You Must Hold the Rope
Shirley Carlson
Director of World Intercessors
“Who wants to be a rope holder for us
as we go down into the ‘mine?’” I asked
the group of faithful prayer warriors seated
around an oval table at our OMS headquarters in New Zealand.
An elderly gentleman was quick to
speak. His name was Ivan, and he recounted with a clear memory and deep passion
in his voice, “I was about 12. Every month,
at a church in Hamilton, I met with more
than 20 young school-age children. We
learned about missionaries and national
workers and prayed for them. The name of
the group was Rope Holders.”
Now I was curious!
I had just finished recounting the origin
of the term rope holders, but I wanted to
capture Ivan’s firsthand experiences and
vivid memories.
One Mission Society
“Tell me more, Ivan,” I ventured.
He continued. “Although it’s been more
than 50 years, Rope Holder meetings were
important in fostering interest in missions
for me. I look back with gratitude for what
I learned.”
I was deeply moved to hear this faithful man in his 70s recall with holy conviction how his teen years had impacted his
understanding of how God moves in response to our prayers.
I thought about what could have been
another oval table in the late 1700s, with
a group of believers listening as William
Carey, at the age of 33, responded to the
words of a friend who challenged him to
say “yes” to taking the Gospel to the lost
and dying in India.
“There is a gold mine in India, but it
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seems as deep as the center of the earth;
who will venture to explore it?”
“I will go down,” responded Carey, in
words never to be forgotten, “but remember that you must hold the rope.”
But before he went down, his friend
Andrew Fuller recalled, “It seemed he
took an oath from each of us, at the mouth
of the pit, to the effect that ‘while we lived,
we should never let go of the rope.’”
What did it mean to hold the rope? For
those brave enough to go down into the
mines, for their safety and effectiveness
in completing the task of finding precious
treasures, before they descended, they
tied a rope around their waist so that if the
atmospheric gases caused loss of consciousness, the person above ground at
the other end of the rope could pull them
to safety.
For William Carey, what did it mean for
others to hold the rope? Holding the rope
spiritually meant knowing that as he went
into the unexplored lands of India, he knew
with confidence that people were holding
the ropes on the other end through prayer.
What does it mean today for us to hold
the rope? As missionaries and partners of
One Mission Society, we have said “yes” to
going around the globe to search for and
rescue precious souls from the destructive clutches of the enemy. Some of us go
down; some of us hold the rope.
J.O. Fraser, a pioneer missionary in
Asia, said in his book The Prayer of Faith:
“Work on our knees … It is the prayers of
God’s people that call down blessing upon
their work, whether they are directly engaged in it or not … Christians at home can
do as much for foreign missions as those
actually on the field. I believe it will only
be known on the Last Day how much has
been accomplished in missionary work by
the prayers of earnest believers at home.”
Will you pray earnestly and
never let go of the rope?
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