Chasing the Dragon 2 of 2 — Jackie Pullinger

Reaping Where Others Have Sown

And first of all, I couldn't make the connection, because, you know, as I told people about Jesus, some of them knelt down in the street and said, that's wonderful, I've longed to hear words like this.

And others sat down and said, that's amazing, I want to accept Jesus. I just couldn't believe what was going on. I thought, oh, my Chinese got so good. And actually, I wasn't saying any different from what I'd been saying before.

They were the same words. But I realized that as I'd been praying in the Spirit secretly, in a mysterious way, and it is a mystery, God was making me sensitive to spiritual things. And actually what was happening was that I was saying the same words I'd been saying before, but this time I was saying them at the right time, to the right people.

I was saying them to people who wanted to hear. It was really unfair. You know that text that Jesus says, go out and gather in the harvest, because the fields are already white, and you're going to reap where you didn't sow.

And that's the unfairness of this kind of ministry. You will. You'll go out and you'll reap where you didn't sow, and you know it's nothing to do with you. And you can't be proud either, because you didn't work on those people.

And I found out in nearly every instance that someone had been praying for the person who came to the Lord. Sometimes it was a grandfather, or a pastor back in China 30 years before, or a headmaster 20 years before.

Usually you could trace that there'd been someone somewhere, probably who'd done all the work. But I just got the privilege of saying the words, and so they came into the Kingdom. And it was very exciting that those who had been involved in the triad societies, they began to come to the Lord too.

And it happened that one young man called A-Ping believed, and he joined the triads when he was about 14. He was a good fighter. And I remember him coming to me once and saying, this girl has offered herself to me.

Peter and John and the Procession of Praise

There was a story where Peter and John went out and met a beggar, and the beggar asked for money, and good thing they didn't have any, because they said, no, we haven't got any, but I'll tell you what we will do.

We'll give you what we have in the name of Jesus. Rise up and walk. And he went walking and leaping and praising God. Well, there's a song about it. So when we came to the chorus, walking and leaping and praising God, we all walked and leapt carefully over the sewers.

And we had to go single file because you can't walk too down the streets. We walked around the world. It was a lovely, lovely day because it was the only time that I can remember that all the businesses stopped.

The Blue Film Theater stopped. And the people came to the mouth of it, and they said, what's this? Christians praising God. I mean, we've seen them giving out bits of paper before, but we've never seen them dancing in the streets.

And we went past the gambling den, and in the gambling den was one of our young men. And he was asleep in the gambling den. And when he heard the noise outside, he went, oh, I'm in church and I've gone to sleep.

So he woke up and joined the procession. And then we ran past the opium dens and they stopped. And they came to the door and they said, what's this? And we wound around to some of the dens where there were the big heroin demands.

And unasked, the leader of our procession stopped. Now, his name is Ah Ming. And he had just a few weeks previously got off heroin when the Lord touched him. And he was not invited to preach, but he took this upon himself.

And he stopped the procession and started to address the air. And he was telling the air about Jesus and how Jesus had saved him. And doing a grand job, actually. And inside the den was another young man who'd just finished taking heroin.

And he was wondering, as he'd finished sticking the needle in his arm, what to do next. Because they always have this problem. Am I now going to go to sleep and enjoy the effect of the heroin? And wake up frightened and in pain because I don't know where to get the next lot.

Or am I now, while I'm feeling reasonable, going to go out and stick someone up? So that I can get some heroin and go to sleep without being frightened. And he was wondering about this. And he heard the noise outside, poked his nose out of the hat.

And he saw his friend addressing the air and talking about Jesus. And he thought, it's very strange, but he looks quite fat. And they're very keen on fat people. They say, this is a great blessing from God.

And truly, if you're in a place where food is scarce and you're poor, they just believe that to be large, you've got to have time to be large. And money enough to be large. So they're very keen. Call it great blessing.

Anyway, there was Moses, as he was later to be called, poking his nose out of the hat, looking at fat Amin. And thinking, how come he's fat? Because just a few weeks ago, we were sticking needles in our arms together.

And now he's talking about Jesus, what's this? So he joined the end of the procession and we wound around the streets. And eventually we came back to our little room. And I started to tell him about Jesus.

