Gladys Aylward emphasizes the vital role of women as quiet achievers in faith, urging them to embrace their responsibilities and privileges in Christ. She shares her experiences in China, highlighting the challenges faced by young people and the importance of instilling values of love, truth, and freedom in their families. Aylward encourages women to be new creations in Christ, shedding old ways and representing Him in their communities. She passionately calls for mothers to pray for their children and to be active in their spiritual growth, reminding them that their influence can shape future generations. Ultimately, she stresses that true freedom and purpose are found only in Jesus Christ.

I have prayed this morning to you, who are my sisters, we will be willing to meet with the Lord Jesus, because I believe that God has given us a most amazing privilege, but a most wonderful responsibility. Surely there has never been a time such as this in which we find ourselves living, when anything can happen any moment, when the world sweeps forward and wonderful things just come into the news and into our very lives. But at the same time, you and I have this challenge, not only to meet the time, but to meet God in those times. And it is something of this that has prompted me and made me accept this invitation from World Vision to come out. You will find that I do not know very much about the outside as a western civilization. My life has been lived away in the middle of China, and when we came out from China itself, I went to live on a little island for most of us, and that has been my interest, my life. There I believe God put my life. But I haven't been able to just sit on that small island in the all around. From every point there are these terrific challenges. And just to emphasize to you, not in just a theoretical way, but in a way of fact, these places that to you are Southeastern Asia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaya, China, Formosa, Japan, Korea, and those, that area represents a terrific challenge. Because you see, dear sisters, their young people are way ahead of yours. They're more clever, they read more, they do more, they're far more energetic, they don't expect to be spoon-fed, they know where they're going and they're going to get there. And as I see it, just in the way in which they live, and now I come and see the way you live, friends, you're on the losing side. And the challenge is for Jesus Christ, because I truly believe that only in Christ is there freedom, or can we keep and hold our freedom, or can we get anywhere of any value at all. So you'll find that this morning is not just a talk, a sort of little story, it is a challenge from my own heart to yours. That's why I ask that we, as women, should meet together. Because although I have never really lived a woman's life as you have, I've never had a home, I've never had a husband, and I never have had children of my own. But I have brought up more children than I suppose any of you have ever thought of. And so there has always been in my life the problem of eating, and wearing clothes, and room enough for the family, and what to do with the next one, and how to settle their quarrels, and being alone without a father. And all these things have brought into my life and into my heart not just ideas, I'm not going to give you tips on how to manage your family. I would that you got what I have got, the love of Jesus Christ, so that you will pass on that to your children. Of the patience that only he can give, so that in your home, in spite of all that turmoil and confusion, you will be perfectly happy. And spread a sort of comforting feeling because of that patience through the people who you have to live with. I'm going to read one verse. Now I will explain, it is not because I do not believe the middle of the verses, these two that I'm leaving up, but they don't just happen right this morning to come into our talk. And the verse is the 17th verse of the fifth chapter of 2nd Corinthians. Now if you know your Bible, I hope you do, these words won't be the same because mine is Chinese, sorry that's all I read, but I will turn it round as I understand it from Chinese to you. A person inside Christ is new. That person's old affairs are behind that person's back. Everything is changed. A person inside Christ. You and I right now are inside this building. We as individuals, as persons, are inside our clothes. And so there is a sort of limit, isn't there? We just don't do as we please in being in this building. We are consigned by these walls. And in our clothes, well we're just not quite as free as we would be without them. We are inside. And I believe in the same way, in theory, in spirit, you and I have to get inside of Christ so that although we're limited, we're limited by Him, by His love, by His patience, by His great almighty mercy and salvation. We're inside of Jesus Christ. This person then has to do something. It says a person inside Christ is new. Now friend, I do not believe that you and I, when we believe on the Lord Jesus, we join a church or we get confirmed or baptised, we gradually become a little nicer, our tempers are a little better and, well, altogether we're just going forward, aren't we? No. The Bible doesn't imply that. A person inside Christ is, and this is present, new. And so you and I, if we really believe in Jesus Christ and we are willing to get, as it were, inside of Him, to listen to His voice, to do as He asks, we are new creations. Right now. We don't have to wait till we get to heaven. We don't have to wait till we've got a little better, a little older, or done a little more good work. No. This is entirely through faith and trust in our wonderful Jesus Christ. And now this new creation does something. Immediately throws overboard all the old ideas. Are all your old ideas out? Friend, do you still read those same silly books? Still dream the same silly dreams? Well, when we were girls in our teens, we dreamed dreams, but we shouldn't be dreaming dreams of when we are fourteen. We should be acting. We should be living in reality. Romance is for youth, not for age. We should have gone forward. We should have thrown overboard those things which we know as we grow older are of no value. A person inside Christ is new and all the old affairs are behind His back. Before I went to China, I was connected with the stage. That's what I went up into London. That's what I left my home for, to go and study for the stage. And so all my friends knew how interested