In light of our current views of North Korea, we can easily forget how much we don't know about it and its Christian roots. Years ago, the city of Pyongyang became known to missionaries as the “Jerusalem of the East.” The city had great institutional strength for Protestantism, including Union Christian Hospital, Union Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and Union Christian College, the first four-year college anywhere in Korea.

One hundred and ten years ago, Pyongyang saw the outbreak of a massive revival which was the high point of the season of evangelical strength in northern Korea. One Saturday night, Presbyterian missionary William Blair preached to thousands of Korean men focusing on their need to turn away from their traditional hatred of the Japanese people, with whom Korea had a long history of conflict. The missionaries and Korean Christians had been praying for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit for revival and repentance, and it came on that night in January 1907. Many at the meeting began praying out loud, and soon the signs of awakening began to appear. As one missionary described it, the sound of many praying at once brought,

After Esther and God’s people fasted and prayed for three days they experienced a degree of deliverance when Haman was removed, but the decree that Haman had convinced the king to implement could not be rescinded. Though Haman had been brought down, the people of God still did not know if in the end they would truly be delivered from the hands of the wicked.

Esther did not stop interceding even after victory over Haman. Though her enemy had been brought down, she went again before the king even though she could lose her life by going to him when he had not called her. She fell at his feet and implored him with tears to counter the evil of Haman and the scheme he had devised against the Jews. 

"If you believe in prayer at all, expect God to hear you. If you do not expect, you will not have. God will not hear you unless you believe He will hear you; but if you believe He will, He will be as good as your faith." - Charles Spurgeon

At times it can be difficult, not to believe that God hears our prayers, but that He always answers them. I love this quote from Spurgeon because it reminds us that the shortcoming does not lie on God’s shoulders, but ours. Whatever we fail to see in our lives, is a result of our own lack of faith, not a lack of His faithfulness. 

"Prayer creates a personal change in your life. Nothing you can do will benefit you more than prayer." David Yonggi Cho
David (Paul) Yonggi Cho is the senior pastor of the world's largest church in Seoul, South Korea. He was born in 1936 and raised as a Buddhist. His early life was a struggle. First, he lived through the Japanese invasion of Korea and then the Korean War. He grew up with a tremendous ambition of becoming famous and successful after his poverty-stricken childhood. At the age of nineteen, he was holding down several jobs and was struggling just to exist. One afternoon he started vomiting blood and was then diagnosed as having incurable tuberculosis and was told that his life expectancy was a maximum of four months.

He went home and cried out to his god Buddha for healing. When this didn't take place, he denounced his Buddhist faith. He then cried out to the unknown God. Cho recounts what happened next in his book The Fourth Dimension:

When Robert Hunt landed at Cape Henry on April 26, 1607, he planted a wooden cross and said, “The Gospel will go forth from these shores, not only to this land but to all the nations of the earth.” In 1620, William Bradford and the signers of the Mayflower Compact declared they came to this land “[f]or the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian religion.” The signers of our Declaration of Independence relied on “Protection of Divine Providence,” and today our Pledge of Allegiance acknowledges we are “one nation under God.” We are a nation with a gospel purpose.

Are the declarations made at Cape Henry or on the Mayflower relevant today? How might those commitments made four hundred years ago reveal our identity and destiny? If we accept the significance of these historical declarations, how should we pray for America?

Usually when it’s time for an Answered Prayers edition, I turn to a book, and copy an excerpt from it, with a prayer answered by a miracle. But it would be remiss of us not to mention the incredible answer to our prayers that happened less than a week ago.

If you receive our newsletter, you might have seen that Franklin Graham organized a prayer march in Washington D.C. last Saturday. If you didn’t attend or catch it on the news, you might not know that an estimated 55,000 people attended! 55,000 thousands Americans traveled from all over the country, some as far away as Florida, just to pray for our country in unison.

If that isn’t an answer to the prevailing prayer that we all have been striving in, I don’t know what is!

Men and women knelt on the grass in the middle of our Nation’s capitol and lifted their voices for our country. Hymns were sung, hands were raised, and tears were shed.

Our Vice President and the Second Lady also attended and prayed with those so many thousands of Americans gathered in one accord.

The march was designed with seven destinations. Each group stopping at each one to pray together and then moving on at their own pace to the next. Those stops included the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and the U.S. Capitol.

I hope you are encouraged by this testimony and take heart today to continue in the work you have been diligent in laboring in.

"I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day:
the night cometh, when no man can work.” John 9:4

This hymn was penned not long after the Second Great Awakening by Charles Carroll Luther. He was a journalist and lay evangelist before being ordained as a Baptist minister in 1886. Though not a prolific composer, he authored this hymn in 1877 when he heard Reverend A.G. Upham relate the story of a young man who was about to die. This young man had been a Christian for only one month. Though thankful to the Lord for granting him salvation during his final hour, he was nevertheless grieved that he had no opportunity to serve the Lord nor to share Him with others. He explained, “I am not afraid to die; Jesus saves me now. But must I go empty-handed?” Upon hearing this account, Luther wrote this hymn. Charles Luther then handed his lyrics to George C. Stebbins who did a beautiful job conveying the heart’s cry of this lovely hymn into music.

1857 found America in a tumultuous time. Civil War was brewing, the economy was unstable,
and morality seemed hardly to be found. But God used a man who was willing to give up his
lunch hour to prayer, to draw His people close to Him before one of the worst wars in our
country’s history.

