6. Hindrances To Being Awakened and Praying Earnestly With Focus

In the New Year’s Eve of 1989, we joined together on Mount Fragrance to pray all night.  That day as I read Isaiah 64 according to my own sequence, the first verse caught my attention:  “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down.”  I realized the reason that the Lord had delayed in fulfilling his promises was that we had not asked earnestly.  From that day on I aimed my prayer at revival, and grasped God’s promises by praying earnestly for the development of the home of workers entrusted by the Lord.  The enemy began to attack me.  At first I was very healthy and my appetite was very good.  Then suddenly in the middle of the night I felt so dizzy that the world seemed to turn upside down.  I vomited and had diarrhea.  For a long time afterward I suffered from a neural disorder that caused serious dizziness and imbalance of movement.  Along with this I continued to have diarrhea caused by dysentery.  When I recovered, I went to Shanghai.  Unexpectedly the American Consulate issued a visa to visit my relative in the United States.  I wanted to leave for America before the expiration of my visa but there were too many things to be done before I could leave.

           During this time I continued to pay attention to the Lord’s Word and continued praying earnestly for the great revival of the whole world and the development of the home for Christ’s workers.  At the same time I found that I had symptoms of cancer in my womb and the pain was getting worse and worse.  I recalled that a woman in the labor camp had cancer in her womb and had died of it very soon.  My symptoms were exactly the same as hers.  Eventually I even needed to use gauze as a pad for bleeding.  One day as I was just beginning to pray, I bled heavily.  My heart sank as with a freezing clod, and I thought:  “It is useless.  I am dying so why should I bother to pray for the great revival or the development of God’s work?”  Suddenly another sentence came to me:  ”Isn’t this the best way to stop you from praying?”  Then I had another thought,  “Oh, this is the trick of the devil!”  Immediately I realized, “If I die, I die.  I must open my mouth to ask for revival, to ask God to raise workers who are after His heart.  I must pray that all of us can have one heart in preaching the gospel to the whole world, so that the Lord can come quickly.”  Hallelujah!  The threat of death pushed me to pray more earnestly.  When I finished praying, the bleeding stopped, and I threw away the gauze.  I arrived in America the same year.  I pray that I will always have the determination of Esther, that “if I die, I die.”  I pray earnestly to claim God’s promises so that God’s will can be practiced everywhere.  We must pray unceasingly for God’s plan—Jerusalem, the Church—day and night.  We must not allow the devil to hinder our praying!