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My family

My family is a missionary family, and both parents are very devout Christians. I grew up attending Sunday school, attending Sunday services, and daily family services. Sometimes I was so unhappy that I could barely sit and listen to the long sermon, but before I knew it, I had absorbed a lot of the Lord’s teachings. Even after I married Mr. Jiang, I didn’t have a second birth. I intellectually believe in the divinity of Christ, and I believe that Jesus came into the world to redeem sinners, but that doesn’t matter to me personally. Although he died for me, and for the people of the world, this fact has no special meaning for me. As for sin, everyone is a sinner, and I will never be worse than the average man!

The first spiritual turnaround

My mother’s relationship with the Lord was not like this, she lived a life very close to God, and she used to spend hours in prayer and fellowship with the Lord. At that time, whenever we were in trouble, we always asked her to pray for us.

My mother’s death was a great blow to each of her children, but perhaps the hardest blow to me, for I was her youngest daughter, and I relied on her more than I ever knew.

At that time, in addition to the threat of Japanese aggression, Mr. Chiang added another burden, that is, to put an end to the civil strife in the country at that time. At the same time, the Yellow River overflowed, and a large number of people were threatened with famine. Over the years, I have worked closely with Mr. Chiang to achieve his goal of building a unified and modern China. At this time, I was disheartened and almost despaired by many difficulties, but my mother was no longer in the world and could not pray for us every day. What should I do? Who can I turn to for help? Looking back now, I understand that this was my first spiritual turnaround.

Before Mr. Chiang married me, he promised my mother a Bible study, and he faithfully kept that promise. Before my mother died, she led Mr. Chiang to the official conversion. Later, he continued to study the Bible on his own every day to understand the complex truths of the Old Testament, which was a difficult task, because few pieces of Bible history could be appreciated by someone who had not grown up in a Christian environment. When I saw him trying to find out in the midst of difficulties, I knew I should help him, as my mother had always done.

When I was a student at Wesleyan University in the United States, I took a course called “Old Testament History.” So I used my old notes and textbooks and began to have a daily Bible study with him, and we still maintain this Xi to this day. Every morning at 6:30 a.m., we prayed, read the Bible, and discussed each other’s experiences. Every night before going to bed, we also prayed together.

Woman guardsman

In 1936, Mr. Chiang was abducted by his subordinates in Xi’an. At that time, it turned out that this spiritual Xi every morning was a stone that supported and strengthened him. Although he was in terrible mental anguish, in danger of dying at any moment, and because of the fall on his body during the disaster, he was very safe during that period of abduction. His captors kept him in solitary confinement for ten days, preventing him from communicating with the outside world. At that time, the whole world was shocked, and the people of the whole country demanded that his captors immediately release him safely.

Later, I finally managed to get on a plane to Xi’an, with him. When his captor allowed me to meet him, he was amazed as if he had seen a ghost. When he had calmed down, he showed me a Bible that he had read that morning: “The LORD hath made a new thing on the earth, that women are guarding men. 【Jeremiah 31:22】No wonder he and I have been so faithful to this day

God’s entrustment

In 1949, when the situation in China changed, and soon after I arrived in Taiwan, I felt that God had called me to organize a prayer group. At the time, I was terrified of it. I felt very uncomfortable and tried to evade this responsibility. I was afraid that my friends would think I was overly religious, just as I had thought of my mother before. Isn’t it strange that most of us are naturally silent about our love for family or friends, but we are the least willing to be known about our devotion to Christ! For it is only by repeatedly affirming our faith that we can maintain a living love.

So I invited five friends, all of whom were devout Christians, to my new home. I told them that from that day on I wanted to have a prayer meeting. I mentioned the promise of Jesus Christ that if two or three men gather together in His name, He is in the midst of them. If they agree, we can pray together for the fate of China and the world.

Chinese Women’s Prayer Society

Since then, we have held prayer meetings every Wednesday afternoon for five years without interruption. In the beginning, we had to overcome a feeling of unease in which we were all shy at first, some of us who had never prayed out loud in public, and friends who had always known each other suddenly became strangers to God. But God finally took charge of leading the meeting, giving the Holy Spirit a real presence with us, filling the room from time to time.

