The day began as so many others had with the rooster proclaiming the time had come to rise and shine. Young Patrick rolled over and tried to rob the day of reality as he erased the night etchings from his eyes with a vigorous rub. Before long his leathery bare feet touched the rock- hard, packed earthen floor of the farm home his father had built. Pat’s dad was deacon, or teaching brother in the Celtic Christian church, and he did some farming to provide the necessities of life, and life was good! Patrick’s grandfather was a regional leader or priest in the growing Celtic church. With this kind of heritage it was very normal for the day to start with prayers prayed around the table before breakfast was served. Patrick had a kind of quiet admiration for both his father and his grandfather. Their faith seemed so real and so precious to them, but for Patrick, he was much more interested in sports and in the girls he was starting to take serious notice of. Religion was boring and something you think about when you’re old and when you have to!
Like so many young men his age, Patrick was dispatched to the fields to work, while his father went out to visit and share the good news of the gospel with others. Patrick worked away in the rolling fields of Britain, his mind wandering aimlessly from one subject to another as his muscles directed the hoe in the weeding of the field.
He never heard them, not at first anyway….not until it was too late. In the middle of delightful daydream where he had just stretched forward to kiss that beautiful girl Gweneth, he heard a blood-curdling scream behind him as five gigantic brawny Irishmen rushed upon him knocking him roughly to the ground. Patrick’s heart nearly stopped on the spot. He had heard the rumours about these savage Irish plunderers and their merciless looting, and killing sprees. Patrick’s eyes, – widely stretched eyes, darted from one man to another as he looked for that club, axe or spear that would surely end his life, but instead he saw one of them reach for leather straps and Patrick’s hands were bound securely and then the other end was tethered to a rope. By the end of the day, Patrick was just one of approximately 25 young men from his area who had been seized by the pirates. They were the fortunate ones, many others were left dead, the women ravaged, raped and then killed along the way.
It was not many days until they reached the coast and it became clear that this was a gathering site where perhaps a hundred or more young boys between 12 and 16 were gathered. They were packed onto the ship with barely enough room to sit and no room to lay down. They were taken into the channel, out to sea, and eventually brought to Ireland. There they were auctioned off at public auction as healthy young slaves who could greatly benefit their new owners.
Patrick was loaded in the back of a two-wheel cart and taken along with several new sows and a few chickens to his new home in central Ireland. He was just one of a number of slaves owned by this Irish clan who stood guard as the slaves fed the pigs, and worked the fields. Patrick was now forced to work hard or he was mercilessly beaten. He began to consider all that had happened in his life that had brought him to this point. He wondered what had happened to his mom and dad, and his grandparents. Had they been captured too? Were they alive or had they been victims of the savage attacks. Somehow Patrick thought, they might be okay, because they had such a strong personal faith.
Now forced to work from early morning before sunrise until the sun was setting, Patrick began to think more and more about all he had been taught as a young boy. He had been taught that Jesus would never leave him or forsake him. He had been taught about the love of God and His great plan of salvation. His mom and dad had faithfully told him about the promise Jesus had made to return for His own someday. His bones ached and his muscles strained as he thought about how his parents had told him that he needed to decide for himself if he would believe and trust Jesus Christ as his Saviour. But he had lots of time to do that … someday. He wanted to have fun in the meantime. The words he had heard repeated so often as a child began to flood back to him now. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Jn.3:16
Ps. 37:39 “But the salvation of the righteous is of the Lord: He is their strength in the time of trouble.”
“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart, that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” John 1:12
It was not very long until Patrick as a sixteen year old slave, came to his senses and responded to the love of Jesus as he worked in the fields. He knew as he responded in faith to Jesus that a transforming power was flowing over him in those moments. A power that brought to him hope, comfort and a new understanding of who God was and what He was doing in all that had happened. Much later he would write of this time in his life: “The Lord opened the understanding of my unbelief, that, late as it was, I might remember my faults and turn to the Lord; and He had regard to my low estate and he pitied my youth and ignorance, and kept guard over me before I new Him, and before I attained wisdom to distinguish good from evil; and He strengthened and comforted me as a father does a son.”
Bible theologian and historian F.F.Bruce writes: “From this time forward, the life of young Patrick was marked by an intense zeal and a passion for earnest, intense, and persistent prayer. Patrick would record later that it was during these six years of slavery he became aware that God responded to the sincere cry of the heart, and he spoke of a growing sense of the voice of God speaking in his ear as a response to the prayers he prayed.” In small ways over and over again, God would respond to the fervency of prayer and the sincerity of heart, by revealing things that established faith in young Patrick’s heart in spite of the hard and difficult life he was a slave to.