Jeremiah Lanphier was just an ordinary man. He worked as a clothing wholesaler in New York
City. He was so concerned with the souls of those around him, that he spent his evenings
handing out tracts. Eventually, Jeremiah accepted a job at a Dutch Reformed Church visiting
members, witnessing, and holding Bible studies. This job proved to be demanding work with
little visible reward and Jeremiah found himself physically and spiritually exhausted when his
days would end. Because of this, he began to pray at noon for one hour. He found this
reinvigorated him and gave him strength to continue his work as the scripture says,

 Since we met last, our nation has gone from having the strongest economy in her history to having an unemployment rate that is the highest since the Great Depression. We have states still in lockdown, which many people believe is for political reasons. 

 America is in distress! 

Today’s answered prayer series comes from the late Ravi Zacharias’s book “The Logic of God.” While it isn’t a story of a specifically answered prayer, Ravi does address questions that many of us struggle with when we feel like our prayers are not being answered.

“I marvel at the impact of praying with a hurting person. I have prayed many times with someone who has claimed to be a skeptic and is living in a manner that supports that claim, only to finish my prayer and open my eyes to see tears in his eyes. Although prayer remains a mystery to all of us but especially to one who lives apart from God, I have observed again and again that even the hardened heart retains a longing for the possibility of communicating with God.

It is not my intention to deny the great disappointments of unanswered prayer, but let us look at what God intends prayer to be. The most definitive passage is what is often called the Lord’s Prayer, or, as some scholars like to call it, the Disciples’ Prayer. The highly significant first words carry the weight of all of prayer: ‘Our Father who art in heaven.’ ‘Our Father’ we recognize, at least implicitly, two truths: the nearness of God as heavenly Father, and the sovereignty of God as the One who controls everything. As soon as you cry out in prayer, “Heavenly Father” you are recognizing His presence in your life.

After the Lord’s Prayer and as His conclusion to it, Jesus told us that God would give the Holy Spirit, His indwelling presence, to those who ask for it (Luke 11:13). It is not spoken in the form of a question — it ends with an exclamation point! God will give the gift of the indwelling presence of the holy God to any who ask for it —this is an absolute certainty! You can count on it!

Sadly, we hear so little of this today. We have turned prayer into a means to our ends and seldom wait on God’s response long enough to think about what He wants for us in that very moment. By refusing the evidence of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to one particular gift, we have robbed people of the Holy Presence that prompts us in prayer, prays for us when we don’t have the words to pray for ourselves, and comforts us in our times of need.

The paramount need today is the indwelling presence of God. In this incredible twist, the indwelling presence of God, the Holy Spirit, makes God both the Enabler of our prayers and the Provider of answers to those prayers. More than anything else, this is what prayer is about.”

Sources:
Zacharias, Ravi. “The Logic of God.” Ravi Zacharias 2019

"The wonderful thing about praying is that you leave a world of not being able to do something, and enter God’s realm where everything is possible. He specializes in the impossible. Nothing is too great for His almighty power. Nothing is too small for His love."
~ Corrie Ten Boom

Today we look at the example set by one of history’s most remarkable women, Corrie Ten Boom. Living through one of the darkest periods of history, Corrie was an undeniable force of prayer during World War II. Raised in a Christian home, and brought up with a deep love for God’s chosen people, Corrie and her family converted their house to be an “underground stop” for Jews seeking to flee Nazi persecution.

For almost an entire year the Ten Boom family had as many as 10 people at a time hidden in their small home. Corrie built a “hiding place” in her own room that six to seven people could be concealed in at a time. She hid extra ration cards to feed them and a radio to learn more about what was happening around them; both illegal. She worked tirelessly to find new Dutch families to house the refugees. Throughout that year, Corrie and her family hid and saved an estimated 800 Jews.

Ultimately the Ten Boom family was betrayed and arrested by the Gestapo. Out of the ten of them, only six would live to see the end of the war. During the arrest and search of the house, four refugees and two Dutch underground workers hid successfully behind the false wall. They escaped two days later, and four of them would survive the war.

There are many stories to tell of how prayer saved Corrie, including how she was miraculously skipped over while smuggling a New Testament through a prison camp, despite the person in front of her being searched twice, or how she was accidentally released from prison a week before all the women in her age group were gassed to death. They are too long for us to include today, bur if you’re interested in learning more about her story please consider her book, The Hiding Place.

It’s needless to say, that a person could only go through the horrors she experienced and come out with the forgiveness she extended, by enduring with prayer. I will leave you with a few words from her on the subject.

“Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?”

“What wings are to a bird, and sails to a ship, so is prayer to the soul.”

“Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.”

“We never know how God will answer our prayers, but we can expect that He will get us involved in His plan for the answer. If we are true intercessors, we must be ready to take part in God’s work on behalf of the people for whom we pray.”


Sources:
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Corrie_ten_Boom

https://www.tenboom.org/about-the-ten-booms/

“A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked. Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place the Most High, who is my refuge.” Psalm 91:7-9

These days, more than just about any, Christians find themselves thankful for the hope we have in Christ, redemption, and eternal life. Unlike others, we have hope and a purpose, and because of that our hearts are full of thanksgiving during times of continued uncertainty.