Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Strength From The Bible
"Your Word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path." ~ Psalm 119:105
In Eritrea, the government restricts the freedom of religion of faith groups. The only groupings permitted are the Eritrean Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church and Islam. Everyone who is caught at a meeting of believers outside these four official religious groups, even in a private house, can be arrested, tortured and put under pressure to renounce his faith.
Thousands of Christians are being held at police stations, in containers, at military bases and in prisons. Even though many of them have been held for years, none of them has had a trial. In many cases, Christians are also beaten or abused in some other way.
Isaac is one of these prisoners. He heard about God’s love from soldiers in the military unit in which he was fighting during the war with Ethiopia. On the basis of their testimony, he decided to become a Christian and was secretly slipped a Bible. He buried it in the sand and when he had the opportunity, he read the Word of God somewhere outside the army camp. He tried to do so as inconspicuously as possible, but one day he was discovered.
Almost from his first day as a Christian, he was persecuted. He was tortured and even left out in the burning sun, but he refused to renounce his faith. God’s love and God’s Word had become too important for him. In the end, he was locked up, just like other Christian prisoners in Eritrea. He has become a living legend, because he has held on to his faith.
A number of Christian prisoners, who are being held in containers, have been given Bibles in secret. They have divided them into portions, and in this way, each believer has a small part of the Bible. When the container is closed, it is too dark to read. But as soon as the doors are opened to let in some air or to hand out food, something amazing happens. The prisoners do not immediately run outside for fresh air or to eat. First they inconspicuously hold their portions of the Bible to the light in order quickly to be able to read a few verses and to be strengthened by God’s Word.
Response:
Today I will treasure my freedom to read and meditate on God’s Word.
Prayer:
Lord, I pray Your Spirit of Peace upon my brothers and sisters in prison today in Eritrea. May they be encouraged by Your Word!
~ excerpt from: "Standing Strong Through the Storm" - a daily devotional published by Open Doors USA, PO BOX 27001 Santa Ana, CA 92799 USA
Open Doors USA is a 501(c)(3) compliant organization and a charter member of the Evangelical Council of Financial Accountability. All contributions are tax-deductible.
https://us13.campaign-archive.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=70518126e7
Memorizing God's Word
"All Scripture is inspired by God [breathed out by God] and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." ~ 2 Timothy 3:16-17
When China’s best-known pastor, Wang Ming-dao, was finally released from prison, he stated, “In these past twenty years, I have not had a copy of the Bible. Happily between the ages of twenty-one to twenty-four, I spent my time at home doing the housework and studying the Scriptures. I memorized many passages. These passages in my heart came out one by one and strengthened me. Had it not been for those words of God, then not only I, but many others, would also have been defeated.”
Pastor Lamb in southern China was in prison for many years at that same time. “I understood then why I had memorized so much of God’s Word while in Bible school,” he says. “I kept my sanity only by repeating Bible verses over and over.”
The best way the church can prepare for trials and persecution is by seriously studying and learning the Word of God. Christians need an overview of the whole Bible. Understanding God’s outline for mankind in the Bible aids in memorization as well.
What is the right attitude to bring to Bible study? Some read and study the Bible with the intent to get something from it to teach to others. But first, we should approach the Bible with the desire to see the goodness and loving-kindness of God and understand how “wide and long and high and deep” is His love for us (Ephesians 3:16-19). Let His love show you His supply for your own need and then you are better able to meet the needs of others.
Second, approach the Bible with humility. Study the Bible to discover what God has said. Bible study is meant not merely to inform but to transform.
In restricted countries where Bibles are in short supply, pastors are often in a quandary as to which of the many spiritually needy he should share these precious books with. Progress in Bible memorization is one method they can use for determining who will receive the available Bibles. One house church group in Vietnam decided to give them to the believers who were most determined to use them. The criterion used was memory work. So Bibles were shared only with those who recited flawlessly Psalm 119 — all 176 verses!
Open Doors is committed to provide God’s Word to those for whom it is not available.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, because it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek. For in it God’s righteousness is revealed out of faith into faith, just as it is written: The one who is righteous by faith will live.” ~ Romans 1:16-17
Response:
Today I will memorize a new verse from God’s Word, the Bible.
Prayer:
Pray for the Christians in restricted countries where there is a shortage of God’s Word.