and taken up I was with the theatre. And then after I was paid and I went to China, of course this all went and I forgot all about it. But as I was on my way back from Red China to Great Britain, twenty or more years had gone by and suddenly the thought came into me, now what am I going to do? I suppose my dear aunt and my relations, they were all Russian, were next invited to the theatre. I just didn't know. You know, dear friend, no one's ever asked. No one ever invited. You see, they didn't. I had no question as to what I was going to say. They knew the very attitude that I took, the very way I walked in. I was a new creation. I hadn't just gone to China and grown up. I hadn't become a missionary. Oh no, I looked at things in a different way. And now the girl of twenty had grown up and she was looking at things in a different light. Friend, are you looking at things in a real square right in the light of Jesus Christ? Because you are a new creation in him. And then as the old affairs, the old things you know that really don't count, do they? They go overboard. Everything's changed. Oh, you don't move house. You still have to sweep the old floor with the same old broom. You still have to cook the same kind of dinners because your family liked that kind of cooking. But it's new. You live a new life. You're new. You talk in a new way. You've joy in your heart. You live a new life because Christ is yours and you are his. And friend, it doesn't have that we alter the place where we live or our circumstances are either better or new. It is as we are inside of Jesus Christ. I lived in the middle of China for nine and a half years in one of the miserablest places on earth. You could have walked right round our city in twenty minutes. That's how big it was. You could have seen everybody. There were five shops. They all sold the same thing. They had five or six things for sale, nothing of which I wanted to buy, simply because every single one of those five things was something to do with idols. Paper to burn to idols. Incense to burn to idols. Candles to burn to idols. Belts to tie around cow's neck. And rope to tie up your cows with to the post of your door. Now what did I want those for? So there were no shop gazing, no shopping. But friend, I lived in that little city and I can honestly tell you God gave to my heart a most amazing joy in watching one by one the men and women of that small city and the people outside come and find Jesus Christ as their savior. Not because I could preach wonderful sermons because they didn't come to listen if I but because they saw living in an inn just outside the city gate somebody who was a new creation. And this afternoon I pray that to you something of this challenge will come into your heart that you may go out to do what God wants. Because if we leap over in the same chapter to the 20th verse we read this and therefore or so this person becomes Christ's representative. You and I inside Christ representing him. We're not out just to talk about our own affairs or even the affairs of our church or our family. We are there to represent the Lord of Glory and friend it's the greatest the most glorious privilege and something that fills us with joy. And now I would like to give you all as it were mixed up you'll find something that represents to me the mission field and your and my part in it. Because this isn't a call to the mission field you can't just get up and run off can you? No you've got your family and you're as it were tied down and you have responsibilities to those families. But I truly believe that every single soundly born again child of God that is those who have the witness of Jesus Christ in their heart should be doing something for the kingdom of God. We should be new creations representing him somewhere. Now where that particular place is I wouldn't know in your case I could only know in mine. I only know that as we get inside of him seek to find out his will he never asks us to do something we can't. He never tells us to go to somewhere he knows we cannot go. He doesn't put us if we're he is a great almighty God and he I believe in that great plan just made the place that you and I should fit perfectly in. When I was a little girl in school this was a little country school outside in a few miles from the city of London. There were I suppose about 200 odd little girls beside myself and I was the only one in that school among those little girls with this colored hair. This old black knob. You know I hated it. We do because we don't like being different. Every other one of those little girls had sort of golden colored or fair hair or some other color and I don't know the colors you'd call them but anyway they were not like mine and I didn't like this. And so there were many tears shed over what the boys in the school called old black knob oh golly what. The Lord Jesus must have a purpose somewhere in giving you this black hair. And then the next thing was that the rest of the family and of course all those other little girls they didn't stop being little. They grew up and I just stopped in the middle. But I didn't and nobody seemed to be able to add any more inches on. And so the tears went and I didn't realize until years later when one day I was walking up the main street of a port city in China. Tianjin. And all of a sudden my heart began to beat and I began to feel warm and excited all over and I looked all around and I said well why my hair's the same color. I could see everything. I was the same size as all of them. And when I went up into inland China into a place where they had never seen anybody from the outside. Friend I am positively sure that had some rather tall nice looking girl with pretty golden or yellow hair had gone there they'd have chased her out. Oh but they didn't chase me out. The rest of me was the same as them. Friends don't worry that God is going to ask you to do something you can't. He is love. But he does ask us to do something that we can't. Stand as his representative straight honest uncompromisingly true where he has put us. And then not only ourselves find joy but our family and those we love and I truly believe our nation. Now I went to China as you know as a girl in my 20s and for those first few years I lived in a little tiny mountain city right down not far from the Yellow River and God opened wonderful doors filled my heart with amazing joy and did things that I had never dreamed he would ever do for anybody let alone me. I lived my first year with an old scotch lady and although we