'VIOLENT' PRAYER Brought REVIVAL
Posted by: prophetic <prophetic@...>
will notice that they believed in a kind of 'violent', wrestling,
"agonizing" prayer - and they found this to be a major secret to
Revival. Below is the story of another who discovered the same secret:
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JAMES O. FRASIER - Violent Groans and Cries of Travailing Prayer
-by David Smithers.
Some of God's most precious servants have gone through life
hidden and unnoticed. Forgotten and ignored by the religious
masses, they thrive in obscurity and solitude... William Jay, the
English preacher, wrote, "Many who are great in the sight of the
Lord are living in cottages and hovels, and are scarcely known..."
James O. Fraser, of the China Inland Mission, was one of those
choice servants of God who was content to labor in almost total
obscurity. This gifted man was a preacher, linguist, musical
genius and engineer. He came to the Yunnan Province of China in
1910 with a heart longing for the souls of the forgotten Lisu tribal
people. As Fraser gave himself to the work of reaching the Lisu,
he became somewhat forgotten. For years he lived alone, hidden
behind the great mountain ranges of China's far west. Few people
really knew James Fraser. There was an air of mystery about this
talented man who had chosen a primitive pioneers life over the
applause of a English concert hall. Some said that it was
absolutely wrong for Fraser to waste and bury his gifts on the
mission field. Yet, Mr. Fraser was greatly used of God through
prayer and loving labor to turn multitudes of Lisu from their slavery
of demon-worship to Jesus Christ. After mastering the difficult Lisu
language, he developed his own "Fraser Script" and translated the
Scriptures into the tribal dialect. By 1916 there was a real move of
the Spirit among the Lisu, resulting in sixty thousand baptisms
within only two years. The Lisu church continued to grow and
eventually became one of the largest tribal Christian bodies in the world.
J. O. Fraser's success was not the result of his impressive talents
or giant intellect. Mr. Fraser succeeded where others often fail,
because he had learned how to touch God through prayer.
Isolated and hidden away behind the mountains, he was
compelled to seek God for his every need. "To know the real
Fraser one needed to hear him in prayer. Prayer was the very
breath of life to him, and in prayer he seemed to slip from time
into eternity." For many of us prayer is not a first choice, but a
last resort. Fraser had learned out of sheer necessity to pray
fervently and continuously. Frequently the mountainside would
witness the piercing, importunate pleadings of this man who
counted his prayer-time not by minutes but by hours." Fraser was
not a man who merely said prayers, he TRAVAILED in prayer. He
knew the spiritual necessity of wrestling and agonizing in prayer.
He writes, "How much of our prayer is of the quality we find in
Hannah's bitterness of soul, 'when she prayed unto the Lord?' How
many times have we ever 'WEPT SORE' before the Lord? We have
prayed much perhaps, but our longings have not been deep
compared with hers. We have spent much time upon our knees, it
may be, without our hearts going out in agony of desire. But real
supplication is the child of heartfelt desire, and cannot prevail
without it; a desire not of earth nor issuing from our own sinful
hearts, but wrought into us by God Himself. Oh for such desires.
Oh for Hannah's earnestness, not in myself only but in all who are
joining in prayer for these poor heathen aborigines."
To our shame, some of the most basic spiritual disciplines of our
godly forefathers have become strange and unfamiliar to many of
us. One of the most effective weapons of the praying saints of old
was the discipline of, praying through." J. O. Fraser both
encouraged and practiced this powerful reality. Upon this subject
Mr. Fraser writes, "We must be prepared for serious warfare, 'and
having done all, to stand,' we must fight through, and then stand
victorious on the battlefield. Is not this another secret of many
unanswered prayers, that they are not fought through? If the result
is not seen as soon as expected, Christians are apt to lose heart,
and if it is still longer delayed, to abandon it altogether. You know
the name they give to places in England when the building (or
whatever it is) is abandoned, when only half of it is completed- So
and so's 'Folly'. I wonder whether some of our prayers do not
deserve the same stigma. Luke 14: 28-30 applies to prayers as
well as towers. We must count the cost before praying the prayer
of faith. We must be willing to pay the price. We must mean
business. We must set ourselves to 'see things through' (Eph. 6:18,
'In all perseverance')." Wrestling with demonic spirits is a daily
reality of spiritual survival. Spiritual warfare is not learned in our
leisure time, but is thrust upon us as we begin to threaten the
kingdom of darkness. In 1913-1914, James Fraser went through a
time of deep spiritual oppression that forced him to deal with
issues many would rather ignore. As Fraser reached out to the
spiritually blinded Lisu, he became the object of an intense
demonic attack. He found himself slipping into a paralyzing
depression and despair. He soon began to question even the very
foundations of his faith in God. "Deeply were the foundations
shaken in those days and nights of conflict, until Fraser realized
that behind it all were 'powers of darkness', seeking to overwhelm
him. He had dared to invade Satan's kingdom, undisputed for ages.