Let me ask you this morning – Do you have a sense of that still small voice of God speaking to you? Do you sense the Lord responding to your sincere and earnest prayers with the revelation, insight, direction, and support you need in your every day life? “In quietness and confidence will be your strength.” Isaiah wrote. “Wait on the Lord, be of good courage and He shall strengthen your heart.” David wrote in Psalm 27. Sometimes we need to COME APART, before we come apart! “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as the eagle, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” One of the great tragedies of our age and culture is that so many Christian men and women, live each day, busy with and consumed by the temporal, finite issues of this life, and not once do they hear the voice of the Master saying, “This is the way, walk in it.” What did Jesus say? “My sheep hear my voice and they follow me!” O how we need to be sheep who hear and follow if we are to be effective for Christ in a world with so many conflicting voices. Perhaps you are listening to me today, and you are very aware, like Patrick, that you need to yield your life to Jesus Christ and begin to seek him earnestly in prayer for direction and counsel, and you know what, JESUS IS LONGING TO SPEAK TO YOU. HE LONGS TO BRING ORDER, AND PURPOSE TO YOUR LIFE.
In the sixth year of his slavery, Patrick began to hear the Lord urging him to escape. God had given him favour with his owners and they did not keep a real close eye on him anymore. This inner voice spoke to Patrick and told him that if he would escape to the coast, a ship would be there he could board that would take him to a place of freedom and safety. Sure enough, when Patrick made his escape he met a sympathetic sea captain, bound for St. Honorat, off the coast of Gaul (France) where for a time Patrick found refuge in a monastery. After a while he returned to his home territory in Britain and found some relatives who had not been killed by the Irish invaders and he settled with them. Life had again turned a corner and the future was looking bright with promise, but now Patrick was intent on pleasing God with his life, and that always makes for excitement and adventure.
In his great written work and testimony, “Confessions of Patrick” he wrote of his own personal Macedonian call. “It was in the depths of the night, I saw a man named Victoricious, coming from Ireland, with innumerable letters, and he gave me one of these…..and while I was reading out the beginning of the letter, I thought that at that very moment I heard the voice of those who were beside the wood of Focluth near the western Irish sea; and this is what they were saying to me, “Please, holy boy, come and walk among us again.” Their cry pierced to my very heart and I could read no more. Patrick was certain of the call, but also felt that he needed preparation to fulfil it, so he left immediately for the cathedral in Auxerre, Gaul to study, and was after several years of study, ordained as a minister. Patrick had made it very clear to his superiors that he felt he had a call to go and minister to those who had taken him as a slave in Ireland, but Patrick’s superiors were concerned about his safety and his teachers were also wary of his ability for such a demanding mission. They asked Patrick to stay put and instead they sent out a more experienced missionary, Paladius. Within a year of his arrival in Ireland Paladius was dead, and this seemed to open up the way for Patrick, whose reluctant overseers now released him to go there.
It was 432 when Patrick arrived back in the Ireland he had risked his life to escape from. The country was steeped in paganism, with very few, and very small enclaves of born again Christians. Most of the Irish worshipped the sun, the moon, wind, water, fire, and rocks. They believed strongly in good and evil powers or spirits all around them. Magic and blood sacrifice were a regular part of their religious rites, and the priest were called Druids. They spoke of the holy hours of midnight and noon, and preferred to practice their rites by the light of the moon. Druids would spread out the entrails, especially the liver of their sacrifices, animal and human, and would foretell the future by what they saw in the entrails. They believed Mistletoe held over someone could bring them under a spell. There was a pecking order of sorts among the Druid priests with the most powerful in magic arts being at the top. All priests and devout followers of this religion were sworn to secrecy, as to how they were taught, and what they did.
Let me just say that any club, group, association, or segment of society that insists on secrecy is being perpetrated and fuelled by the Destroyer, Satan. God is a God of revelation and proclamation who will always call us to share where and how we found our completion and fulfilment in Him.