had planned to have in this small city the first mission station we didn't. We had a mule inn and this was because we found that that was the best way to get the people in. From that mule inn came the first Christians who were mureteers who traveled over the mountainside and had to spend the night in the inn. And then after the old lady Jeannie died I accepted a job under the national government which I then knew nothing about. All I knew was that every single woman around me had bound feet and now this custom of binding little girl's feet was against the law and the government needed somebody to go out and stamp this custom out in those mountain villages and this opened to me a most wonderful door. The villages were mine, the hamlets were mine I could knock on any door day or night and go in. Now I was supposed by uh because I was earning my living uh through being an official of the government to stamp out foot bindings and explain the evils of growing and smoking opium and I did well I earned my money but I had gone to China for Jesus Christ and so to me the first the most important thing of all was that they knew Christ and I discovered in a most amazing way that although you could talk you could make laws you could make rules and you but it didn't go where love went. I wonder to how many of us we are going to learn that as we get inside of Christ it isn't following a law it isn't making rules it is allowing the Lord Jesus to pour his love through you so that oh there will go something to that other person or persons that will draw those seedings in a different way whereas a law says you must or you mustn't and the heart of man just resists whereas love draws. I remember going out into a small village to find a man who had bought which of course you could do in those days a little girl of four years old. His intention was that she should be later on the wife of his son. She'd never had her feet bound so he proceeded to order his wife to bind the little girl's feet up. I went found out and he had to unbind them. I fined him meant a lot to a man who had very little money. Some week later I had an idea I ought to go to that village again. He'd gone back and bound them up so I dragged him in. He served two months in prison. The moment he was left out he went back and did the same thing all over again and this time I went out and he came in again and went through a very horrid sort of punishment that was on in China in those days which means that the person the prisoner is dragged through the street absolutely naked and anybody can come out and throw what they like at them. It's a horrid thing and this man had this and yet at the end of he went back and bound up his little daughter-in-law's feet and I didn't know what to do. I prayed, I pleaded with the Lord. So hard, so cruel and then one day in an entirely different place and standing preaching the gospel in the middle of a fair a man shot his hand up and he said, can I believe on your that dear God? Yes brother, come out here and kneel down and I'll tell you how to worship my God and there with the tears streaming down his face he recognized Jesus Christ and as he got up he said, would you come to my village with me? You've been there four times. What am I going to come to your village for? And as I looked at the man here's the baby who'd gone through all that that now love had drawn and I went to his village with him and had the wonderful privilege of unbinding for the last time the little daughter-in-law's feet. Friend, I wonder to how many of us we're going to realize that God is a great loving God but then God is also a just God and so as the time went on to me there were terrific challenges and the district became so big and so complicated that I now believed that God would have me long and pray and seek to draw somebody as a fellow worker. There was only one Christian from the outside in the area that was me and so I prayed and I pleaded with the Lord, would you challenge somebody? Would you draw somebody? Would you bring them right here? And then together we will climb mountains for you. But no one came and I got rather disappointed and wondered why if this God is a God of love if he's a God of justice why doesn't he answer our prayer? Is that what you are? Friend perhaps you've prayed and you've prayed for something you've pleaded with the Lord and you still haven't got the answer to your prayer? Well I believe it's because of two or three things. One you might not be praying in his will. He might not want to answer in the way in which you expect and so you have to let that prayer down and as it were put it on one side. A person inside Christ is new and perhaps it's an old affair. That is something that's nothing none of your business and God is never going to answer it. Should we get inside of his will and his power and find out if we're really praying right? And then it may be that in his plan he isn't ready and that he has still a way to draw you. That's I believe what happened to me because although disappointed and frustrated and wondering why if he was a God of love he didn't answer my prayer and send somebody. I was to find before long something that was to fill my heart with a wonderful joy as that I would have never planned or even dreamed of planning. I walked down the street of our little city one day and I saw sitting on the side of the road an ordinary mountain woman. Leaning against the woman's knee was a little child and on looking at the child I discovered it was dirty and it was sick and so I went to tell the woman to take it from the street and wash it and love it. I learned on talking to the woman she was there for one purpose to sell it. I bought it. Now I didn't buy the child because I then loved children or I didn't love the child because then I loved China. I bought the child because I believe God was asking me to and although I cannot explain all that went on in my heart this morning all I know is this that I was positively sure that I had got to do this. Now dear friend I'm going to tell you I am a woman as much as you are the same kind of woman as you are women and deep down in my heart there was going on the battle that went on in your heart one day and what I wanted was what most of you have already got. I wanted a husband. I wanted a home. I wanted babies of my own. Belonging inside us as women is for security. It's for love. Inside us God has created a great heart and it is made to pour out love. Now I do not believe that our husbands and our brothers possess this in the same