How I Prayed: Hold Fast to Community
Chinese believers are different ages, different ethnicities, different sexes, and hail from different socio-economic groups. Some are rural, uneducated grandmothers who remained faithful through years of trial; others are urbane intellectuals. Yet no matter their differences, who they are in Jesus is more important than anything else about them.
How I Prayed: Hold Fast to Weakness
Our own human weaknesses only provide opportunity for God’s glory to shine through. I am praying that Chinese believers will have the supernatural strength and grace to rejoice and give thanks in all of their weaknesses. God has Chinese believers in this season because he wants to use their difficulties to show his own greatness and goodness.
How I Prayed: Hold Fast to the Kingdom
Pray with me: may Chinese believers truly realize that they have a kingdom that cannot be shaken. The king they serve is with them, is living, and his rule cannot be overcome.
How I Prayed: Hold Fast to Christ
After three years of intermittent lockdowns, Christians want to come together. But because of tight controls, many churches are finding this goal all but impossible. My friend said her church is meeting in small groups, with a few families in each group….Pray for God to give pastors and believers in church bodies like this bravery to face their reality, and also patience as they persevere in difficult circumstances.
Our Hearts Have Been Knitted To Yours: A Letter of Encouragement to the Chinese Church
Praying for you has strengthened our resolve to follow Christ regardless of the cost. Your courage, endurance and joy through suffering regularly moves us to repent of preferring comfort to discipleship. When we learn that you pray for us, we cry out, “How long, O Lord?!” until we can worship with you together some day in heaven.
How I Prayed for Monterey Park
I live just outside the border of Monterey Park, within walking distance of a dance studio where, last weekend, a 72-year-old gunman shot and killed 11 people and wounded nine others. Usually, when I sit down to write a monthly “how I prayed” piece, China is the forefront of my mind. But this week, it is hard to tear my thoughts away from my own community, which is in shock after the tragic shooting.
Hold Fast
When you endure hardship, you are proclaiming that Christ is all in all, he is my sufficiency. You are not boasting in yourself. Our hope is that, eventually, Christ and the Spirit will deliver us. How can we boast or hold fast? By prayer. We have no external resources, only prayer.
How I Prayed for Suffering
am praying that Chinese Christians who are currently experiencing suffering will follow Jesus’s example laid out in Hebrews 12:2: “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” In this life we will have troubles. But that is not the end of the story. Joy comes in the morning, and Christ has overcome this world of sin and death.
Death Has Been Defeated: Psalm 22
If the first part of this psalm depicts Good Friday, this, then, is Easter. Death has been completely defeated, and Christ’s hardships are forever a thing of the past.
So We May Know God: Psalm 138
God’s purpose is to help us know him. God accomplishes this purpose by giving us specific experiences.
