An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him.
Today’s
devotional comes from a Chinese house church pastor who was arrested
and held for three weeks just prior to this talk. He says his experience
was going with Christ to the Garden and to the Cross. Today he explains
The Garden:
My arrest was totally unexpected. There was no
warning. I was teaching a seminar in one of our church groups in
northeast China, when in the middle of the afternoon, six policemen
burst in and the next thing I knew I was punched in the stomach and
lying on the floor. One of the policemen put his foot hard on my neck
and I couldn’t move. I was then allowed to get up. Someone rammed me in
the kidneys with a baton and I fell again, gasping from the pain. The
pain was sharp and severe all the way to the police station, and I
couldn’t take anything but the shallowest breaths. It turned out my
digestion was ruined for months.
Although it was unexpected, there
was a strange way in which I had been prepared for it. The night
before, I was praying at midnight for the seminar. I had a list of all
the participants, and was praying for each one. The more I prayed, the
more discouraged I became. These men and women were too young, or too
uneducated, or too wounded. I just felt that they were not good enough
to be leaders in our movement. I slumped and sighed and felt very
depressed. Also, I was having a bad stomach ache. For weeks my stomach
was sore and nausea had been my constant companion.
Then all of a
sudden I felt a depression on the sofa, like someone had entered the
room and sat down beside me. I opened my eyes. There was no one there,
but the depression on the sofa remained. Then I felt a large hand on my
back. It was hot and pressed into my lower spine, straightening me up. I
felt strong again and my nausea disappeared. Then a soft voice said, “I
am strengthening you for the fight. Do not worry about these young
people. I am the strength of God, sent by Jesus to look after them and
you. I will help you because He loves you.”
That was an angel. I am convinced of that. Just as the Scripture says of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength” (Luke 22:43),
so it was for me. Angels appear to give us strength. And so all the
time I was being taken to the police station in a cramped van, I was
repeating the words of the angel to me, “I will help you because He loves you.”
So
I want to make this clear to you all. Whenever you face the challenge
of suffering for Christ, you will be angelically strengthened
beforehand. You need to keep praying, because that’s when the angel
comes. But if you pray, you will be ready, because an angel will be
there to strengthen you to bear anything.
RESPONSE: Today I will continue to pray and trust God for His angelic strengthening.
PRAYER: Thank You, God, for Your angelic host who come to strengthen in our greatest point of need.
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