Brother Yun

I just finished reading The Heavenly Man by Brother Yun and Paul Hattaway. This is an amazing story of standing firm in the midst of persecution! This man was severely beaten and tortured numerous times for his faith and it just made him want to tell others about Jesus more and more!

So many times his prayers were answered in huge ways and people came to know Christ! So many times! Ridiculously frequently! He spoke with such authority and prayed with such confidence! He had remarkable self-discipline in the way that he treated his persecutors, the way he fasted for 74 days, the way he memorized 55 chapters of the Bible… Wow! God did so many incredible things through him and in him! Often God gave him visions of what was to come, giving him hope to endure. During one of his trials/interrogations, he thought, “Lord Jesus, even if they kill me I’ll still love you.”

So often all Brother Yun had to cling to were the Words of Truth (from the Bible) that he’d memorized long ago… His dedication to Bible memorization alone was amazing, but even more so because God really placed it on his heart to memorize scripture at the age of thirteen and his obedience to that prompting was a crucial part of God preparing him to endure great suffering in his later ministry when the words he’d memorized years ago brought him so much hope, gave him so much purpose when there was no Bible to read or fellow Christian to pray with! (By later ministry, I mean when he was 30!).

Yun had an incredible boldness and yet knew that his power and authority came from God. At one point he and several others were praying over a demon-possessed man who was yelling, “You say you have power over demons, but you can’t cast me out! This is my home and I’m not going anywhere!” Yun wrote, “For hours we used every technique we could think of. We prayed many different kinds of prayers, but nothing worked. Finally, out of sheer frustration, we all gave up. We sat down and said, “Lord, we can’t do anything.” Suddenly, while we were all sitting down in defeat, the Spirit of God came upon us and the demon-possessed man started shaking uncontrollably. We jumped to our feet and laid hands on the man. Immediately the demons left him. We learned a great lesson that morning. When we arrive at the end of our own strength it is not defeat, but the start of tapping into God’s boundless resources. It is when we are weak that we are strong in God.”

I confess that I feel weak right now, at the end of my own strength. Yet I am not defeated, as Yun noted! I am in a great place to be able to see God move in my life like never before. Pray that I will be strong in Him!