Every year at Easter, our prayer service holds a Good Friday service, which is broadcast on TV. We highlight the events that took place after Jesus’ crucifixion, when the apostles, except Judas Iscariot, who hanged himself in shame, became veritable spiritual greats with amazing leadership skills. Although they were persecuted and tormented, they preached the gospel everywhere and fought for the kingdom of righteousness. Far from being scattered like a flock of lost sheep without a shepherd, these very few Christians formed a tightly knit and invincible community, so much so that they were outweighed by the power of the entire Roman Empire under terrible oppression. Why can’t we be like them with zealous and fearless, but timid, lifeless Christians who don’t even know what they believe?

The Gospels record that during His work, Jesus Christ often had to leave the crowd to fellowship with God the Father. He did it not only alone, but also with his disciples. As he is the Son of God, and as he needs prayer to renew his spiritual power, it is only natural that we need to pray all the more—to pray together, to pray aloud, to pray with urgent zeal and desire for God’s will to be done.

Each of us takes turns leading the weekly prayer meetings. The meeting usually begins with two minutes of silent prayer, followed by the singing of a few favorite hymns, followed by a reading of a passage by the presiding person and her personal spiritual testimony of the passage, followed by a public discussion of the topic. After that, each of the participants proposes to pray for something or someone in particular. We knelt down religiously, and two or three of us prayed in turn, as the Holy Spirit led. We don’t have a set routine, because we feel that spontaneity and variety of changes are more likely to arouse our enthusiasm. However, at the end of each time, we will pray for the future of China and world peace according to God’s will.

Experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit

In one of the first meetings, a presiding officer asked everyone who had experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit to raise their hands, and I didn’t raise my hands. It wasn’t until later that I came to know the Holy Spirit who dwelt in me. The facts are as follows:

One day, I was reading a passage about the crucifixion of the Lord, and I stopped when I read that a soldier had stabbed him in the side with a spear, and blood and water were coming out of the wound. I’d read it many times before, and I’d never been particularly moved, but this time I cried. That day, for the first time, I realized that he had suffered these pains for me. I cried and cried, and I felt deeply unworthy of my humility. It was a very peculiar feeling, a mixture of great sorrow and great comfort. I rarely cried because we grew up Xi not show our emotions. But that time the tears flowed like a tide, and I couldn’t hold back. At the same time, I felt a light and relieved feeling that my sins had been washed away by tears.

On that occasion, I experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and from that day on, I did not believe only in my mind, but personally connected with my Lord. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation, and the old things have passed away, and they have become new. 2 Corinthians 5:17

My view of religion

My personality does not like the mysterious, but I love the practical, the things that can be seen in the world, I believe it, otherwise I don’t believe it, and I may not also admit what others admit, in other words, the religion that suits my father may not necessarily move me, the only palatable religion, like a sugar-coated pill, I don’t believe in.

I know that my mother’s life is very close to God, I know the greatness of my mother, and when I was a child, I was somewhat reluctant to accept the religious training that my mother forced me to, but I believe that this training had a great impact on me. At that time, I was often tired of family prayers, so I used my thirst as an excuse to sneak outside, which often annoyed my mother. At that time, like my brothers and sisters, I had to go to church often, and I hated the long lectures, but today I think that this Xi of going to church often has cultivated my perseverance, which is thankful training.

The mother’s personality shows her sternness and strength everywhere, and it is not feminine. My mother’s prayers were the most impressive part of my childhood, and she used to shut herself up in a room on the third floor and hold prayers for long periods, sometimes before dawn. If we have any problems to solve, Mother will say to us, “Let me go and ask God. We can’t rush her to answer immediately, because asking God is not something that can be done in five minutes, and we must be patient and wait for God’s revelation. But strangely enough, whatever the Mother prays to God to decide, the result is good.

So after my mother passed away, I often thought to myself that my spiritual life would gradually grow. To put it more bluntly, I think God called my mother to enable her children to be self-reliant. When my mother was alive, I often thought that whatever I should or shouldn’t do, my mother would pray to God and inquire about God on my behalf. Although she insisted that we must pray for ourselves, that she could not be our intermediary, I am sure that she had prayed for us for so many long periods that it was for us, perhaps because such a mother was associated with religion in my heart, I could not give it up in any way.

