Testimony - Part 6

Before that, I said, God, I want to talk to this one, and that one, and this one, and this one, and please bless me. You know, I was still condescending. I decided what I was going to do, and I asked God's blessing on the end.

But this time, when I was praying in tongues, I said, God, I know there are people who want you. Would you please help me to pray for them? You know where they are. And would you please let me be somewhere in it? Would you please use me? I don't mind if I ever know, if you just use me.

And that's the difference. You know, I hadn't suddenly got good at Chinese. I wasn't saying anything especially good.

I was saying the same words of life that I'd said before. The difference was this time I was saying them to the right people. I was saying them to people who were ready to hear, and that's all you have to say.

It's terribly easy to preach the gospel to people whose hearts are ready. They're longing to hear those words of life. And one after another after another, we found that addicts came to know Jesus.

And they came off drugs miraculously. I mean, just like that. Amazing.

Without any withdrawal pains. And they were all on heroin. And they'd been on heroin for, some of them, 20 years.

And I said, Lord, this is wonderful. And as the first one had come off his opium without any pain, he was singing. And then he began to praise God in tongues, and I'd never told him about that, so it wasn't my fault.

And I said, this is wonderful. And, okay, I said to him, now, you keep away from the gangsters. You'll have to leave the 14K now.

And you just stay with Christians. And God bless you. You go your way.

And a few weeks later, he came to me and he said, I really want to praise God. And he said, I was in the opium den last night, and somebody offered me opium. I was horrified, because an opium den is a terrible place.

It has a little platform off the floor, maybe two inches high. And it's covered with slime. Because people spit.

You know, it takes about half an hour or an hour to take the opium. And it's mainly old men, and they look like skeletons. They're green.

And they lie there, and the whole place is full of spit and other things. Their eyes run, their noses run, everything runs. It smells, and it's terrible.

Anyway, here was this chap saying, I was in the opium den last night, and they offered me opium. And he said, I wanted to take it. But he said, I remembered Jesus.

So he said, I prayed instead. And Jesus gave me strength, and I knelt down and I sang them choruses. Praise God.

And I said, no, no, that's not praise God. That's not at all smart. It's not clever to get into a situation like that and pray to get out of it.

You shouldn't have been there in the first place. And he said, I lived there. And I discovered that he had no home.

He used to sleep in the opium den, you see, when he took opium. And he kept his clean shirts in the laundry. And when he needed a clean shirt, he'd go and get it out of the laundry and put in the one he got on.

I found that there were many people like that. Many street people. They had no cupboard anywhere.

Not even a suitcase. And there was I saying, God bless you, as it says in James. Be fed, be clothed, be warmed, go your way.

Now you know Jesus. And he was living in the middle of the old city in an opium den. So what could we do? Well, we took him into our home.

Because we couldn't find another one. Most of the Christian places, and there are a lot in Hong Kong, were for nice people. And you had to be a nice people to get into them.

And there were very, I couldn't find anywhere which would take not nice people. When prostitutes came to know Jesus, there was nowhere they could live. Nobody wanted them.

You had to have a recommendation from two pastors and two months rent before you could get in. So he came to live in our house. So he ended up with twelve.

And this sort of went on. It was exciting really because as one came to know Jesus and his life changed, then others came. They brought the others along.

And in other ways too. It's funny because when there was just me to look after, I found that the Lord could support me. Well, I knew he would.

But I was interested to know if when I was looking after two people, he'd look after them as well. Or if they were supposed to do the praying for them. Then I found over the years that if we've looked after one, we've had enough for one.

If we've looked after twenty-seven, we've had enough for twenty-seven. If we've looked after thirty, we've had enough for thirty. And we never tell anyone.

But the Lord knows. I want to encourage you. Whatever he's given you, it's for you to share.

And there'll always be enough for those that he's put on your heart. It's extraordinary. But there are things that are dear to our hearts.

There are things that we fear giving up. And you wonder, God, I'm willing to share most things. But could I keep just this? I mean, you wouldn't take that, would you? I want to tell you a story that happened to me.

Which just helped me to learn how to hold lightly the things that I had. I was looking for a prostitute one day. Her name was Maria.

And she had been sold into a brothel when she was a month old. Later on, I found her real mother. And she said, oh, she said, She said, I didn't really sell her.

It was, you know, she said, I couldn't raise her. I didn't have enough money. My husband had left me.

So I just got some lucky money. It was a hundred Hong Kong dollars. You divide that by eight.

And she said, I just got lucky money. She sold her to a brothel keeper. And this little girl grew up with the prostitute.

And when she got to 14, she was supposed to earn herself. But she didn't want to. She wanted to choose her own men.

So she ran away. And I lost her and I didn't know how to find her. So I prayed, God, would you please show me where she is? Now there are hundreds of nightclubs in Hong Kong.

Hundreds of brothels. Hundreds of ballrooms and massage parlors. I had no idea where to start looking for her.

So I got to a certain point and I said, All right, Lord, will you show me? And he said, you walk straight on. So I walked to the end of the road. And I came to a crossroads.

And he said, don't turn left. Don't turn right. Walk straight on.

So I crossed over the road. And he said, walk straight on. And I walked straight on.

And then he said, stop it here. And I looked up and there was a very tall building with many of the windows blackened in. This was outside the wall today.

And that means that it's a brothel or a massage parlor upstairs. And at this point I got cold feet. And I said, oh, this is silly.

I'm not playing spiritual detective. I'm going home. And I dreamt about her later.

I dreamt that she was in a brothel and crying because she needed to get out. Three months later I got a phone call from her. And she told me where to meet her.

And I came to see her. And it was the same home that I had in my dream. And she said, I was looking for you earlier.

She said, but I didn't know how to find you. I called for you. I didn't know how to find you.

I need to get out of this. And she said, please will you give me. I can't remember exactly the amount of money.

But it was something like 500 Hong Kong dollars. Because she said, I've got into debt, gambling. And I borrowed money from a loan shark.

And they require an enormous amount of interest. They are always lent to girls, always. But they want 100% interest every week.

So she said, if I don't pay him this money, he's going to take me to be what they call a snake. And that would mean she would belong to him for two years in a brothel. And she would have to earn for him.

And she would be a prisoner. And she said, I don't want to do this. Would you please give me $500? I had taken a young man with me who was one of the triads in the walled city who had become a Christian.

And I really didn't know what to do. Because I thought, well, for a start, I don't have any money. I haven't got $50, let alone 500.

For a second thing, she's just going to go on doing the same thing. I mean, I shouldn't really give her this money, should I? Because she's not really serious about changing. I mean, why should I pay prostitutes' debts for them? She'll just be in the same old mess.

And I sat down to pray with this young man. I said, I really think we need to hear what God's saying to us. And in the back of my mind, I was thinking about the only thing I had at all which I could sell.

I only had one possession which I could sell. And that was an ogre. I don't know if you know.