way. God has given to us this privilege and I wonder to how many of us are going to use it in the right way. The world has taken a hold of this and it brings it down into the dust. It makes it sexy and filthy. It throws it on the screens in films. It writes dirty, sexy, horrible books and mother to die. Something that God gave you is clean and pure but only as you keep Jesus Christ in your life and I believe that this is what you and I have to pass on to our children. That they too might be clean. That those things that the world says are the done thing shall in your home be turned out and if you've got sexy books in your home mother, burn them. You have no right to be a mother and not be able to throw out that book that you don't agree with that is under your daughter's pillow or bed. My children might not be my own children but I have watched what they read. I know where they go even today and I challenge you as mother to teach your children truth. I bought the child because I believe God asked me. That in spite of all this battle that was going on in here God had come in and I wonder to how many of you you've made your up your mind of what you're going to do. You've planned it all out. You've organized it all and this morning God is going to challenge you because that plan's not going to work mother. That organizing isn't your business. What God has given to you and me in this heart of ours is a love for truth and honesty and purity which you and I should be instilling into our children and I am sick of listening to filthy conversations in ladies waiting rooms even on planes and there are times when I just blush with shame because beside me is a young man. Women get down to earth and be clean. Talk about things that are clean. How can you expect your children to be clean if you're not? A person inside Christ is new and the old affairs should be behind our backs. Throw out some of this silly nonsense and be truthful and straight. Read some good books. Read the word of God. Learn how to pray. See what God wants you to do and then you will find it will be poured out onto these you love. You'll know where they go. They'll love you and you'll love them and God will be in contrast. To me this little girl was the beginning and as the months and the years went on there came into my life and into my heart these who were to be my family. Now they haven't all grown up and done what I would have liked. I do not believe they've all done maybe what God would have liked but I have been terribly proud of them. From that one little girl there came during those first few years five and then as the five came my heart sort of longed for all those lonely children out in the mountainside and the door being opened God gave courage, wisdom, understanding and love to receive. Not everyone that was left on my doorstep but everyone that I believed God wanted me to take. When the war came I had got 40 and then during the war there came down from the north 40 more. These boys and girls were not just orphans they were my sons, they were my daughters. I loved them and they loved me and then when the enemy came and we were swept out across those mountains and the yellow river to make a new home miles and miles away from where we lived in the province of Shintse. I sometimes with breaking heart watched them go out to earn their living, watched the boys have to go and join the army, watch the girls have to go and do war work but always with a sense of pride that these were the boys who one day were going to stand for Christ somewhere. These were the girls who were going to be straight and true where one day I would not be able to go for Jesus Christ and mother this is what I believe God gave them to me for. Not that I might just love them and spoil them, let them do what they like and twist me around their finger but that I might love them with the love that Jesus loved me with. To make them straight, honest, true, Chinese citizens for Christ. I did not expect what you ought to expect from yours because there were not the privileges of that where we lived that you can give to your children but I truly believe that God expects all that you can give and pour out on this your child and your family that God might be honoured in your family and that your child one day might be his witness as you I pray today are here. And then we were separated and down between us comes an iron curtain. Some of us happened to be on one side and some on another side. This was not of our own choosing, this was simply because of what had happened and we had just got to make the best of it and see how God was going to prove us, test us and use us. And in those early days when China had become red, there were times when my heart broke, when I've laid out on the floor and pray to die, the hopelessness of it all, the aching heart, the misery, the cruelty as they stripped us bit by bit of everything we possessed. Mother keep your freedom and give it to your children. I plead with you get Christ because only in Christ is there freedom. There is no freedom outside of Christ and only in this book is there truth. May you never have to watch what some of us who are mothers had to watch in that today you willing to be inside of Jesus Christ can be his testimonies and keep that freedom not only in your own lives but in the lives of others. And then as we came out, out to something that we didn't know, no money, no clothes, no future, no hope, no nothing. And I would like you to try and realize just what you would do if you were suddenly lifted from your home and thrown out with absolutely nothing. Who are you? You know your name but nobody's going to believe it. You've no proof of who you are, you've no money and probably you don't understand all that everybody says around you and that you've come from a different part of that particular land to everybody else. And then perhaps mother you will pray for some of these young people who are facing up to these sort of problems and if you think you've got problems with your young people then you have a way of stopping those problems from coming into being something like this. We didn't choose to be refugees, no more than you will one day when you may become a refugee if you don't get Christ. We were made them. And so here out on this side are these hundreds and hundreds of young people who don't know who they belong to, who don't know anything of the place where they were born. No roots, nothing to hang on to. Longing for something that we believe is only to be found in Jesus Christ. I