France, the birthplace of John Calvin, saw a glorious revival in the mid-16th century with Calvin and others in Geneva training and sending thousands of pastors to evangelise and plant churches in France, and hundreds of thousands being converted.
I pushed our driveway gate open and groaned inwardly as I saw our elderly neighbour approaching. He is new to the area, has time on his hands and likes to talk, but I was already running late.
Julien left the Jehovah’s Witness movement, hungry for spiritual truth – one of a number just like him whom we’ve been amazed to see the Lord bring us into contact with in recent years. Then there’s Hassan, a refugee from a Muslim background, whose heart has been touched by biblical truth.
Six of us were huddled over a blank canvas. One of us had stayed up late the night before to sketch a basic calendar for the year ahead. Every little box for every day of the year represented an opportunity – an opportunity to do our job and to reach the campus for Christ.
I have recently been enjoying reading the testimony of Lilias Trotter, a 19th Century, single missionary who devoted her life to serving God in Algeria*.
On the night of 13 November 2015, as all our screens filled with the terrors of the attacks on the Bataclan, Paris restaurant terraces and the area around the Stade de France, our social media screens began to fill with one phrase: “Pray for Paris.”