That just by being there, I was the lightning rod that was drawing in prayer God intended to use for the region. In 2009, God had said to me: “Prepare for harvest.” I came to see that being in prison was part of that assignment. We saw that something unusual was happening.ĭid you have a sense of what God was wanting to do?Ī: I came to see during my imprisonment that actually, God was using this to draw in prayer for Turkey, in an unusual way. Norine started to hear that people were praying in a number of countries. I didn’t know the numbers of people praying when I was in prison. There was something much bigger going on.ĭid you see that in prison, or was that in hindsight?Ī: Well, in hindsight it’s clearer, but I began to see it in prison. It was God-initiated, God-driven, God-sustained, and I came to see that God was doing something much bigger with that movement of prayer than just sustaining me and then delivering me from prison. I’ve been told by a church historian that what happened with me was an unprecedented prayer movement focused on one person. So that was something he kept coming back to.Ī: And the encouragement I got often came from knowing that. Norine: Each time we met, he said, “Are they still praying?” Because it would be natural for people to move on to the next crisis. Still, I had this desperate need to know that people were praying. The first year, especially, is when I broke physically. When I went on trial, that was initially very difficult. Being in solitary confinement was very difficult. I had been held in detention centers before that. Being thrown into prison for the first time. Were there specific times that were harder than others?Ī: I had a number of bad ones. My first year in prison, I broke repeatedly Grace was taking me through, but finding strength, determination, peace and joy was actually much more difficult than I expected. So I was very alone, isolated in my faith. I was the only Christian in prison, and the only Christian I had any contact with throughout my two years was Norine. Because my past experience with Him was really rich, to have that intimacy removed led to a fence around my heart toward God. Did you sense people’s prayers in prison?Īndrew: My two years in prison were marked by what I would call the silence of God, and not having any sense of His presence. Recently, we sat down with Andrew and his wife Norine for a conversation about those two years in prison, how God has worked in their lives over the last three years and why they say their ordeal was so much bigger than their own stories.Īndrew and Norine, millions of people were praying for you, including the Open Doors community. The same day, in a whirlwind of events and emotions, Andrew was surprisingly released and 25 hours later was in Washington, D.C., meeting with the president. On October 12, 2018-two years after a series of four hearings and postponed verdicts-Andrew was found guilty and sentenced. He never expected to be a political pawn in a legal case that would rise to Washington, D.C.’s highest halls of power.Īnd he never expected to be physically, emotionally and spiritually tested for two years in a crowded prison cell in Izmir, Turkey. As the leader of a small Christian church in Turkey for 25 years, Andrew never expected to be standing before a Turkish court facing multiple charges, including espionage and terrorism, and a collective sentence of 35 years-essentially life in prison for the then-50-year-old husband and father of three. With each court hearing and each delayed verdict, we poured out our hearts and voices for Andrew Brunson, the pastor from Black Mountain, North Carolina. Septemby Lindy Lowry in Europe / posted at on 4/23/22.įor 735 days, we prayed for him.
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