came out, breaking my heart for my family, for my home and all I knew. It was all now behind an iron curtain and didn't belong to me. And I went to a little island for Moses. I wasn't very happy, I didn't know what to do and I thought well I suppose I could preach a sermon. Oh well I'll just put up my name and I'll fill in here and there for some minister if he's sick or goes on a vacation. And one evening I was down in the Baptist church taking the place of the minister who was sick. And at the same time something was happening outside, not very far from that very church, that was to alter my life and give me an entirely new idea of things. Fill again my heart with love and start me off all over again and give me courage even to come out here. We have a bus station and down the edge of the bus station runs a long wooden seat. On that bus station the cleaner who was sweeping the floor noticed that somebody had left a paper parcel. And he, looking at the paper parcel as he swept the floor, saw it very very gently move occasionally and he decided it was a chicken. This is because we don't carry chickens and ducks around dead where we live, we carry them around alive. And so he thought well now if I keep my eye on that parcel then that chicken will be mine. And so when two or more hours had gone by he went over and picked up the chicken believing that the person who owned it had gone on a bus. But to his utter horror and amazement when he took it in his hands it wasn't a chicken or a duck, it was a little baby, a newborn baby, just born, picked up, put in the parcel, paper and rolled out. You can imagine what it was like. Well he was very frightened and he took it out to the police station and the policeman said oh I don't want it, oh I can't do anything with it, I've got nowhere to put it, nothing to feed it on, you know, I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll give you a list of names and you go and visit these people and one of them will take it in. And so a police officer and the little cleaner from the bus station with the baby in the parcel did the round. Nobody wanted it. And then somebody said I don't want it, in fact I've nowhere to put it and nothing to feed it on but have you ever heard of it? And do you know one day in the paper I read that she just laughed and you take it along to her. And so they came to my door. I was not in but my landlady who was not a Christian and not a very nice woman opened the door and they said here's a parcel for that woman who lives in your back room. Oh yes, well just lay it in there. And so they went in, put the baby in the kitchen, let themselves out and went. I came home. I didn't go to the kitchen, I've nothing to go to the kitchen for. I go to bed. But when I am laying comfortably in bed I can hear on the other side of the wall my landlady talking. I tell her two important looking gentlemen came this evening with a gift for you and because you weren't in I told them to put it in your kitchen. Oh thank you very much I'll see it tomorrow. Oh I wouldn't wait until tomorrow because it looked to me like a nice watermelon. And you know if you leave watermelons in your kitchen rats will come. And I a little irritated and crossed the yard because I don't like spiders and rats in my kitchen. And that's what happens if you leave food there. And oh looking down I found in the washbowl the baby and it was still alive. And I said oh lord no. Oh no I've already brought up two families for you. Now what do I do with this? And I truly believe that God's Holy Spirit put into my heart the fact that only down the road was a heathen woman with a newborn baby. I didn't even know which house. But I went out down the road and I knocked on the right house and a little heathen woman sat dropping her baby's milk into the mouth of this poor dirty little thing. And the tears streaming down her face she suddenly looked up and she said if it still breathes when I've nourished it shall we wash it? Yes. And as I took it back in my hand after it had been washed now wrapped around in a piece of cloth I said Lord Jesus what do I do? I have nothing to feed newborn babies on. And I know where to put newborn babies. Oh said the Lord Jesus you were going home to bed weren't you? Well why don't you go? It's awfully late at night. I did. And the baby came too. Hasn't died you know. They don't. Little lives are very strong inside them. And another door is open. Oh Lord I'm nearly 60. I don't want to start a new family. This is the time when I sit on the sofa and put my feet up. Oh no says the Lord you're not the time hasn't come to put feet up on sofas. Eh because you see oh well this is just the beginning. They have come and they have come and in the same way as the first family came and God looked after them and poured out love so this one has come too. And then in the most amazing and wonderful way God does as we go forward and trust him I come out. You know who I leave this new family with? Well the old family. After all they're grown up and they should be doing something shouldn't I? Well you take care of this new family and then we'll have three families and we will all praise the Lord together. Friend I wonder is God speaking to us? Shouldn't we be doing something for Jesus Christ? It isn't as he asked me but is he asking you? I believe dear friend that to many of you God has got to teach you how to pray. Do you really know how to pray mother? Pray so that your heart is burdened and it's breaking. Pray not only for your own sons and your own daughters but others. Pray for the young men and the young women who today know nothing of Christ. I wonder how many are going to accept that challenge. Pray for my babies. I don't know who they belong to but I know they belong to me now and I'm going to pour all the love I can get from God on them. But would you pray for it? Pray for the thousands who we probably don't know anything about and will never be able to find. Pray for the men and the women who are gonna die without Christ. And I don't know about you mother but have you ever prayed for the women of Russia? All the degradation, all the stinkingness of sin. Woman I believe communism came from hell. I don't care who you are I know. I hate it with every breath I breathe. Because it is the enemy of Jesus Christ. And mother is in your house pray it out. If it's in your family pray it out. If it's in your nation pray it out. You lose every shred of freedom once it gets a grip. And have you ever prayed for the women who through no fault of their