This week I want to cover an event in Fraser’s life that literally was the difference between success and failure in his ministry. The details of the event I’ve taken below from Mountain Rain. please read on because it was very important and very life-changing for him – and could be for you and for me today.
But the message that I’ve shared in the attached recording takes a different look at those events and follows on from last week, where I spoke of PACTeams. An early PACTeam member, as it were, obeyed the prompting of the Holy Spirit to support a missionary on the front line. The victory that Fraser experienced came because someone who cared for him was prompted to send a magazine, a word from the Lord which arrived at a desperate time in Fraser’s life and changed the direction of his life and ministry. A simple act – but one with a huge result that led to revival amongst the Lisu people in China. PACTeams matter. They make a difference!
What Happened? – Fraser’s journey from defeat to victory.
A strange and sinister shadow fell over James’s whole spiritual life. He was perplexed and found himself in deepening gloom. At first he put it down to his isolation. A sense of loneliness engulfed him from time to time, but he soon realized it was not that. Then he wondered if it was the poor food – rice and vegetables made a seriously deficient diet. But it was not the poor food. He was used to that. He looked out on the curtains of mist and rain and wondered if the depression was their doing.
But gradually he became aware of an influence far more far reaching and soul destroying than these physical discomforts. He was assailed by deep and treacherous doubts. Has God said? The question came to him again and again, as clearly as it came at the dawn of time. Your prayers are not being answered, are they? No one wants to hear your message. The few who first believed have gone back, haven’t they? You see, it doesn’t work. You should never have stayed in this area on such a fool’s errand. You’ve been in China five years, and there’s not much to show for it, is there? You thought you were called to be a missionary. It was pure imagination. You had better leave it all, go back and admit it was a big mistake.
Day after day and night after night he wrestled with doubt and suicidal despair. Suicidal? Not once, but several times, he stared over the dark ravine into the abyss. Why not end it all? The powers of darkness had him isolated. If they could get him now, they could put an end to the work.
But one day, when the clouds were at their darkest, some letters arrived from Tengyueh, brought up the mountain by a weary, bedraggled runner. James opened the letters carefully, lest he tear the wet pages. One of the envelopes from England contained a copy of “The Overcomer”, a magazine he had not heard of before. He settled down to read it, rain dripping on all sides. “I read it over and over, that number of the Overcomer”, he wrote.
But one day, when the clouds were at their darkest, some letters arrived from Tengyueh, brought up the mountain by a weary, bedraggled runner. James opened the letters carefully, lest he tear the wet pages. One of the envelopes from England contained a copy of “The Overcomer”, a magazine he had not heard of before. He settled down to read it, rain dripping on all sides. “I read it over and over, that number of the Overcomer”, he wrote.
“What it showed me was that deliverance from the power of the Evil One came through definite resistance on the ground of the cross.” He was an engineer and believed in things working. He wanted to see them work, but he had found that much of the spiritual teaching he’d heard did not seem to work. He felt he needed more than the truth of passively leaving everything to the Lord Jesus. Definite resistance on the ground of the cross brought him light, and it worked. “I felt like a man perishing of thirst, to whom some beautiful, clear, cold water had begun to flow.”
“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.
“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. One had to learn gradually how to use the new weapon of resistance. I had so much to learn. It seemed as if God was saying, ‘You are crying to me to do a big work amongst the Lisu. I am wanting to do a big work in you yourself.’”
The long, dark night in that poor hovel in the mountains ended in the dawn of victory. He was led in the train of His triumph, a triumph finished and complete. The victory was of course a spiritual one. The outward circumstances were the same as before…”
(Source: Mountain Rain, a biography of James O. Fraser by Eileen Fraser Crossman)
