Aflame
10 April 08
I had a very important meeting this morning. I met with 2 cats, a blind black labrador, some sick sheep and an awesomely keen supporter (no-one can say this job’s not varied)! It was so inspiring to meet up with her that I’m going to tell some of her story here. Let’s call her Sarah.
When Sarah was 13, she came to know Jesus. She had an experience like Saul on the road to Damascus – a really dramatic conversion where she became God’s, heart and soul. She loved to read her Bible and pray and get to know this awesome God.
One night, she was chatting to God as usual before bed and he told her to pray. “There’s a lady who’s just gone into prison,” God said, “and she’s lonely. You need to pray for her.”
So she did. Each night, God would tell Sarah how this lady was feeling – whether she was cold, tired, hungry, sad, lonely – and tell her to pray about it. Soon after this, Sarah heard of Open Doors for the first time, and looked through the prayer list. There were so many people to pray for that she just stuck a pen in the list and decided to pray for whoever that landed on.
It landed on a lady called Anna, who was in psychiatric hospital because the government in her country said she must be mad for being a Christian. Sarah continued to pray for her until she was released. All through this time, she kept a diary of what the Lord was telling her.
One spring, Sarah went to a Christian festival and saw an Open Doors stand, so she went over the have a look at the literature. On the stand was the story of this lady Anna and her experiences in the psychiatric hospital. Sarah looked at the story of Anna and the events that she’d written in her diary, and they matched. Anna had gone into prison on exactly the day that God had told Sarah to start praying.
Since then, Sarah has been committed to praying for Christians across the world who are persecuted. She’s spent hours on the phone to churches asking them to take part in SHOCKWAVE, put loads of time into researching prayer points for different countries and getting her youth group to pray, and given away book after book on how God works in the lives of the persecuted.
It’s a little while now since she was 13, and Sarah now has children of her own, but she’s just as staunch a supporter as ever. She reminds me a bit of the Olympic torch: God set her alight at an earlier stage on her journey, and she’s been burning brightly for him ever since, setting many others alight along the way. The best thing is, any attempt to put out her light has just failed, unlike the real Olympic torch!
Knowing the Lord Jesus while we’re young is such a huge privilege. It might not feel like you have much power or influence as a young person, but actually there’s this slightly weird quote that says ‘the child is the father of the man’. Before you start trying to work that one out biologically, think about it. Some of the things that we experience and care about when we’re young affect us deeply for our whole life. If we step out on the journey with God while we’re young, God can set many others alight through us and keep us burning for a bright lifetime. 60% of the Persecuted Church are young people, and here on this site we talk about their Christlike example all the time. I wonder if anyone sat and talked about my Christlike example while I was at school?
Whatever flame you have now, let it shine out and trust God to make it grow!