own have got to live under it? The women of Poland? The women of Russia? The heartbreaking women of China? And as you in your freedom rejoice and watch your children grow. Break your heart for the women who can't. I believe God is going to ask some of us that although we might be busy he's going to expect more of us. We're going to do a little more for Jesus Christ and maybe a little less for ourselves. Because you know dear mother God isn't going to ask for all those dustings of chairs. He isn't going to ask for about all the time that was spent on doing that one particular thing. There is not one of us here who hasn't at least 5, 10 or 15 minutes to give to God. You're not all that hard work dear friend. I come from the east and I know. We work out there and if you think you work well I'm sorry but you don't. Oh no you don't. Not according to our set. Where we have got to do every single thing and yet we do far more for our God than you do. Will you wake up? Laziness, selfishness, self-willedness, jealousy and criticism is there instead of something which should be love and joy and peace. Throw them out dear friend. Throw overboard these old things that shouldn't be. Stop criticising. Get out and pray. Stop picking holes in your neighbour. Pray for us. Do a good deed for us. God put you and I on earth not just to eat, drink and mind your own business but to love and pour out love and to go out as his representative in a world that is sick with sin. God might ask us to go and do something. Where? How? I don't know. I don't know you enough to even suggest. All I know is that my God is love and he longs that love should be poured out. A person inside Christ is new and that new creation belonging to God does what God tells them. It may be back in your own home, in that office, in that school, wherever God has put you as he has put me but it will be for his glory and it will be so that he can give us an understanding and what I call a vision of what to pray for and how to pray. And this morning to us shall we accept the responsibility that God has given to us? There used to be a saying when I was a little girl, I don't know whether it still goes, the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Mother, you have a tremendous power. You hold in your hand a future president or a future great woman for God or the reverse. Don't blame your government. Don't blame the times in which you live. Don't blame your church or your minister if something goes wrong in your child's life or in yours. Blame yourself. God gave to you and me this morning power. The power that I have tried terribly hard to tell you if only in a story that I claim. I claim for my children the power of God. They shall be what you want Lord. They shall tell the truth. They shall be those witnesses for you where I cannot stand. And may you be as proud of your children today as I am proud of mine. Not because they have done what you or their father wanted but because they have done what God wanted. Mother, one of the last places I visited in Red China not so very long ago was a filthy, stinking, horrid prison. It was to see what was once a pretty little girl. She is my daughter. She has already been there for nine whole years. I'm terribly proud of my girl in prison. She needn't be there of course. And then you say why doesn't she get out? She refuses to bow to any but Christ. Mother, are you going to be as proud of her as I am? I won't. If you want to be, give your girl her. She might not find the husband you long. She might not do what you hoped. You will break your heart over the longing for her and for the love that you want her to endure. But you'll be so proud because you will know God has chosen her and you will know that in that filthy prison there is at least one witness for Christ that only death will wipe out. Mother, I stood one day on an open market square which is now the execution ground in the middle of a very large city in the southwest of China. I stood with a group of men and women and we're breaking our hearts because in the middle of that market square are our sons and our daughters, 15 of them. They're only just over 20 and they are there to die. Friend, they don't shoot them in red China, they chop off their head. Mother, wake up! Communism is evil, it's wicked. Let it in and you will go with it. You shut up! Communism came from hell. Speak Chinese and go and live in Peking. Go to Peking and live there. Enjoy yourself. Get caught in a prison and you'll know what I'm saying is true. Women, wake up! Listen to the truth. I stood on the market square and I watched. Did you watch your son die, woman? Did you watch your son die? Because I did. Get up and say so. I defy you. Get up! A person inside Christ is new and only in Christ is there truth and unity. Friends, as we pray, would you let God challenge you? Would you let God speak the truth to you? Would you take it from the heart of Clarice Hayward who defy anybody? The communism is of the devil. Only in Christ is there freedom. I'm willing to die sooner than give in and not defy anybody, whoever they are, wherever they are, to defy Christ. Women, this is the truth and today you give to your child what you choose, lies or truth. Shall we bow our heads and shall we before the great almighty God ask him to speak to us and show us truth? I'm not here to argue. I love the Lord Jesus Christ with all my heart and I hate the ideology of communism with every breath I breathe because I know it is evil, it is stinking, it is sick, it is devilish and I long for you who are mothers, the freedom that only Christ can give. And as we pray, would you give yourself to him? Would you ask him to teach you how to pray? Would you ask him to teach you how to give? Would you ask him to teach you the right sense of values? The things of earth count for nothing. It is your soul and Christ. Shall we pray? Dear loving heavenly father, you who are love, you who are peace, you who came down from heaven to die on Calvary that men might live, break our hearts before thee, that we may know that only in thee is truth, only in thee is peace. Oh God we cry to thee this morning for thy love that it may pour through our hearts that we might be willing to get inside of you and become your new creation, that over and through us there may be thy holy spirit in such a way that we can go out and spread it to others. Oh God we bring these we love to thee, we bring our sons to thee, how we long that they might be straight, true, loving men for thee. Oh God break our hearts