Mountain Rain

by Eileen Fraser Crossman

1. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ—no theological explanation needed. 2. The resurrection of Jesus Christ—most important of all. The gospel was never preached without this being brought in. 3. Exhortation to hearers to repent of their sins. 4. Promise to all who believe on Jesus Christ that they will receive remission of their sins.

In teaching Christians, it is quite another matter. To them we are to declare “the whole counsel of God,” as far as they can receive it. But the gospel as preached to the unsaved is as simple as it could be.

would you think and pray about getting a group of like-minded friends, whether few or many, whether in one place or scattered, to join in the same petitions? If you could form a small prayer circle I would write regularly to the members.”

“They rise from their knees feeling that God will answer some time or other, but not that He has answered already.”

Somewhere, sometime, God’s Word would yield a harvest.

“Spent the day mostly in Bible reading and prayer, alone on the mountains.

Back in Tantsah he was learning more and more that prayer was the only weapon that could drive back the forces of darkness.

He found it helpful to start prayer, not only in meditation, but with a definite request that God direct him in the channels of prayer the Holy Spirit was beckoning him into.

He also found it helpful to make a short list, “like notes prepared for a sermon,” before every time of prayer. “The mind needs to be guided as well as the spirit attuned. I can thus get my thoughts in order, and having prepared my prayer can put the notes on the table or chair before me, kneel down and get down to business.”

Unanswered prayers have taught me to seek the Lord’s will instead of my own.

“We need to feed upon the Word of God more than we do. We need more holiness, more prayer. We shall not, then,

(a) A firm standing on God-given ground, and a constant assertion of faith and claiming of victory.

(b) A definite fighting and resisting of Satan’s host in the Name of Christ.

(c) Praying through every aspect of the matter in detail.

To have a healthy prayer appetite was the best thing possible. To neglect this appetite would bring on a dullness and weaken the spirit in the same way a lack of sufficient food weakens the body.

He had eight or ten people in his treasured prayer band.

James was impressed by the length of time D. E. Hoste allotted to prayer. Hoste was quick to point out that his time and energy was always saved by prayer and wasted without it. Prayer was the lifeblood of the whole work of God in China.

The older man much influenced James and he joined him every day to pray—often for hours—for all aspects of the work.

He depended so much on his prayer supporters that he sent maps of the villages and detailed reports of the people. He wrote to each supporter separately and answered all their questions.

He was asking asking his supporters to treat their prayer as more than a sideline. “I am trying to roll the main responsibility of this prayer-warfare on you,” he told them. “I want you to take the burden of these people upon your shoulders, I want you to wrestle with God for them.”

It would have been much easier to give them money. Plenty of people in England and America would have sent money to build churches and pay pastors. But James saw (and he was not alone in this) that foreign money and foreign control would build a foreign church and a weak one. The Lisu had to learn straightaway that they must give to the Lord out of the depths of their poverty. Their own sacrifice would support their own chapels and evangelists.

He had learned early and painfully the part tenacious prayer plays in the advance of the Kingdom of God.

“I used to think,” he wrote, “that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel that prayer should have the first, second and third place and teaching the fourth.”

He would often go there early in the morning, missing breakfast, to spend hours in prayer. He was free there to walk up and down and pray aloud. It was quiet too, he said, and he could wait and listen for the will of God, both for himself and for the work.