The Shame-Bearing Cross and New Life for the Guilty

And he said, yes, I could believe, but I can't be a Christian. And I said, why not? And he said, I've killed my wife. And the story was that he was quite a powerful triad leader. And he had a good job in a nightclub.

He was a bouncer. And he was so good at this that he employed some sub-bouncers. And then after that, they employed more sub-bouncers. So in the end, he had a bouncing business. And he didn't need to do any himself.

He just lived off the others. And this girl that he lived with loved him. And she loved him very much, but he was playing around with two other women and he refused to stop. And she was so unhappy, she began to take drugs herself.

And he took her to the hospital twice. And the third time, she died. And then he was sorry for what he'd done. And his business went down and he declined. And on the night that we were walking around the city singing and dancing, he was actually sleeping in the streets at that time.

And I said, that's all right. Because when Jesus died on the cross, he was cut off from God. You know, he was supposed to be the son of God, that one, the one who did all the miracles. But when he died on the cross, he took upon himself the death of your wife.

I don't know whether you've ever thought about this, but Hebrews says that Jesus despised the shame. And I don't know whether you've ever thought about shame in this way. But it was a shameful thing for Jesus to die.

Because actually, when he died, he was in effect pleading guilty to other people's murders and pleading guilty to other people's rapes and all the dirty and foul things that there are in the world. He said it was as if he'd done them.

What a terrible shame for God to take upon himself. Sometimes I begin to feel a little bit of that because I go to court quite often. And mostly I don't do anything. I just sit there because I've gone to be with somebody who's on trial.

And sometimes they're on trial for really awful things. And I can see the policeman looking at me, and I can see the public looking at me thinking, what's that girl doing with that filthy chap there? What's she doing?

And you feel ashamed being identified with shameful people. That's what Jesus did for us. He identified. He took our shame even upon himself. That's what I told Amal. I said, Jesus took the death of your wife upon himself.

And if you give your life to him, he can give you a new one and you'll be free. And he prayed very happily to receive Jesus. And he went out into the street, his head just swimming. And he met some friends in the passage outside.

And they saw him, and they laughed. And they said, you've got Jesus, haven't you? And he said, but I didn't care because for the first time in my life my heart felt light. And I thought, well, good, there's one more.

Now we can go on to the next one. And I was a little upset when he appeared a few days later for our Sunday morning gathering because we were praying together and we were sharing things together. I said, has anybody got anything to thank God for?

Deliverance from Drugs Through Christian Community

Yes, he said, I really want to thank God because I've got a job. Marvellous, I thought. Good. What's your job, Amal? Well, he said, I've got a job as a team mentor, as a watcher for a heroin den. Oh, well, that doesn't sound too good.

Well, he said, it's wonderful, I really thank God because I get $15 a day for that and that's just enough to keep me in heroin money. I haven't had to steal or hold anybody up since I believed in Jesus.

Oh, no, that doesn't sound at all right. You know, you're not supposed to be on drugs at all if you believe in Jesus. But here was the problem. Now you may be in that situation yourself one day. At that time we had not begun to open our homes.

I was expecting that God would go around touching people and they would all get off miraculously. But this one didn't and I couldn't understand why not. So what was I going to do? Was I going to give him money myself every day?

I mean, that was a temptation. At least then he wouldn't have to work in a den. Or was I going to say, pray and God will get you off miraculously? What? I mean, you might find yourself in that situation.

And these are some of the times that you'll find you're very puzzled and you'll think to yourself, why does it work for other people and it doesn't work for me, you know, why? And you're meant to go through times like that.

You're meant to go through times when there are sick people that need to be prayed for and they don't get well. You're meant to agonize. You're meant to ask the Lord, why don't they get well? You're meant to try and find answers because the Lord does want to work through you, not just for that person you're agonizing over, but for many more.

And I'm glad that I went through that time of agony. Why? How come he's believed in Jesus and he's out there in the streets still needing to take heroin? It just doesn't make sense. And then we began to understand that God, of course, could quite easily get them all off instantly, but he didn't want them lying around in the streets or living in drug dens.

He wanted them in homes. He wanted them in places where they would be looked after, where they could grow up in the new life that Jesus had bought for them. And that's what began to happen as we opened our homes.

