Mon Jun 12, 2017.
Bible reading: Romans 8:31-39.
Memory Verse: And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Romans 8: 38a
In the 1880’s, a Welsh missionary who had endured severe persecution finally saw his first converts in a particularly brutal village in the Indian province of Assam. A husband and wife, with their two children, professed faith in Christ and were baptized. The village leaders decided to make an example out of the husband. Arresting the family, they demanded that the father renounce Christ, or see his wife and children murdered. When he refused, his two children were executed by archers. Given another chance to renounce his faith, the man again refused, and his wife was similarly strucked down. Still refusing to recant, the man was also murdered.
It was said that when asked to recant or see his children murdered, the man said: “I have decided to follow Jesus, and there is no turning back.” After seeing his children killed, he reportedly said, “The world can be behind me, but the Cross is still before me.” And after seeing his wife pierced by the arrows, he said, “Though no one is here to go with me, still I will follow Jesus.”
According to this missionary, when he returned to the village, a revival had broken out, and those that had murdered the first converts had since come to faith themselves. The account of the family that had been martyred in Assam were so astonishing and widely circulated that most Indian believers were familiar with it.
Sadhu Singh, a trainer of foreign missionaries, took the martyr’s last words, and put them to traditional Indian music in order to make one of the first unique Indian hymns. The song immediately became popular in Indian churches, and it remains a mainstay of worship music there to this day. Some of the American missionaries returned from India and they brought the song with them. Finally, it ended up with Canadian song writer George Beverley Shea, and he made it a popular song at the Billy Graham crusades.
Faith Challenge: Can you die for your faith? What can you trade for your faith?
Quote: And they loved not their lives even unto death – Bible
Prophetic Word: Receive grace to live your faith to the end, in Jesus name.
Prayer Focus:
Holy Spirit, strengthen my convictions firmly on Christ, the Rock, in Jesus name.
Faith killers, die, in the name of Jesus.
Powers hunting my faith, die by fire, in the name of Jesus.