. His prayers were so profound, his sanctuary was so unique that his African brothers felt it was blasphemy to stay in his single union/communion with God and they stepped out of his little room.

Then somebody came running and said, “I need to see Mr. Livingstone for a moment.” They said, “Sshh! Quiet, please. He’s praying.” Five minutes went by, they looked in. He was still on his knees. Several minutes went back, they looked in. He was still on his knees. After a protracted period of time went by, they looked in. He was still on his knees.

One of them felt that the man was too tired to continue to pray. He needed to get some sleep. He walked over to him and one of them shook him by the shoulders and inquired, “Wana? Wana?”

Livingstone fell over. He was dead.

He died exactly the way he had lived – in the presence of his Lord.

He didn’t run from His voice. He didn’t wave a lamp that had no light in it. He didn’t sell a soul for some earthly pleasure. But the haunting spectre of the smoke of a thousand villages had burned itself within his heart so that he could say, “My Jesus, my king, my life, my all, I again consecrate my self to thee.”

Stories of Faith - Episode 15

Mary Carey was the sister of William Carey, the man who has come to be known as the “Father of Modern Missions.” Their father was a weaver in Northamptonshire, England. William and Mary were playmates as children, but as she grew older, she was increasingly affected by a degenerative disease of the spine.

When William Carey left for what would be a lifetime career as a missionary to India, Mary went to live with their sister Ann. For the rest of her life, she depended upon the kindness of her sister’s family for everything that she needed. By the time that she was twenty-five years old, she was paralyzed; she could not move any of her limbs except for her right arm. She was confined to her bedroom for fifty years. For thirty-one of those years, she could not speak.

This is not the life that Mary would have chosen. At one point, she wrote in a letter to her brother, “I wish we may be more conspicuous for God.” Though she never became “conspicuous,” God allowed her to be more influential than she could ever have dreamed. She faithfully interceded for the work going on at Carey’s mission in India. In spite of the fact that she could not speak, Mary led a Bible class, sitting propped up in bed and writing on a slate. Although self-pity must have been a ripe temptation, Mary’s niece wrote that her aunt always felt more for others than for herself.

Mary Carey outlived her brother, but as long as he was living, she wrote him letters. She was his connection to home, and she exhausted herself writing to him all of the details of their family’s news. Not only did these letters help sustain and encourage Carey on the field, Mary’s letters and William’s responses have allowed historians to piece together many of the details of Carey’s life and ministry.

Chronic illness is a heavy cross to bear. Mary was financially dependent upon her brother and physically dependent upon her sister’s family for her entire adult life. But she was emotionally dependent upon the Holy Spirit, who enabled her to think beyond her own difficulties and care for others. Her pastor often said of her, “Her work in her affliction, in its way, was as great as that which her great brother wrought.” William Carey’s life changed India forever. Mary Carey’s life, letters, and prayers changed those around her and left a valuable legacy for those who suffer in body.

Culled from "The Well Squandered Life: Influential Lives of Obscurity"

Stories of Faith - Episode 14

David Brainerd was born in Connecticut in 1718. He lost both of his parents in his youth. He tried his hand at farming for a bit, but he longed for education and entered Yale University when he was twenty-one. Brainerd believed that God was calling him into ministry; his earnest temperament and scholarly disposition boded well for his success in the pastorate.

While David Brainerd was at Yale, George Whitefield preached there. The fires of the Great Awakening sweeping across the country began to burn among the students, leading to great spiritual zeal and, along with it, controversy. The faculty and administration of the university were suspicious of what was termed “enthusiasm.” The students who, for the first time, had developed a taste for spiritual ardor began to question the genuineness of faith in those who were not swept up in the Awakening. Charges of hypocrisy were leveled at various school officials who retaliated by announcing that any such charges would be greeted with expulsion. David Brainerd was overheard to make several ill-judged remarks about members of the faculty, and the university made good its threat by expelling him.

David Brainerd’s expulsion from Yale ended his career as a minister before it began. No matter how he appealed the decision, he could not get reinstated as a student. A recently passed law forbade any minister from being established in Connecticut who had not graduated from Yale, Harvard, or a European university. David Brainerd gave up his dream of being a pastor and instead became something he had never before considered: a missionary to Native Americans.

Brainerd’s constitution and temperament made him a far from ideal choice to be a pioneer missionary. He contracted tuberculosis while at Yale and had been physically weakened ever since. Brainerd suffered greatly from what was then known as melancholy, which we now call depression. Living alone in remote villages where no one spoke his language exacerbated his tendency toward depression. But what David Brainerd lacked in natural qualifications, he made up for in dedication and earnestness. As Ruth Tucker puts it, “Brainerd was a zealot.”

For several years, David Brainerd had very little success in his mission work. He did not speak the language of the tribes to which he preached, and his interpreters had little spiritual understanding. He moved several times and finally ended up in Crossweeksung, New Jersey, where he found greater openness among the Iroquois of the Susquehanna Valley. In 1745, revival broke out in Crossweeksung, and, over the course of a year and a half, Brainerd saw more than a hundred Native Americans repent and believe the Gospel. He helped start a school and church. But in 1747, Brainerd’s health broke down. He died of tuberculosis in the home of Jonathan Edwards, under the watch care of Edwards’s daughter (whom he had hoped to marry).

One would have expected the memory of David Brainerd’s short stint as a missionary to be relegated to the annals of missiology. But Brainerd kept a journal, and Jonathan Edwards was so inspired by the journal that he published it along with a brief biography of his young friend. The Life of David Brainerd has never since been out of print. It has influenced countless ministers, missionaries, and lay people, including John Wesley, David Livingstone, William Carey, Robert Murray M’Cheyne, Andrew Murray, and Jim Eliot.

