Cambodia 2000

The small percentage of praying Christians began to have an impact over the spiritual atmosphere over Cambodia in the early 1970s. The curtain was getting ready to fall on the civil liberties of the Cambodians as the communists were situated to take power in their war torn country. In answer to the call of praying believers, evangelists and missionaries from other nations were arriving to preach the good news. One of their number was an unknown evangelist by the name of Todd Burke. Burke realized that he had happened upon a spiritual powder keg when over 5,000 people attended his first crusade in Phnom Penh. Long lines of people assembled early in the morning and thousands poured into the venue. Hundreds filled the altar to be prayed for, to receive Christ, and to pray for others. Many in the audience were refugees from the war, carrying some mark of the war on their bodies. Even many missing limbs and hearts ravaged by a war which had cost the lives of millions. Suddenly, for a moments-time, the images of war to a back seat to the move of the Holy Spirit, as thousands throughout Phnom Penh came to a spiritual oasis. The peace of the Lord filled the air as thousands heard the Gospel for the first time and many of them responding to the call to surrender. This move of the Holy Spirit even caught the attention of television and newspaper reporters who had come to cover the war. Images of people repenting, praying, and receiving Christ made papers and television newscasts worldwide. The Spirit of God planted the Word deeply within the hearts of the Cambodian Christians. Then the curtain fell, the Communists seized power in 1975 and set out to systematically eradicate praying Christians in Cambodia. Fellowships were closed, missionaries ejected, and thousands of Christians martyred as enemies of the state. But it was too late; the Praying House Church Movement was underway. The people of Cambodia, though oppressed, longed for an internal freedom that the religious world view of Buddhism could not provide, nor could it provide the inspiration to resist communism. But that was a feat that was no problem for the Holy Spirit and praying Christians throughout Cambodia. As citizens began to look elsewhere for the answers to the deeper questions surrounding their political and social struggle, the church of Cambodia began to grow. The answer to the spiritual hunger was in the works as for the next 15 years Christians quietly met in secret to pray and fellowship. A Burgeoning House Church Movement would pave the way. The communists killed over 1 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979. Over the next 17 years Cambodia would find itself engulfed in political turmoil as power changed hands frequently. All of which served to lessen the restrictions on Christians and by 1990 missionaries from neighboring countries like China, and even as far away as Korea began to reach out to the Cambodians. The wide spread misery caused by the civil war opened new doors for the Gospel. A small number of foreign missionaries trained Cambodian church planters who together with radio evangelism started a small number of public congregations. Around 1995 further Christian groups arrived in the nation, and by the end of that year there were some 60 congregations in the nation, in every province. Then the church of Cambodia exploded in 1997 with over a 120 congregations covering the nation, with some 20,000 praying believers. This decisive growth started in 1997 when the churches began to multiply themselves without the intervention from the national church planters or foreign missionaries. It was unstoppable. Prayer began to fill the homes of the Christian Cambodians. The Spirit of God began to move like lightning from heart to heart as the prayers of God's people changed the lives of hundreds of thousands. Today there are over 1,000 publicly recognized congregations in this small nation of Cambodia, not counting the Mighty House Church Movement. It is estimated that there are between 3 and 400,000 praying Cambodian Christians. By the year 2,000, Western missionaries, as was the case in China, were stunned to see the rapid growth of the body of Christ. It's happening in Cambodia and around the world as God writes this story for his pleasure.

...know them that labour among you... 1 Thessalonians 5:12 * ...pray for one another... James 5:6 * ...the eye cannot say to the hand I have no need of thee... 1 Corinthians 12:21 * ...there is one Body and one Spirit... Ephesians 4:4 * ...the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth... Ephesians 4:16 * ...I pray that they may be one with us so that the world will believe...John 17:21 * ...how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity...Psalm 133:1 "The purpose of life is companionship." *** "Worship is that form of companionship where we love on Him in response to His great love for us." *** "The most powerful drive in the human heart is the desire for companionship." *** "We inherited this drive from the One we were patterned after." *** "The difference between manipulation and leadership is motive." *** "Motive is purified and guided in the presence of God: Prayer." *** "Pride is a lifestyle of self-sufficiency, an attitude of self-entitlement and a motive for self-glorification." *** "Pride starts subtly and then turns into the aggressive enemy of real companionship" *** "The Cross and the presence of God brings fellowship (heart to heart), but the world offers only socializing (facade to facade)." *** "Every relationship has a foundation. The pride of public ministry has been a foundation for too many. At some point it consumes" *** "There is a difference between worshipping the idea that we worship God and actually worshipping God." *** "Why do we want to see prayer back in the schools, when it is no longer in our homes or churches?" *** "Corporate prayer around the Throne must return the center of church life if there is to be any hope for the masses." *** "Corporate prayer produces effective preaching, not preaching produces corporate prayer." *** "If we are so in the know, why do we no longer gather together to seek God, navigate through our haughty hearts to get a glimpse of God's heart and then pray in the lost?" *** "Christianity is not an enterprise, venture for self-discovery or political or civic organization. It is a Blood-bought fellowship of prayer focused on One." *** "Prayer-based friendships are the only ones that last." *** "Prayer-bathed friendships are not incidental to ministry, they are foundational." *** "Prayer is not a ministry of the Holy Spirit. It is the ministry" *** "It's one thing to tell somebody what we believe about Jesus, it's quite another to be able to introduce someone to our Best Friend." *** "We are more like Martha than Mary; More like Christian activists, than people of prayer." *** "We need unity in humility found at the foot of the Cross, not prideful uniformity that says: 'Look at us doing God's work'" "There has got to be a practical, excecutable strategy in place for us to dethrone the ministry of Hollywood in our homes and bring families and communities together via corporate prayer inspired by the Spirit. Technology is not the enemy; Our disobedient laziness is the enemy." ***