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Key Bible Verse: Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back (Luke 6:27-36). Bonus Reading: Luke 6:27-36

Watchman Nee tells about a Chinese Christian who owned a rice paddy next to one owned by a communist man. The Christian irrigated his paddy by pumping water out of a canal, using one of those leg-operated pumps that make the user appear to be seated on a bicycle. Every day, after the Christian had pumped enough water to fill his field, the communist would come out, remove some retaining boards and drain all the water from the Christian's field into his own. That way, he didn't have to pump.

This continued day after day. Finally, the Christian prayed, "Lord, if this keeps up, I'm going to lose all my rice, maybe even my field. I've got a family to care for. What can I do?"

In answer to his request, the Lord put a thought in his mind. So, the next morning he arose much earlier, in the predawn hours of darkness, and started pumping water into the field of his communist neighbor. Then he replaced the boards and pumped water into his own rice paddy. In a few weeks both fields of rice were doing well—and the communist was converted.

—Paul Faulkner in Making Things Right When Things Go Wrong

Credits: Adapted from — Sunday: Discipleship Journal (March/April, 1999)

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity. For reprint information click here.

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Prayer for the Week

Jesus, open my eyes to the needs of Your hurting children. Stretch out my hands to touch them. ell.

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