David Brainerd’s journal is a record of one long struggle. While one might not expect such an account to inspire missionaries, it gives hope to those who recognize their own weaknesses. Brainerd’s perseverance in the face of depression, loneliness, illness, and perceived failure—obstacles faced so frequently in ministry—gives courage to the downtrodden. Though he was cut off from the life that would have made him comfortable and thrust into a ministry that seemed doomed to failure, God had a plan to use him. I doubt that there are any among us who have not been influenced by someone shaped by the life of David Brainerd.

Culled from "The Well Squandered Life: Influential Lives of Obscurity"

Stories of Faith - Episode 13

Culled from http://www1.cbn.com

Reinhard Bonnke is the son of a German pastor. He gave his life to the Lord at the age of nine and heard the call to the African mission fields before he was a teenager. After attending Bible college in Wales and pastoring in Germany for 7 years, he began his missionary work in Africa. Reinhard began holding tent meetings that accommodated 800 people. As attendance steadily increased, larger tents had to be purchased. In 1984, he commissioned the construction of the world’s largest mobile structure -- a tent capable of seating 34,000. This tent was destroyed in a wind storm just before a major crusade. There was a question as to how to proceed. The team decided to hold the crusade “open air.” Instead of the expected 34,000 attendees, the event saw over 100,000 people, significantly more than the tent would have allowed. Crowds have been exceeding “tent” size ever since.

When Reinhard tells of God calling him to a life of evangelism, he speaks easily about a dialogue they had. It seems God laid out for him what would be expected. And Reinhard told God that he would obey and follow what God was asking of him. Before this extended conversation ended, however, God told him, “You weren’t my first choice.” Reinhard listened. “You weren’t my second choice either.” Later on there was a time when Reinhard hesitated to schedule a specific crusade. He says as he wavered, “God said, ‘You drop the vision and I drop you.” The evangelist attributes the tremendous responses he sees in ministry to simple obedience to what God requires.

Stories of Faith - Episode 12

Culled from www.hopefaithprayer.com, www.jenniferleclaire.org

Most of us know the story of revivalist Charles Finney. He was an attorney-turned-preacher in the early 1800s, declaring he received “a retainer from the Lord Jesus Christ to plead His cause.” During his preaching days in New York, several revivals broke out and spread like wildfire. The greatest moves of God in American history occurred during this season of time. We know Finney, but how many of us know Finney’s partners who labored in prayer? Daniel Nash and Abel Clary were old-school intercessors who were key to the revival that followed Finney’s ministry. We can all look at the life of Daniel Nash and Abel Clary and see an example of how important prayer is to see the kingdom of God revealed. When God would direct where a meeting was to be held, Father Nash would slip quietly into town and seek to get two or three people to enter into a covenant of prayer with him. Sometimes he had with him a man of similar prayer ministry, Abel Clary. Together they would begin to pray fervently for God to move in the community.

One record of such is told by Leonard Ravenhill: “I met an old lady who told me a story about Charles Finney that has challenged me over the years. Finney went to Bolton to minister, but before he began, two men knocked on the door of her humble cottage, wanting lodging. The poor woman looked amazed, for she had no extra accommodations. Finally, for about twenty-five cents a week, the two men, none other than Fathers Nash and Clary, rented a dark and damp cellar for the period of the Finney meetings (at least two weeks), and there in that self-chosen cell, those prayer partners battled the forces of darkness.”

Another record told by Charles Finney himself: “On one occasion when I got to town to start a revival a lady contacted me who ran a boarding house. She said, ‘Brother Finney, do you know a Father Nash? He and two other men have been at my boarding house for the last three days, but they haven’t eaten a bite of food. I opened the door and peeped in at them because I could hear them groaning, and I saw them down on their faces. They have been this way for three days, lying prostrate on the floor and groaning. I thought something awful must have happened to them. I was afraid to go in and I didn’t know what to do. Would you please come see about them?’ “‘No, it isn’t necessary,’ Finney replied. ‘They just have a spirit of travail in prayer.'”

Another states: “Charles Finney so realized the need of God’s working in all his service that he was wont to send godly Father Nash on in advance to pray down the power of God into the meetings which he was about to hold.” Not only did Nash prepare the communities for preaching, but he also continued in prayer during the meetings. “Often Nash would not attend meetings, and while Finney was preaching Nash was praying for the Spirit’s outpouring upon him. Finney stated, ‘I did the preaching altogether, and brother Nash gave himself up almost continually to prayer.’ Often while the evangelist preached to the multitudes, Nash in some adjoining house would be upon his face in an agony of prayer, and God answered in the marvels of His grace. The tears they shed, the groans they uttered are written in the book of the chronicles of the things of God.”

Again, Finney himself wrote of Clary, “Mr. Clary continued as long as I did, and he did not leave until after I had left. He never appeared in public, but he gave himself wholly to prayer.” “Clary had been licensed to preach; but his spirit of prayer was such, he was so burdened with the souls of men, that he was not able to preach much, his whole time and strength being given to prayer,” Finney wrote. “The burden of his soul would frequently be so great that he was unable to stand, and he would writhe in agony. I was well acquainted with him, and knew something of the wonderful spirit of prayer that rested upon him. He was a very silent man, as almost all are who have that powerful spirit of prayer." As history tells it, Finney found Clary’s prayer journal after Clary went on to glory. Recorded within its pages were the chronicles of the prayer burdens the Lord put on his heart. It’s no accident or coincidence that those prayer burdens aligned, one by one, with the order of the blessings poured out on Finney’s ministry and the people who came to his meetings.