At first, vengeance had fallen on the Lisu inquirers, an easy prey.
Now, he was himself attacked, and it was war to the death, spiritually."
Fraser was greatly helped in this spiritual struggle by the timely
arrival of a magazine produced by Jessie Penn-Lewis called The
Overcomer. "What it showed me," Fraser writes, "was that
deliverance from the power of the evil one comes through definite
resistance on the ground of The Cross. I am an engineer and
believe in things working. I want to see them work. I had found that
much of the spiritual teaching one hears does not seem to work.
My apprehension at any rate of other aspects of truth had broken
down. The passive side of leaving everything to the Lord Jesus as
our life, while blessedly true, was not all that was needed just then.
Definite resistance on the ground of The Cross was what brought
me light. For I found that it worked. I felt like a man perishing of
thirst, to whom some beautiful, clear cold water had begun to flow.
People will tell you, after a helpful meeting perhaps, that such and
such a truth is the secret of victory. No: we need different truth at
different times. 'Look to the Lord,' some will say. 'Resist the devil,'
is also Scripture (James 4:7) and I found it worked! That cloud of
depression dispersed. I found that I could have victory in the
spiritual realm whenever I wanted it. The Lord Himself resisted the
devil vocally: 'Get thee behind me, Satan!' I, in humble
dependence on Him, did the same. I talked to Satan at that time,
using the promises of Scripture as weapons. And they worked.
Right then, the terrible oppression began to pass away."
Toward the end of James Fraser's life, he found himself in another
kind of spiritual conflict. He began to feel increasingly dissatisfied
with what many considered successful ministry. He recognized
like never before the tremendous need for true revival on the field
and at home. His heart now longed for a powerful visitation of the
glory of God. When God creates a fresh desire within us, we can
always be confident that He is getting ready to move. While on
furlough, Fraser's longings were confirmed through the opportunity
to hear the missionary-revivalist Jonathan Goforth. Mrs. J. O.
Fraser describes this important event in Fraser's life. "As the old
man of God stood up to preach, an overwhelming sense of the
presence of God filled the room, and as he spoke we were all but
melted under the power of his words, for Goforth had been endued
with a divine unction from God Himself and it was unmistakable.
Fraser had heard before of the great revivals Goforth had witnessed
in his work in China, but to hear him speak was unforgettable and
left a deep burden on his soul. The big question on his mind was
whether we were working with the power God had promised us."
Again Mrs. Fraser writes of her husband's new burden, "He saw
the teeming millions of unreached Chinese and the tiny handful of
missionaries, but great as was the need for more missionaries
there was an even greater need, that those of us who were out
there should be endued with far greater power. Somehow Fraser
was burdened because the Church both at home and abroad
seemed to be making so little real impact on the world. He spent
hours in prayer wondering whether we need to turn again to the
apostles for our examples and Pentecost for our power." It was
now the early 1930's, and Fraser was not alone in his desire for
revival. The cry for revival was now rising from the hearts of many
missionaries and Chinese Christians alike. Suddenly God broke
forth, raising up His hidden vessels to usher in a powerful revival in
northern China. It was here Fraser found some kindred spirits in
the revival laborers, Andrew Gih and John Sung of the Bethel Band.
They enjoyed powerful times of prayer together that often lasted
into the early hours of the morning. Mr. Fraser described this time
as his happiest experience in China. These were the glory days of
the Shantung revival with Bertha Smith and Marie Monsen. Anna
Christiansen of C. I. M. and Watchmen Nee of "The Little Flock"
were also reaping revival fruit at this time. Regardless who the
minister was, the message was essentially the same: the
exposing of secret sin, a call to thorough repentance, the need for
restitution and the hope of total victory through the Blood and the
power of the Holy Spirit.
"The Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the VIOLENT take it
by force." Matthew 11:12. James Fraser's life was a living example
of this verse. Like Fraser, we must cloth ourselves in humility as
we run to wage war in the fight of faith. Our prayers must go
beyond mere sentimental and religious rhetoric. What we need is
the violent groans and cries of travailing prayer!
~SOURCE: http://www.watchword.org
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