And we found that the same miracle happened for all of them as they believed and trusted in Jesus. Each one received the gift of a new language. In all of their cases, we told them that they would, and all of them said, how nice, how kind of God to give you a language to pray in.

And as they prayed that way, they were able to get off drugs without any pain. By the way, it wasn't the praying in tongues that got people off drugs. It was Jesus. You don't need to pray in tongues to get off drugs.

It's Jesus that gets people off drugs. It's just that he's so kind that he gives you a way to help you pray. And that's really kind, you know, because if an addict is in pain and coming off drugs, the last thing he actually feels like doing is praying.

I don't know what you feel like when you're ill, but I'm bad-tempered. You know, I like to hide under the eiderdarm, and I'm not too gracious even if people want to pray for me. You know, I just want to hide.

But you can imagine for an addict who's not used to praying at all, you know, being told to pray is hard. And so it's so kind of God. As they pray, God gives them words. And they don't know what the words are, but they know that God is helping them to pray, and as they do that, they go to sleep.

And they wake up and have a bath and then have some noodles and pray some more and go to sleep. And we've seen dozens coming off drugs in this way as we've prayed with them. And the Lord does the same miracle for all of them because he's the same Lord, and he's good to all.

Forgiveness in Prison and Freedom from Bitterness

So there have been times of agony and not understanding and times of darkness, but times of extraordinary joy. And many in the prisons, too, have been touched. It began because one young man in the prison prayed, and as he prayed, he got off drugs without any pain.

So I began to get invitations from his friends to come and see them, and I was called to see one one day. And he and his friend were sitting in the cell with white stripes around their uniform, and those white stripes indicated that they were dangerous prisoners, that they'd tried to escape.

One of them had faked an illness and went to the hospital, and they tried to escape down the air-conditioning ducts. And they got caught, and the guards beat them up. And so I was telling them about Jesus, and one of them believed.

And I said to the other one before we prayed, Now, you know, you have to forgive your enemies because Jesus says that he can't forgive you unless you forgive others. And so you've got to forgive your prison guards.

Well, he said, That's done it. He said, You've just asked me the most impossible question. And he said, I'm sorry. Anything else. But they're just like pigs. They don't even treat us like people. And you've just asked me the most impossible thing you could.

And so I said to him, Oh, I am sorry. Of course you can't forgive somebody else until you understand what it is that Jesus has done for you. And I began to pray with the other man, and the other man began to weep.

He had an amazing story, the other man. I don't have time to tell you, but God had actually raised him from the dead when he was a baby. And he began to weep to know that he was forgiven for what he'd done.

And as he began to weep, the stubborn one sitting beside him began to weep also. And then he looked up and he said to me, he said, While you were praying, he said, God spoke to me very clearly. And he said, He cannot forgive me unless I forgive those prison guards.

And I want to be forgiven. And I forgive them freely from my heart. And so he was born again. And he then prayed in the spirit. You can't lay hands on them in prison, you know. They're difficult. But there's no need, because it's the Lord who gives his gifts.

And so he began to pray. And he and his friend both became model prisoners. And the reason that he could be forgiven, the reason that he rejoiced in his forgiveness, was that he gave up his bitterness.

And I think that there are many people here who might find it easier to give up riches than to give up bitterness. And this may be something which is holding you back from following Christ with your whole heart.

In fact, it does hold up a lot of us, because many of us feel we have a right to be bitter. We feel that we have been hard done by. We feel that we've been born into difficult circumstances or we've been through a difficult time or we shouldn't have been misjudged or ill-treated or what a lot of terrible circumstances that have happened.

And we sit and we dwell in self-pity and we enjoy it. And Jesus says we have to lose our life to gain it. I tell you the truth. Unless an ear of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.

But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am my servant also will be.

My Father will honor the one who serves me. That man gave up his bitterness and found forgiveness and gave forgiveness and rejoiced in a new life. And he had a miraculous release from prison, actually, some weeks later, which was wonderful.

And we've seen many people's lives change like that. He wasn't on drugs, but he was in the grip of something which was just as bad, because bitterness eats you up just as much as drugs do. And when he was prepared to give up that bitterness which he'd hugged and thought that he had a right to, then he knew life in Jesus.

