Many have asked about the results of my last tests at Emory. I am to meet with doctors Tuesday and they will tell me how things are. We all appreciate your prayer. Thursday, Susan and I fly to China to visit a co-worker who is teaching at a language school in QingDao. We are excited about this trip and hope we can encourage Gerry and Becky Hill and their little girls. Thanks for praying about this too!
Several Chinese Christians have impacted my life greatly through writing and example. Many have persevered through fires we cannot imagine resulting in beautiful fruit of the Holy Spirit. THE HEAVENLY MAN is the autobiography of Brother Yun, a brother still alive today, who has been imprisoned and tortured for his faith. Listen to a prisoner of the Lord.
God is my witness that through all the tortures and beatings I’ve received I have never hated my persecutors. Never. I saw them as God’s instruments of blessing and his chosen vessels to purify me and make me more like Jesus…
In this prison seminary we have learned many valuable lessons about the Lord that we could never have learned from a book. We’ve come to know God in a deeper way. We know his goodness and his loving faithfulness to us…
When a child of God suffers you need to understand the Lord has allowed it. He has not forgotten you! The devil cannot snatch you away! Jesus made this beautiful promise to his children, ‘My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.’ John 10:27-29
The first time I went to prison I struggled, wondering why God had allowed it. Slowly I began to understand he had a deeper purpose for me than just working for him. He wanted to know me, and I to know him, deeply and intimately. He knew the best way to get my attention for a while was to give me rest behind bars…
I’m often asked about the rights of pastors in China. A pastor has no rights, except the rights of a slave! Everyone in this world is a slave. They’re either slaves to sin or slaves of Christ. Our ‘rights’ are in the hands of Jesus. We must fall on our knees in complete dependence on him…
The world can do nothing to a Christian who has no fear of man.
THE HEAVENLY MAN by Brother Yun with Paul Hattaway. published by Monarch Books in the UK and USA in 2002 portions from pages 311-313