for them that we may give them thy truth. We pray thee for our daughters, for our little babies, oh in thy love Lord teach us how to pray, give us strength, courage and wisdom to put their feet on this thy book that they might go out straight, firm, true, men and women whom others will look up to and trust because we've not only loved them but given them truth in thee. Oh Lord Jesus hear our prayer, we pray thee today for the women who in their thousands behind those iron curtains break their heart. Oh God to those who are mothers break and pour upon us so much love that we can pour out to them. We think of those lonely mothers in China, we think of the mothers through Russia, we think of those in Poland and Hungary. Oh God we truly know you love them, then teach us how to pray for them and in spirit stand by them. We pray thee for the young people who know nothing of thy love. Lord Jesus may we get moved and alerted and challenged that they to know today might know thou art God. There is a Jesus who loves them. We are on this side pleading and praying for them. Lord Jesus as today we stand in freedom give to us as women courage to stand and keep our freedom and God teach us how to pray and to work and to do and to be and to give that this land might retain its freedom. God we pray thee keep Australia free. All we plead with thee show us truth and keep these my sisters free. May they never have to know what we have had. May they never have to watch what we have watched. Oh Lord let them keep their babies and we plead with thee keep their freedom. We ask this because we know thou art a God of love, a God of justice and a God of peace and that one day we shall stand with ease we laugh. Who will come from behind iron curtains into the freedom and liberty of your love to give thee honour to give thee all that is thy due of glory and praise and we will thank thee and praise thee for Jesus sake. Amen. Dear friends I pray that this morning God in his own way will speak to you. To us who are mothers we have already broken our hearts. I pray that to you that will never be this same kind of experience. That to you who are free you might remain free and that as a new creation in Jesus Christ you will be willing to go out as his and his alone representative. That somebody through you might find Jesus Christ and the joy that will fill your heart will then flow onto theirs and you will know that God has done for you what you ask and I know the joy as it spreads to your family and through your family to those fellowships and those churches and out into this your nation and your people and may God bless you and may you never have to experience the heartache the sorrow the loneliness of the mothers of China of the young people of China who are not free. The following story was given by Gladys Alwin before her address in the Albert Strait Methodist Church. To some of us there had been given great joys but also great heartaches and there was a time when some of us wondered how we would be able to stand some of the testings and the trials that God was putting us through but I wonder how many of us have really come down to rock bottom with Jesus Christ and been able to prove that he and he alone can hold and does hold. When the red authorities came in to take over China some of us were in a very large university city in the west and in that particular city and there were quite a number of universities but in one section of one of those universities there were 500 students and to each one of those students the life in the university represented learning a future a hope they were there for the same purpose as our young people go to our universities here in these lands of yours and to each one of those students there was handed out by the authorities a large form much larger than this piece of paper on it there were rows and rows of questions I could tell you those questions if I wanted to I know them but the student has to sit down and answer them all now they're very confusing some of them are embarrassing and many of them the student does not know the answer but he's got to find an answer that's what he's there for and so as you go down and down and down perspiring and worrying you can almost miss a little row of words right along the bottom of the form so small looking so unimportant but the most important question of all and as near as I can give it to you back from Chinese into English this is what it says and at this moment right now what position are you in if for put a circle if against put a cross now you're not asked are you a Christian they're not as clever as that or as stupid maybe no what position means just what manner are your thoughts and your heart in if for is for the government and to you who have had no indoctrination this needs just a little explaining I suppose to you it would be quite easy oh put your little dot why I didn't put that government into power and I may not agree with it but I can't help it being there and after all God who is God must have allowed them to get that power so I suppose I better just put my little dot and be full now friend be very careful with your thoughts do you really believe it's as easy as that do you believe in men who deny God you're going to stand for men who say Christ never lived you're going to stand for men who everything they touch flows with blood cruel and horrible are you going to put a dot going to have courage enough to put your cross and go outside them and defy them friend it takes an awful lot of courage they're only students remember of all 500 students every single one had begun their educational life in a Christian school in the old days there were no others if they had ever been sick then they had been attended to in a Christian hospital because in the same way in the old days there were no other kind of hospitals only those opened and kept by the missionary but that doesn't mean to say they were all Christians when the authorities took in the papers and counted them there were 300 circles or little dots there were 200 cross 200 boys and girls in their late teens or early 20s had dared to defy the government well we'll see and so the authorities they called their circolites as we call them together and in a large place than the university campus they gave them a talk they gave to those students all the power necessary except take life that means they weren't to kill anyone but they had got within the next six weeks to pull those Christians over on to their thoughts and so for the next six weeks other people outside