Prayerful Witness and Revival in the Prisons

It's been very exciting to see other people's lives changing. Because of what's happened in Hong Kong, other people in other countries have come to hear about this. And it's terribly unfair, because I've found that the same thing happens all the time.

If you continue to pray in the Spirit, you'll find really unfairly people turn up all the time. I sit next to people on buses and things, and they turn and say, Please, can I have peace in my life? I mean, they're stiff-handed on a plate.

I was in Germany some years ago, and this man started to talk to me, and he said, Can you tell me, is there a man I can trust? He said, I used to trust a man, and I trusted him with my life, and I really believed in him.

And he let me down. His name was Hitler. And is there a man I can trust? And I said, Yes, I'll tell you his name, and I told him about Jesus. And he got out of the train some stops later. I mean, just a light with joy that he'd found someone that he could trust.

And he said, I never would have thought this, but who would have thought a stranger would start talking to you about trusting Hitler on a train? Extraordinary. And I just find that the Holy Spirit does this.

And the reason is, and it's not me, the reason is that I'm quite, quite, quite convinced that in the whole world, and in New Zealand, there are millions of people longing to hear, longing to hear about Jesus, and all we have to say is the Word at the right time.

It really isn't that much hard work to pray in the Spirit. And you will find that God leads you to people, and you don't have to push Bibles at them. You don't have to go and ask if they're saved. You don't have to bash them with Bibles or anything like that.

You'll find they want to know. There will be an aroma about you which attracts. This happened to a man in Wakefield Prison in England, and he wrote to us in Hong Kong because he heard about the voice, and he said, can this happen to me?

So he wrote back and said, yes, of course. Next time I'm in England, I'll come and share with you. But by the time I visited him in England, this is one of the top security prisons in Yorkshire, I found that he'd already received Jesus, and the chaplain had talked with him.

And he said, but I've got a problem. I want to know how to share Jesus with my fellow prisoners. So I said, well, you need the power of the Holy Spirit because that's why it's given. It's given that we might share Jesus.

So I prayed with him in the canteen, and he received the gift of a new language. And then I said to him, now pray every day. Pray secretly. And please don't go around the prison telling people about Jesus.

You just keep quiet. Because one thing I've learned is that very few people will listen to what you say. Most people will watch what you do. So in a prison, this is not a smart thing to go around assaulting people with Jesus.

So you just keep quiet and pray, and you'll find they'll come to you. Well, he wrote a few weeks later, and he said there was a man that I was longing to talk to about Jesus, but he said I resisted the temptation.

I remembered what you said, and I prayed for him instead. And he said the next day the man came to me, and he said, can I change? Can I believe in Jesus? And so Alan began to tell him, and the man said, well, I've got a problem.

I'm a homosexual. And with great wisdom, Alan asked him the best question I can imagine anybody could ask. He said, do you want to change? And the man said, yes, I do, but I'm afraid I can't. And Alan said, no, you can't, but Jesus can change you.

And told him how this could happen, and the man received Jesus, and he received the power of the Holy Spirit, and he did change, and he was free from that which he wanted to be free of, and received a new life.

And an extraordinary sort of revival broke out in Wakefield Prison. One after another after another after another came to believe it was extraordinary. Well, Alan got himself into solitary confinement, and solitary confinement means that for 23 hours out of 24, you're alone.

And they designed the prison so that they're all in single cells. And the only hour that they could communicate or see one another was the exercise hour. But when they built the prison, they made a mistake, because they left all the lavatory pipes connected.

So the prisoners used to communicate down the low pipes. And so above Alan was this Irish terrorist, and down the low pipes they did crosswords and things. And Alan tried to talk to him about Jesus. Well, you know, the Irish terrorist didn't want to hear about Jesus, so Alan prayed instead.

And some weeks later down the pipe came the voice. Of course, he said, it didn't really hurt him when he died, did it? It didn't really hurt Jesus. So Alan said, I gave it to him. And he said, I started with Gethsemane, and I went through the lot, and I didn't spare him anything.

And I told him that it really did hurt Jesus. Yes, he was God, but he was a man, and it did hurt him. And he suffered and died for all the things that we've done. And he cried when he was on the cross.

