God reveals Himself to us strongest in our darkest times. I want to encourage you, whatever the crisis in your life – in the darkest moment in your life, in the moment of your greatest tragedy, in the moment of your greatest suffering, when you’re hurting more than you’ve ever hurt before, Jesus is there. He’s not forgotten you, He’s walking nearer to you. Jesus said, ‘I will be with you always.’ Every day, every hour, in the middle of every storm. Whatever the crisis, there’s never a moment when He’s not there.
Things were difficult in the prison in Czechoslovakia where I was, and in the first few months it seemed as if God did not answer any of my prayers. When I prayed for food, there was none, when I prayed that my wife would come, she was not allowed a visa to visit me – it seemed that every prayer that I prayed, God said no. I began to despair. We had to get up at 6.00 am every morning and sit for hours on a wooden stool embedded with nails. It was torture. In the first six months I wasn’t allowed out of my cell – my food and my toilet were in the cell. I lost so much weight. However, I would try to pray in those early hours before the guards brought the mouldy black bread and foul tasting, drug laced drink which was our only breakfast.
One morning when I had been three months in that cell, I cried out in desperation that I could not pray anymore because, I said, “Oh God, every time I pray, You say no! When I want the food parcels my family send, or a visit from my wife, or for me to be found not guilty in the court and be set free, always the answer is no! I don’t know how to pray anymore, everything I ask for, it’s no!” I sat there, not knowing what to do. “Oh God, if You don’t hear me, I’d rather die, because life has no purpose, no meaning if You don’t answer me.” While I was still saying, “Oh God, I cannot pray anymore”, I remembered the words in the Bible (I had no Bible in the prison – it was forbidden) when the disciples had asked Jesus how to pray, and He said, “When you pray say…” – and I began hesitantly to say those words, ‘Our Father’ – but as I did so, I began to argue, I cannot say ‘our’, that’s plural – I’m alone in here, no family, no friends, no believers, how can I speak in the plural? I have to say MY Father. Suddenly I knew the reality of those words, He is mine – He is my Father!