My Little Girls

The words of Jesus. There is nothing else like them on the face of the earth. Nothing. Nothing else even comes close.

We can read some of, but not all of His words in the Bible. All of His words were not recorded. I have to believe that Jesus spoke as a friend, just like a brother to … let's say … Mary and Martha when He stayed in their home. You know He said little humorous things, small talk that didn't make it into the Scriptures. He was just like us … He had a life.

I also believe that Jesus is still speaking to us today; not doctrinal things, but … well, let me say it this way. I was speaking to my friend Phillip, a brother in Christ who was telling me that the Lord was asking him to be "missional" minded. You say that's not a word. Well it is now … God used it.

Phillip said it's like a person in the military who receives an order from a higher rank; you go and carry out that order. That's your mission … you pursue it to the end. You get it done … you don't question the reason it was given. And when that mission is completed you will be assigned another one. Missional minded … that's what God wants from each of us.

So, today when Jesus speaks a word to us, or gives us a mission to perform, we evaluate it and judge it by the standards set in the Bible and then we should say … "Yes Lord, I can do that" … and then go do it.

Some of the words of Jesus that I operated in for over twelve years are the following …

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.
… Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.
Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full." (John 16:20, 23-24)

No man ever spoke with so much grace, power and eloquence. The apostle John put it this way … "Never a man spoke like this man." No prophet, apostle, or minister has ever spoken as He spoke; no man has ever given a word that affects the healing and restoration of the heart broken or those who weep and sorrow like His words.

Jesus speaks as no man ever did. He still speaks truth that goes straight to the heart with such divine power, that it produces the desired effect … faith in God. His word affects the heart, enlightens the understanding and gives the power and conviction to execute the mission He gives you.

I know … it happened with me.

Let me take you back some twenty years ago … The Halabja poison gas attack was a genocide massacre that took place on March 16, 1988, during the closing days of the Iran-Iraq War, when chemical weapons were used by Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government forces in the Kurdish town of Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan. The incident, which killed thousands of people, is the largest chemical weapons attack directed against a civilian-populated area in history.

Sometime in the winter of late 1988 and early 1989, about two years before the Persian Gulf War of 1991, all of the major news organizations were showing video footage of the plight of the poor Kurdish people under attack by Saddam Hussein. I just happened to be watching a CBS news story one winter evening about the Kurds when I was caught off guard and could not believe what I was seeing.

It was cold and windy in the mountains of northern Iraq that day like it was in central Illinois. The snow was blowing across the back of a flatbed truck that had four or five Kurdish children standing on the back edge of the bed looking straight into the camera. One of those kids caught my attention … she looked about five and a half or six years old; her little chin and teeth were chattering from the cold as she only had on a light jacket, no hat, and a dress that exposed her bare legs from just below her knees.

Oh … how she grabbed my heart. But it wasn't just because she was so cold. I had seen her beautiful little face before … in my house. She was the very image, the exact likeness of my daughter Teresa when she was five and a half or six years of age. She was exactly the same size, shape, smile, everything … I couldn't believe it. Her hair was cut almost the same length as my Teresa's had been.

I ran with tears in my eyes and told my wife Peggy what I had just seen but they never showed that news clip again. It didn't matter … the picture of her standing on that truck bed shivering in the cold would be forever etched into my memory. I can still see her yet today just as clearly as I did twenty years ago. I did not know it at the time, but that was to be a God ordained moment; not just something I happened to see on that news cast … my Lord arranged it.

The Lord spoke to my broken heart that night as I thought … "What if that had been my little Teresa out in the cold?" The truck had picked up these kids to transport them up higher into the mountains where they would be safe from the murderous dictator Saddam Hussein. That next morning the Lord had me to start praying for her every day which I did faithfully for years. Before I would leave the house in the morning, Peggy and I for years had always prayed for our own two girls, Teresa and Tara; but now there would be three … a little Kurdish sweetheart had been added to my family … she was one of mine. The Lord told me so.

But God wasn't through with this story yet … or with me. Within about two months I was once again watching the evening news about all the trouble and poverty in Kabul, Afghanistan, the capital and largest city in that country. Since 1978, a state of nearly continuous war had limited the economic productivity of the city. On this news cast the film crew was filming people going through all of the trash at the largest city dump in Kabul, trying just to survive.

Digging thru the large mounds of rotten food and filthy garbage, there they were … one man, his wife and their little girl, maybe five years old … dressed in the cutest white dress wearing a little white hat of some kind. As the camera zoomed in for a closer shot of the little girl, she pulled something that looked like a glass jar out of the pile of garbage she was digging in. It was about half full of who knows what; but it put a great big smile on her face as she yelled and raised it up to show it to her daddy. The sight of her doing that once again moved me to tears.

How can this be? How much more suffering must the young innocent kids of the world bear? And then I heard the Lord whisper a command to my heart … "You've got room for one more little girl to pray for." Now there were four girls in my heart. I can honestly say for the next twelve and a half years, the number of days I failed to pray for these two little adopted girls of mine, you can count on the fingers of one hand. I didn't try to name them; I just called them … my little girls. My own two grown up daughters always knew who I was talking about when I spoke of … my two little girls.

The words of Jesus became reality for me. What He said is exactly what happened to me. Here they are again … "ye shall weep and lament, and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name … ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full."

Are the words of Jesus real? I found out these words were. I wept and prayed over these girls asking God to protect them from harm; to take care of them as if they were mine; and to find a way for them to hear about and receive Jesus as their Lord. That's what it was going to take for my joy to be full.

Let's take a closer look at these words spoken by Jesus and see what's really in this last verse, John 16:24 … "Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full."

"My name" means … the authority and character of Jesus.
"Ask" means … call for … whatever you need.
"Shall receive" means … get hold of, obtain, and … be amazed!
"Your joy" … a calm delight, fullness in your heart.
"Be full" … to influence you, verify, coincide with a prediction, and complete.

So as I found out, we are to ask … "call for" … whatever we need; call on Him, God the Father with the authority given us in the name of Jesus, to receive or obtain whatever we need so that our joy, our hearts delight will be full and complete by the influence of God on the situation. Does that just about cover it?

Why did God have me pray all those years? That's what He does … He has chosen to partner with man through prayer to accomplish His will on earth.

May I tell you how my part in this twelve and a half year saga ended? The church I was attending during this time had a visiting speaker from a ministry something like "Campus Crusade for Christ." In fact he may have been associated with them, I don't remember; honestly I didn't pay that much attention to who they were. But I do remember … all I heard that Sunday morning was that there were college aged young people, 17 to 21 years of age who were coming by the hundreds to America from Iraq and Afghanistan because they were being given scholarships to attend Christian colleges.

Once again my eyes filled with tears and I wept for joy as the Holy Spirit spoke these words to me … "They are here, your little girls are hearing about Jesus. Your job is done … I have them now … they're safe."

After twelve and a half years of prayer for two of the prettiest little girls God ever made, I felt a release from, not really a burden, but the end of a calling, a commission, and a need God placed within my heart; just a small task, a mission He asked of me.

I've been so wonderfully blessed because I said … "Yes Lord, I can do that" … and I pursued the mission Jesus personally created and ordained just for me. What an honor God bestowed upon me.

They truly were … my little girls.


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