And there was a silence at the other end. And the next day the man prayed to receive Jesus. Well, there was such a change in his life that the prison officers couldn't understand what was happening. And they actually gave him a body search three times in half an hour, which is fairly unpleasant, because they thought he was planning an escape.

He suddenly became a model prisoner. He stopped smoking, stopped swearing, which is quite remarkable in prison. And he was going along fine until one day, down the pipe, this voice came to Alan. He said, I think I've gone over the top.

I think I'm overdoing it a bit. So Alan said, why, what's happened? Well, he said, I was praying this morning, and all these strange sort of sounds came out. Well, Alan said, no, you haven't overdone it at all.

You know, this is a gift from the Lord. It's to help you pray. And there was such an effect in that solitary block in Wakefield Prison that the prison guards allowed Alan to talk. And he was the only one who was allowed to talk during the exercise hour.

And he preached. As they walked around for an hour, he used to preach as they walked for an hour each day. And in that way, many of those prisoners in solitary confinement came to new life in Jesus. You'll probably hear about this, because this is going right the way through the prisons in England.

There's quite a revival there, and many people believe that this is the way that Britain will be changed. It's because the worst men and the most lowly men have found a savior who forgives everything.

Conversion, Idolatry, and the Call to Follow Christ

And they're all in there for really bad crimes. And they rejoice to be set free and to share this with others. Another time I was in London, and somebody telephoned. And she said, I'm a cellist. And she was playing in a show called Annie.

I don't know whether you've had Annie over here, but she said, I want to come and see you. And by the way, she said, I'm a Buddhist. So I asked a friend to be with me when she came to see me, and she turned up on the doorstep.

She came in, she sat down, she started crying, and she said, I don't know why I'm here. And I mean, I didn't know why she was there either. It turned out that she was a Jew. She was born a Jew. She'd been raised, and her father had made her do Freud and then Jung with a psychoanalyst for an hour a day from the age of 17 onwards.

And she'd had enough of that and several breakdowns and so on. And then later went into this Buddhism thing. And there she was, saying, I'm the world, you know. And Freud told her about Jesus. And it was extraordinary, because as I was telling her about Jesus, it was as if the Holy Spirit was speaking to her.

She'd come because she'd heard that Jesus had changed boys in Hong Kong. And this brought a cellist to the doorstep. And I felt anointed to pray in tongues, so I asked my friend to come in at that time.

She was in the room next door. And I prayed in tongues, and my friend had the interpretation. And it was an extraordinary interpretation. She had a picture of somebody throwing idols into the Kidron Valley.

And she didn't know that the girl who came to see me was into Buddhism. She didn't know anything about her. And the first part of the interpretation was lovely, you know, come to me, my daughter, I love you, all of that.

And then it got a bit fierce. And I hate the things you're doing. I know what you're doing, and you must throw away these idols, and you must square up your life. Because she was actually living in sin.

And you must get rid of these things and follow me, because I'm here as your God. Well, this was all pretty powerful, as my friend had no idea what we'd been talking about. And so I said to the girl, whose name was Madeline, here's a gospel, go home and read it.

And she came to a church service several days later. And the Lord had done extraordinary things. He'd been speaking to her in dreams. And she was convinced that Jesus was God's Son, that he was the Messiah.

And she gave up her idols. She threw out her statues. She also threw out her mantra and the scroll with her name on. And she'd been told that if she did this, there would be curses upon her, actually, from the movement that she was involved in.

But she gave them up, because she found the Savior. And it was lovely, because some of her children came to believe in Jesus very soon afterwards. So we find that people in all walks of life, just the same, can be freed from whatever their problems are, whether they're drug addicts or cellists.

Actually, there was a lovely time when we were in Ireland, and a Miss America came to believe in the Lord. It was lovely. She said that she'd been to church for years and years and years. She said all she did was a shopping list.

And when she heard that you could actually have a relationship with the living God, she was terribly excited. She didn't look as if she needed anything. She was very beautiful, and she was very clever.

She had a wonderful husband, beautiful children, lots of money, a lovely home, career and everything. But she didn't have the peace of God in her heart. And when she came to Jesus that day, she said, all of those things, they're just rubbish, you know.

I just count them as nothing in comparison with the joy of knowing Jesus as Lord. By the way, that one that I saw in the drug den that night, that I said, if God can change that one, he can change anyone, he became a Christian.