As you might guess, Patrick immediately encountered great opposition from the Druids, but he responded to their accusations and threats with love and acceptance and did not speak out against their practices. Rather, he emphasised the truth that he had to share, and spoke of a loving God who had made the ultimate sacrifice for sin in the giving of His Son. He spoke of the power of His God too and challenged his listeners to trust God and see the manifestation of His great power. Eventually some of the Druid Chieftains, impressed with the answers to believing prayer Patrick seemed to get and convicted by both the truth he shared and the integrity of his own character, gave their hearts to Jesus Christ. They were reluctant however to give up all their magical rites and this remained a problem in Celtic Christianity for many centuries. Today’s missiologists, look back on St. Patrick’s ministry and see that what he did was to provoke a “Power Encounter” where he trusted God to manifest his power and His presence to the people, allowing them to see the living God could make a mightier priest of those who trusted Him than the Druid priests who practiced the pagan religions.
Patrick, employing some of the missions training he had received in his studies, went to the King of Ireland, King Loigaire, asking him to grant official religious toleration for Christianity, which was subsequently given. The king’s brother, became a devout convert and gave Patrick land to build a church. After this church was built Patrick moved on to unevangelised areas in Ireland and for the next 15 years fearlessly shared his faith, in spite of great perils and opposition at first. He recounts for us in his confessions that at least a dozen times he was in immanent danger of losing his life. Once he was kidnapped and held in a prison for over two weeks not knowing whether he would live or die. In his confessions he wrote after 30 years of ministry, “I fear to lose out in the labour which I began, lest the Lord should hold me guilty.”
Shrouded in legend, and glorified by sainthood, Ireland’s great fifth century missionary is one of the most misrepresented figures in history. He is most often thought of as the greatest of Irish Catholics, when in fact, he was neither Irish, nor Catholic. His promotion to Sainthood came at the council of Whitby, almost 200 years after his death. At that point the Catholic church was working to bring the Celtic Christian church under its domination, and I guess in many ways it worked, since Saint Patrick’s name is thought to be synonymous with Irish Roman Catholicism.
A careful review of Patrick’s methods though will point out how different his mission was and his emphasis than those of his Roman Catholic contemporaries. Unlike their missionaries, Patrick and his growing band of Celtic Christian missionaries stressed spiritual growth. Converts were given intensive training in the scriptures, and encouraged to memorize them. Patrick’s converts were encouraged to become active in sharing their faith themselves, and Patrick included women as being important in this process.
What did Patrick accomplish with his simple obedience to the divine call? He was the first real missionary to Ireland and came there well prepared by God. Because of his emphasis on Christian growth and learning, the building of churches and monasteries became important. First in Tara, then Armaugh, and then all over Ireland. Eerdman’s Handbook on Christian History estimates the establishing of approximately 200 churches during his lifetime as does Dr. Cairns “History of Christianity.” Dr. Gordon Olson’s Missionary History text estimates around 200 as well while World Book Encyclopedia and Dr. Ruth Tuckers, “History of Christian Missions” suggest it may have been as high as 300 churches during his thirty years of ministry. All of the scholars agree that there were between 100,000 and 120,000 people who embraced Christianity through Patrick’s personal ministry, not to mention the hundreds of Celtic ministers who were raised up and taught through Patrick’s work and themselves went out throughout all of Europe.
So what lessons do we learn from St. Patrick’s life and our quick overview of it today?
1.) There is often a generational blessing that flows down to our children IF we are faithful.
Patrick’s father Calpurnius and his grandfather, Potitus were committed to Christ and no doubt they prayed faithfully for their children, and grandchildren. What an awesome responsibility we have to live our lives in an exemplarary manner. Beyond the example, there is a transfer in the spiritual realm of either blessing or curse that is sure and certain, and we as parents need to face up to that reality. While it is true that Jesus bore the curse for us and we always have the privilege of turning to Him and finding freedom, we have no idea how powerful the influence of our actions will be in the transfer of spiritual powers good or bad to our children based on the choices we make. What we will allow in compromised moderation, the enemy will take our kids to in excess.
2.) Sometimes the very worst things that happen in our lives, can be used in the long run to bring the greatest glory to God. Joseph could not see when his brothers threw him in the pit that someday he would be their answer to staying alive and that God would bless millions of people through him. St. Patrick could not see as a young lad not quite 16 years of age, what redemptive purpose there could possibly be in him being kidnapped and sold as a slave. Perhaps you are listening to me today and you can not possibly see how God could be glorified in the trauma that you are facing, but God can do anything, and in every new situation of life, we have a new set of choices and the opportunity to respond to him.