watched nasty little teasing hurried little tricks all those things that do happen when young people are filled with fear and then the forms were handed out again and this time when they were taken and counted the authorities from whom we know all this discovered there were fewer circles there were more crosses and so they said well now how on earth did they manage that here we gave them all the power possible they could do exactly what they like except kill them but they hadn't managed to pull one over into our circle but those on the side of the cross had managed to pull some of our people into their plan and purpose and so they set out to find out how this had been done and they discovered that if you had gone at we'll say eight o'clock in the morning across that very lovely university campus you would have found groups of boys and girls these students with their bibles under their arms and probably a packet of books in the other hand making their way to some place where behind a lecture hall door or down a passage or in some corridor of the little group met they read from this the word of god and they prayed and they poured out their hearts to the great god and they worshipped another awful day was going to begin and they would fail this god whom they loved and whom they knew loved them unless he poured out help and strength and courage to them well all went well for two or three days and then are the other side found us and they appeared behind the lecture hall doors and down the corridors and so there was only pandemonium there could be no bible reading and no prep and so the christian students decided to go at seven and again all went well for a little while until the other side went and so the christian students decided to go at six and again two days went by and the other side went and broke up their little groups and prayer meetings and so they went at five and by the end of that six weeks the authorities themselves discovered that many of those boys and girls were spending two two and a half three and at the most four hours a night for sleep that at all costs they had an hour with god before the day began so the authorities said oh well that soon settles well if it's this bible reading of this praying business we'll soon settle that divide them up separate them and so out into that very lovely university campus there was sent one christian student accompanied by 10 communist students and for the next three months all contact with the outside world from that one little christian had got to be made through 10 others who were against him or her in every way and on every point and to those of us who watched we nearly broke our heart it was so unfair it was so cruel the 10 they could take it in turns to eat to sleep and to study and the little christian was only one and we pleaded with the lord to let them free or to some way comfort and help we were not allowed to speak to them or even to see them and then there came a day when the authorities did not again hand out forms but when some of us found ourselves lining the city streets and a few of us found that we had very important places and we were stood all along what was once a market square which had now been turned into an execution ground and our hearts just failed us and we said oh lord oh but crept it isn't what we think and then we awoke to discover that standing in a long line all down the middle of the market square were these 200 odd boys and girls and they're there not to put a name a sign or a name on a piece of paper there to answer in person over on the other side of the market square was a man with a paper the list of their names why the first name on that list happened to be the name of a girl i do not know a pretty shy little thing who i could tell you all about if i wanted to born in one of those lovely courtyards up in peking come at the end of five big brothers who'd all of course gone to school a little sister wanted to go to school too and the only school around was a christian school and so in the christian school she had found jesus christ and drawn in one by one the five big brothers and then mother and then father and then the servant even to the tradesman who'd come to the back door a lovely shy little thing always away in the back somewhere never quarreling or arguing one of those rather dividend pretty little things 17 years old jong hwa young stand forth answer in person what position are you now in she was away a long down almost at the end of that last and as we watched we could see this rather slim little thing coming very calmly and quietly up past all of her fellow students and we said oh lord it's so unfair she's so small and so weak why didn't you choose someone bigger and better and more capable but he evidently hadn't and before long here she was standing up all alone facing thousands of people because to these sorts of things in china every household has to send at least one representative and for the moment it looked as if she was swaying perhaps she's going to cry perhaps she's going to faint or give in it's just too much for her simple little hat but oh no in just two minutes with a little toss of her head she had absolutely command of the situation and this is exactly what she said sir when i went for my three months indoctrination i thought jesus christ was real i thought this book was true sir i returned from my three months indoctrination i know jesus christ is real i know this book is true and calmly putting the bible under her arms down she got and walked slowly calmly back into her place in the last one by one by one each in their own and separate and different way they took their stand and friends they died right there tonight that they died doesn't matter to you how they died is beside the point to you the challenge is do you believe your god is real do you believe this bible is true then friend you've got to prove it to somebody away with all your nonsense all your nervous ideas all your little plans and organising that keep you tied down all the conventions that you're afraid to break all the habits that you've got into i believe my god is real i believe this book is true and dear friend i pray that to every single one of you tonight that little girl will not have died in vain that the testimony from a little chinese student in the Sichuan university might ring over this earth for truth and freedom that you might have courage to stand where god puts you for the purpose that he asked that somebody might know that god is real and the word of god is true