And he's been off drugs now for about seven years. And because of his testimony, one of the leaders in the walled city has believed. In fact, his name is Goko. And all those years we've been praying for him.

He came to the Lord in March this year when he was in prison. And I went down to the cell to pray with him. He'd just been convicted for being in possession of a large amount of opium. And the prison guard said to me, do you have anything private to say to this man?

Because I'm supposed to listen into your conversation. And I said, well, I do actually, I'd like to pray with him. And that is private. So he said, OK, I'll give you two minutes. So when Goko came into the room, I said, we have no time to talk, we only have time to pray.

I didn't ask him if he wanted to pray or not. And I began to pray, and he began to weep. And he asked Jesus into his life. He was baptized in the Spirit. He began to pray in another language. And he wept.

And we talked, and we looked at the Bible. And the prison guard never came back for an hour. He got through a whole packet of tissues. It was a wonderful time. That's just the beginning of another story, because we're already in the middle of another one since we've been away from Hong Kong.

Sharing Christ Through Suffering and Costly Discipleship

There's been a murder in which two of Goko's younger brothers are involved. We don't know the details. We'll find out when we go back. But this, you see, illustrates exactly what happened. That day when I prayed with him in March was one of the happiest days of my whole life, because I'd been praying for him for 15 years.

I knew he would be a Christian one day. It was just wonderful when it happened. And he said he would give up his whole gang. And later on, he testified as he was baptized in water that he would give it all up to follow Jesus.

And this is what I'd hoped for. This is one of those moments of extraordinary glory. But we are now punched back to the other end, because we'll have to go back and sort out what's happened in this murder, in this gang fight that his brothers are involved in.

There will be a lot of pain, because somebody's died, and there are families affected. And there are 30 people from the walled city running at the minute. And they're running away from the police, because there are 40 people involved in this fight.

And in a kind of way, we dread going back a little bit, because we know that we're going to go back to a hard time. And there's no easy way to smile your way through murders and gang fights and other people's deep grief and sorrow and the awful regret for those who may have to spend the rest of their lives in jail after a mistake like this.

But we know that if we are prepared to share suffering with Christ, that is to go in with the love of Christ to those people and say, He loves you. Whatever you've done, He'll forgive you. We'll stand by you.

Even if other people look down upon you and spit at you for what you've done, Jesus still loves you and will stand by you and will hurt as you hurt and will rejoice as you rejoice. If you are prepared to go through times like that, times of suffering, to be intensely involved in other people's problems rather than your own, then I believe you'll share the glory with Christ.

Endurance, Grace, and Choosing Life in Christ

2 Timothy. If we died with Christ, we shall live with Him. If we endure, we shall reign with Him. If we disown Him, He will disown us. If we are faithless, He will remain faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.

And Timothy, Paul, as he was writing to Timothy, was actually at that time in prison suffering himself. He said, And I suffer, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But, he said, I endure.

I endure. I endure everything for the sake of those who have been called to Jesus, that they may obtain salvation. That is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. So there you are. You can choose how you'd like to live your life.

You can choose whether you'd like to hang on to your personal problems, especially those places where you feel you have a right to feel hurt or aggrieved or upset or to pity yourself. You can choose to hang on to that.

Or you can say, I'm going to die to that. That's not much of a life anyway. And I choose to live in Christ. I'm going to die to that old life. I want to receive new life in Christ. And having done so, having received new life in Christ, and if most of you here have already, you can again choose how you're going to live that life in Christ.

Whether you're just going to go to meetings and have a sort of glory session every now and again, or whether you're going to obey what the Gospel says, which is to sell everything that you have and give to the poor.

That is to give up everything that stands between you and following Jesus with a whole heart. So do that. Actually, you'll find you'll lose nothing. You'll gain everything. And if you feel frightened to embark upon this kind of life, that's all right, because he's looking for weak people.

He's looking for weak people because he says that in our weakness, his strength will be made perfect, and he offers the power of his Holy Spirit to accompany us. He says he'll teach us how to speak. He'll teach us how to walk.

He'll help us to remember what he said. He'll give us gifts of healing that the sick might be healed. He'll give us words of prophecy to encourage those who are downtrodden and weary and puzzled and upset.