A just-in-time answer to prayer

Hudson Taylor, the well-known missionary to China, was on his way to China for the first time when his ship was becalmed for several weeks. The ship was slowly drifting towards the shore of New Guinea.

On the shore cannibals were lighting fires and rushing about in great glee  Taylor remembered how when he was a medical student, other students had jeered at him and spoken of "cold missionary." It looked like someone was expecting a piece of hot missionary that night.

The sailors had tried to turn the head of the vessel around from the shore, but in vain. "We've done everything that can be done," said the captain."It looks like our fate is sealed."

"No," said Taylor. There were four Christians on board - the captain, a steward, a black man and Taylor. "Let each of us retire to his cabin and in agreed prayer ask the Lord to give us a breeze immediately." The three others agreed.

Taylor told the Lord he was on his way to China, that He had sent him, and he couldn't get there if he was shipwrecked and killed. He went back on deck and suggested that the mate let down the mainsail. 

"What do you want me to let down the mainsail for?" said the mate. The missionary explained they had prayed for a breeze, it would be here soon, and they had better be ready for it. The mate said with an oath that he'd rather see a breeze than hear about it.

Then they noticed that one of the sails was quivering. Soon the wind was upon them.

Wrote Taylor: "Thus God encouraged me, ere landing on China's shores, to bring every variety of need to Him in prayer, and to expect that He would honour the name of the Lord Jesus and give the help which each emergency required."

CWR are arranging a national prayer weekend for this coming weekend. Why not join in?

You can see the details here.
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Unless you become as little children. . .

Helen Roseveare, born in Hertfordshire, was converted to Christ while a student at Cambridge University. She completed her medical degree, and went to Africa as a medical missionary.

In her book Living Faith* she tells how one day they were caring for a woman in the labour ward. Despite everything they could do for her, the woman died, leaving a premature newborn baby and a two-year-old daughter.

They had no incubator - they had no electricity - and although they were on the equator, the nights could be chilly. She asked one student midwife to find a cardboard box filled with cotton wool to put the baby in, and another to fill a hot water bottle. The second girl came back in distress. While she was filling it, the hot water bottle had burst, and it was the last one.

"Put the baby as near the fire as you safely can;" Dr Roseveare told her, "sleep between the baby and the door to keep jt free from draughts. Your job is to keep that baby warm."

Later, the missionary went to pray with some of the orphanage children. Before they began, she told them about the woman, the two children and the hot water bottle.

A 10-year-old girl named Ruth began to pray. "Please, God," she said, "send us a hot water bottle. It'll be no good tomorrow, God, as the baby'll be dead; so please send it this afternoon. And while You are about it, would You please send a dolly for the little girl, so she'll know You really love her?"

"Could I honestly say 'Amen,'?" thought the missionary. "I just did not believe that God could do this. Oh, yes, I know that He can do everything. The Bible says so. But there are limits, aren't there? And I had some very big 'buts.'" The only way God could answer that particular prayer would be by sending her a parcel from home, and in almost four years in Africa, she had never ever had a parcel from home. Besides, if anyone did send a parcel, who would send a hot water bottle to the equator?

That afternoon, she got a message that there was a car at her front door. By the time she got home, the car was gone, but on her verandah was a 22lb parcel bearing UK stamps. She called the orphanage children to help her open it.

There were brightly coloured knitted jerseys, bandages, soap, and dried mixed fruit. She put her hand in again, and pulled out - could it be? A brand new rubber hot water bottle. The parcel had been on its way for five months. God had prepared it five months before to answer the little girl's prayer "this afternoon."

Ruth said "If God has sent the bottle,He must have sent the dolly too." The girl rummaged in the bottom of the box and brought out a small, beautifully dressed dolly.

"Mummy," said the girl to the missionary, "can I go over with you and give this dolly to that little girl, so she'll know that Jesus really loves her?"

 *Living Faith: Willing to be stirred as a pot of paint. Tain, Ross-shire: Christian Focus Publications, 2007.
        

A very present help in trouble

William MacDonald tells* how during the First World War young men in an island community in the Scottish Highlands were being called up for military service in increasing numbers. Each time contingents of them gathered at the pier to sail to the mainland, friends and relatives assembled there and sang:

God is our refuge and our strength,

in straits a present aid;

Therefore, although the earth remove,

we will not be afraid:

Though hills amidst the seas be cast;

though waters roaring make,

And troubled be; yea, though the

hills by swelling seas do shake.

A river is, whose streams make glad

the city of our God;

The holy place, wherein the Lord

most high hath his abode.

God in the midst of her doth dwell;

nothing shall her remove:

The Lord to her a helper will,

and that right early prove. . .

That is, of course, the Scottish metric version of Psalm 46 - the psalm that begins "God is our refuge and strength." Psalm 46 prompted Katharina von Schlegel to write the hymn Be still, my soul, and Martin Luther to write the famous hymn A mighty fortress is our God. When discouraging news came - and Luther had his share of discouraging news - he would say to his friends "Come, let us sing the 46th psalm."

The days of the First World War were a more godly age. Nowadays many have turned away from God, and society is descending into chaos and disorder. But God is unchanging.

Psalm 46 continues: "There is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God." That river speaks of God's peace, God's love and God's provision. These things are not pie in the sky, but real. Not everyone has them - but they are the daily experience of those who walk with Him.

God forces Himself on no one. But He is available for those who seek Him.

"If you seek him, he will be found by you."

"Seek, and you will find."

* Believer's Bible Commentary. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1995, p620f.