Before I conclude this prayer question, I would like to tell you a lesson I learned from my mother. She was bedridden by then, not long before the day she died. At that time, Japan began to plunder the three eastern provinces of our country. We kept the details of this incident a secret from our mother, and one day I happened to talk to her about the eagerness of the Japanese to coerce us, I was so excited that I could not control myself, and suddenly I cried out in a loud voice:

“Mother, your prayers are powerful, why don’t you pray to God to punish Japan with an earthquake or something like that?” She turned her face around for a moment, and then looked at me with a serious gaze, “When you pray, or ask me to pray for you, don’t insult God with such a request, we mortals should not have such intentions, let alone pray to God?”

I have been deeply affected, and I know that the Japanese people have suffered a lot because of the government’s fallacy of actions against China, so I can now pray for the Japanese people.

In the past seven years, I have been pessimistic. The four richest provinces in the northeast were taken away by the enemy, and the people were suffering from floods, droughts, and famines. On the personal side, the sad experience of the death of a pious and loving mother made me see the shortcomings of life and the difficulties of human affairs. We work hard for the country, like a drop in the bucket, to no avail, I feel that life in the torrent of history is as small as a drop in the ocean. Sometimes I say to myself, “If the country is really strong and unified, what will happen to us? Is there no end to everything in the world?

Looking back on my married life over the years, my relationship with religion can be divided into three stages: the first stage is my extreme zeal and patriotism, that is, I want to do something for the country. I have a good opportunity, and if I work with my husband, it will not be difficult for me to contribute to the country. Although I have such ambitions, he relies on himself, and I lack a kind of mental concentration.

This is followed by the second phase. The sorrows I have said above have made me disappointed, pessimistic, depressed, and negative. Until my mother died, I felt that it was dark in front of me. There is the iron hoof of a strong enemy in the north, there is a political rift in the south, there is a drought in the northwest, there is a flood in the Yangtze River, and the dearest mother has called God again. What else do I have besides emptiness?

My mother’s religious spirit had a great influence on Chairman Chiang, and I felt very sorry that I could not encourage my husband spiritually. The chairman’s eldest lady was an ardent Buddhist, and her belief in Christianity was entirely due to my mother’s persuasion. For our marriage contract to be approved by her, the Chairman was allowed to study the doctrine of Christ and to read the Xi Bible. Later, I found out that he kept the previous covenant, and after my mother died, he did not change his original intention at all, but there were some things in the teachings that he could not understand at first, and it was very dull to read. He recites Xi’s Old Testament every day, pondering and pondering how difficult he is, so in my daily conversation, I need to solve the difficulties and show them tactfully.

So we realized that I would do my best to help my husband with his needs and that I was doing my best for the country. So I guided my husband into the spiritual garden that I knew. At the same time, I was trapped in the abyss of sorrow because of the chaos of my life, and I also wanted to find a way to extricate myself, so I unconsciously returned to the God that my mother believed in. I know that there is a power in the universe and that its greatness is by no means beyond the reach of man, and that is the power of God, and that the task of my mother to encourage the spiritual life of the chairman has been undertaken by me, and I have become closer to God day by day.

This brings us to the third stage. Everything I wish to do is out of God’s will, not my own. Life is very simple, we made it so messy and complicated, the old Chinese paintings, each with only one main subject, such as the flower painting scroll, one of which is three-dimensional, the rest is just a foil. The same is true of complex lives. So what is that flower of life? As far as I realize now, it is the will of God. But absolute piety and faithfulness are required to understand God’s will. Today’s political life is full of hypocrisy, strategy, and diplomacy, but I am convinced that these are not the most powerful weapons of politicians, but their most powerful weapons are loyalty and integrity.

In short, it seems to me that religion is a very simple thing, and its meaning is to do my best, my strength, and my will, to carry out God’s will. I believe in God, who has infinite power to help us, and whose favor is simply beyond our hopes and prayers.