3.) We see in the response of Patrick’s heart to the terror of his circumstance, – a real genuine turning to God in repentance and fervent prayer. We need to respond to the tough things in life the same way Patrick did. With confession and brokenness before God, and a turning to him in trust and utter dependence. When as a parent you confront your children with disobedience and you discipline them, they will either fold their arms and glare and hate you for it, or they will break and genuinely be sorry for what they have done and will try not to do it again. We all want to see the brokenness, rather than defiance or even indifference. Let’s make sure our first response in times of trouble is to always run to the ROCK of our Salvation. Our Refuge and High Tower. He will deliver us, just as He did Patrick and with Him, we can have a new beginning of fruitfulness in Him.
4.) If we will listen, God will show us what we can accomplish for Him. If we will listen He will show us the path to fruitful service . If we listen he will make us “Difference Makers.” Listen friends, your self esteem may be in the sewer. You may be so low your looking up to see bottom and pulling down your socks to see, but God is interested in using you. IN recent weeks we have looked many times at the verses. Matt.5:16 “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your GOOD WORKS, and glorify your Father in heaven.” What GOOD WORKS you ask? The GOOD WORKS He prepared for you, before the foundation of the world, that you should walk in them . Eph.2:10. Does God just want some especially gifted people involved in his redemptive plan for humanity? NO! NO! A thousand times NO! The apostle Paul said it is as every joint supplies. He tells us in Eph. 4 that he gave gifts to the church for the perfecting, – or a better word for our understanding would be for the MATURING of the SAINTS, that is every born again believer, for the work of the ministry. The problem in our day of sloth and spiritual laziness is that we don’t do what we need to be mature and as a result we are on the outside of the redemptive process looking in and SAINTS – God does not like it that way!! Some of us all like the man who was so lazy he got caught on an escalator during a power failure and he waited two hours for the power to come back on so he could get off. We need to listen when he says GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD AND MAKE DISCIPLES. What is hard about GO?? What do you fail to comprehend in that word. “YE” who is a ye? Friends we need to wake up, read up, pray up and rise up to our calling in God and make a difference in this sin sick world for Jesus Christ. We are called to. We Can. If we will. Today Patrick shows us what one yielded heart can accomplish that is not afraid to get off their duff and work at it.
5.) If you do what you ought to do, you will be able to do much more than you thought you could do. At the end of his life St. Patrick wrote these words,” But I pray those who believe and fear God, whoever has designed to scan or accept this document, composed in Ireland by Patrick the sinner, an unlearned man to be sure, that none should ever say that it was by my ignorance, that accomplished any small thing that I did or showed in accordance with God’s will; but judge ye and let it be most truly believed that it was the gift of God, and this is my confession before I die.” This from a man who was directly instrumental in the salvation of at least 100,000 and indirectly in many more. This from a man who saw somewhere between 200,& 300 churches established, with buildings for training and teaching.
Patrick’s was a life well lived. Whenever we see people through history who have been used significantly for God’s glory, we need to study their lives and come to understand what made them tick. That’s why the reading of Christian biographies is probably next in line after the importance of reading God’s word.
When you review the life story of St. Patrick you see how important the influence of Godly parents and grandparents is on the lives of their children. Listen parents it is never too late to begin living the way God intended you should. You are never too old to begin to be a good example from this point forward, even for your grown children. They will notice a new commitment to God’s word, and his work on the earth in your life. They will see clearly a reordering of priorities if you are willing to follow God with your whole heart today. And when you become fully obedient you can expect the fullness of God’s blessing in your life and the lives of your children.
We learn from Patrick himself that a personal commitment is necessary. No one ever made it into heaven on the coattails of godly parents. Once we are able to understand the gospel for ourselves we much make a conscious choice to ask for forgiveness and accept Christ and the master of our lives. When Jesus said in John 14:6 that he was the way, the truth and the life and NO ONE would come to the father except through him – he meant just exactly that. Being good, kind and loving won’t do it. Attending church or giving resources to help others is not enough! You must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you must accept the forgiveness he offers.
Patrick’s commitment to listen to and follow Christ also shows us that if we want all God’s best in our lives we must listen to and follow him no matter what he calls us to. Even if what he calls us to is difficult, like it was for Patrick, there is no greater place of joy and fulfillment than being in the centre of God’s will.
St. Patrick made a huge difference in the lives of multiplied thousands and God can use you in a powerful way as you choose to continually say yes to all he asks of you. May God help us.