Greetings Reader,

The Spirit Was Burning Within Me

At sixteen, he was kidnapped from his family's villa on the coast of Britain, chained, and dragged onto a raider's ship as a slave.

He was carried across the cold Irish Sea to Ireland, a barbarian land.

Hundreds of warring pagan tribes and druids meant no escape, no appeal, and no rescue.

He was alone in a country where he knew no one and did not speak the language.

And by his own later admission, he barely even knew God.

This was who we know now as St. Patrick.

I read a book about St. Patrick while in seminary, and because tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, I was thinking about his man's amazing courage and faith.

Most of us know the legends:

• the shamrock he supposedly used to explain the Godhead,
• the story that he drove the snakes from Ireland,
• and the many signs, wonders, and miracles attributed to him across the centuries.

I want to share a couple of details about St. Patrick’s inner walk with God that might encourage you today.

The Spirit Was Burning Within Me

Alone on the foreign hills of Ireland, Patrick lived as a shepherd slave for six years.

He had no family, friends, church, mentor, or Bible.

He was surrounded by druids who practiced ritual magic and human sacrifice, along with at least a hundred independent, fiercely warring tribes who worshiped strange idols.

Spiritual darkness surrounded him as thickly as Irish fog on the mountains.

As a teenage boy, alone in an ungodly land, he could have been bitter, resentful, and angry.

Yet, he turned toward God rather than to his hurt and fears.

He was not forgotten nor forsaken. God was with him.

In his own words, from his autobiography, the Confessio:

God Himself burned in his heart and became his teacher.

It is a pattern woven through all of Scripture, including:

• Moses in the desert.
• Abraham under the stars.
• John the Baptist in the wilderness.

These barren, desolate places, even in our own lives, may feel dry, weary, and, well, maybe a bit like abandonment.

Yet, this becomes the very place our faith grows strong and God reveals Himself mightily.

Patrick's hillside was no different.

What looked like a wasteland became the holy ground of God’s presence.

The fire inside Patrick grew larger than anything a pagan land could throw at him.

When God Speaks the Impossible

After six years, he writes:

As it turned out, the ship was two hundred miles away in a place Patrick had never been, and he knew no one along the route.

Every visible fact said the journey was impossible.

But, he went anyway.

When Patrick reached the port, the captain refused him outright. Patrick turned away and began to pray.

Before he finished the prayer, one of the sailors called after him, "Come quickly. Those men are calling you!" They let him board, and they set sail that very day.

This is what faith looks like when it steps off the pages of the Bible and into a pair of worn-out shoes.

Romans 10:17 tells us that faith comes from hearing Christ’s words.

The words of Christ that Patrick heard gave him faith to make his escape.

Patrick could not see freedom yet.

He could see the chains of punishment, if he got caught.

Yet, he chose to trust Christ’s words over his circumstances.

If you have ever sensed God whispering a promise that made no sense, if you have ever felt called toward something you could not yet see, you are standing where Patrick stood.

And the God who had a ship waiting two hundred miles away for this young man has not lost His ability to turn your impossible situations around for you too!

The Man Behind the Legend

Like us, Patrick wrestled with regret and doubt.

He described himself as "a sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all the faithful."

He wrote that he felt ashamed and afraid to expose his lack of education, that he lacked eloquence, that he had a small vocabulary and could not express what his spirit longed to say.

Church Hurt is Not New

Then after thirty years of faithful missionary ministry, his own church leaders turned against him.

They dredged up a confessed sin from his boyhood and tried to use it to discredit his ministry and undermine everything he had built.

History tends to gloss over the struggle and hand us the highlight reel.

But the truth Patrick left us in his own handwriting is that progress happened little by little, prayer by prayer, cold morning by cold morning.

He did not wake up one day with unshakable faith.

He built it by his ongoing communications with God, one to one hundred prayers at a time.

And through all of it, the Holy Spirit led him:

Romans 8:26 tells us the Spirit intercedes for us with groans too deep for words.

Patrick lived this verse on an Irish hillside fifteen hundred years ago.

And the same Spirit is available to you, right now, in your own struggle, your own weariness, your own impossible circumstance. Just a reminder: prayer is powerful.

Called Back to the Hard Place

Patrick eventually made it home to Britain, and his family begged him never to leave again.

He could have settled into a comfortable life and let Ireland remain a memory.

But then came the dream:

And so, Patrick, now a grown man, went back to the land of his captivity, back to serve the people who had enslaved him.

Over the next thirty years, he planted over 300 churches, baptized thousands, and helped transform an entire nation.

The monasteries he helped build became beacons of learning that preserved Christianity through the Dark Ages and sent missionaries across Europe for centuries.

God took every fractured piece of Patrick's story—the kidnapping, the slavery, the loneliness, the shame, and the betrayal—and turned it all for good.

God is With You Too

I know many of you are in your own difficult season right now.

You are the ones who have not given up.

You are praying through hard circumstances.

You are trusting God with situations that make no visible sense.

You are choosing faith when it would be easier to settle for what you can see and manage on your own.

I want you to hear this: you are not alone.

You stand in great company with a great cloud of witnesses who walked this road before you:

• All the saints in Hebrews 11
• Paul, who sang hymns in a Roman prison.
• Joseph, who served faithfully in a dungeon he did not deserve.
• Ruth, who followed God into a foreign land with nothing but a promise.
• And Patrick who prayed a hundred prayers a day and night and heard God's voice in the impossible.

These were people like you and me who kept going little by little, prayer by prayer, one faithful step at a time.

And God used everything. Every hardship. Every betrayal. Every sickness. Every delay. Every unanswered question. He wasted nothing.

You may never plant 300 churches or baptize over 120,000 people.

But you can tend the fire of your own heart.

What has God said? What dream has He put in your heart? What verse reverberates in your mind? What prophecy remains unfulfilled?

Hold on to it. Pray about it. Act on it.

The God who prepared a ship two hundred miles away for a teenage slave is already at work in the places of your life you cannot yet see.

He has not forgotten, and He is not finished.

I want to leave you with a prayer attributed to St. Patrick that carries the spirit of everything he lived. And it may be worth remembering:

May the Holy Spirit burn like fire in your heart this week!

Dr. Cynthia Johnson, Deeper Walk Ministries, Inc.