____________________________
~ Open Doors USA is a 501(c)(3) compliant organization and a charter member of the Evangelical Council of Financial Accountability. All contributions are tax-deductible. Open Doors USA PO BOX 27001 Santa Ana, CA 92799 USA
https://us13.campaign-archive.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=adf9710984
Strategic Level Spiritual Warfare
"Suddenly, a hand touched me and raised me to my hands and knees. He said to me, “Daniel, you are a man treasured by God. Understand the words that I’m saying to you. Stand on your feet, for I have now been sent to you.” After he said this to me, I stood trembling. “Don’t be afraid, Daniel,” he said to me, “for from the first day that you purposed to understand and to humble yourself before your God, your prayers were heard. I have come because of your prayers. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia opposed me for 21 days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me after I had been left there with the kings of Persia. Now I have come to help you understand what will happen to your people in the last days, for the vision refers to those days.” ~ Daniel 10:10-14
There is considerable interest and teaching today about “territorial spirits,” that is, spiritual warfare waged against high-ranking principalities and powers assigned to a locale. The Scripture passage here indicates that a particular evil spirit was assigned to Daniel’s human government or territory. But what we lack biblically is any example of or injunction to engage these spirits directly or by name. Daniel only prayed to his God who sovereignly directs angels to war against the territorial rulers. The Apostle Paul taught that demonic emissaries who attack the church and hinder its mission can be overcome only through reliance on the power of God.
That same power of God is much needed in the world today. For example, witchcraft is being used as a strategic weapon by traditional Indian authorities in western Colombia in an attempt to weaken and even stamp out the faith of indigenous Christians. Sorcerers or witchdoctors, called te walas by the indigenous peoples, have started sending messengers to sit in the back during church services, rather than going directly themselves. When the pastors invite listeners to receive Christ, these messengers say, “No, we have just come to listen.” But while Christians are praying, the te walas sprinkle the cursed waters around the church.
If their incantations bring no results, the te walas themselves come to the church, surrounding it with occult rites to cause the believers to lose their desire to pray and read the Bible. In some recent night-time visits by these traditional “healers,” the witchdoctors made pacts with animal blood as well as sprinkled their cursed waters on the church.
A seventeen-year-old girl in one church was induced to participate in these practices, despite having Christian parents. She actually made a pact of witchcraft, her pastor said, to give over one of her relatives to Satan. Discouraged, her parents cannot understand how this could happen in their home, where she learned to know and love God. Church leaders and the pastor have united with this family to intercede urgently for this young girl’s deliverance. The pastor admitted that he feared that more such cases are happening that have yet to be discovered. They need our prayers.
Response:
Today I’ll not underestimate the power of God to defeat all that Satan throws against me.
Prayer:
Lord, may Your mighty power overcome the evil united against Your church.
_____________________________
Open Doors USA is a 501(c)(3) compliant organization and a charter member of the Evangelical Council of Financial Accountability. All contributions are tax-deductible. Open Doors USA PO BOX 27001 Santa Ana, CA 92799 USA
https://us13.campaign-archive.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=0018760f4c
The Village In Syria Were They Speak Jesus' Tongue -
63,767 views Journeyman Pictures
China NWO communistic gov. 666 anti-Christ evils demolishes Christian megachurch -
AFP news agency
Published on 13 Jan 2018
Annihilation of Christian Life and People: Where is the Outrage in the West?
~ Meeting Catastrophe with Indifference
"Where is the solidarity for the Sri Lanka's Christians?" asked the British scholar Rakib Ehsan, a Muslim.
"The differences in tone and nature between the condemnations of the Christchurch and Sri Lanka terrorist attacks are striking. After Christchurch, there was no hesitation about stating the religious backgrounds of the victims and directing emotion and affection towards Muslim communities. Politicians took no issue with categorising the events in Christchurch as terrorism."
"In contrast, the words 'terrorism' and 'Christianity', along with their associated terms, have so far failed to feature in much of the reaction to the attacks in Sri Lanka."
"What is evident is not only a clear reluctance to specify the religious background of Christians who were killed in Sri Lanka, but also an absence of heartfelt solidarity with Christian communities across the world, which continue to suffer grave forms of persecution on the grounds of their faith."
Rakib Ehsan asked the right question. But it might be rewritten as: Where is the Western solidarity for the Sri Lanka's murdered Christians?
This is a drama in three acts. The first act consists of the Christians and other non-Muslim indigenous peoples being violated and murdered. The second act consists of Muslim extremists who create this genocide. And the third act consists of the indifferent West, which looks everywhere else.
The number of murdered victims in the April 21 Easter Sunday jihadist attacks in Sri Lanka is too terrible even to think about: 253 dead. Among the victims, 45 children were murdered. Their small faces and stories have begun to emerge. The Islamic terrorists knew there were many children in the three churches, and they deliberately targeted them with their bombs. Footage shows one of the bombers patting a young child on the head before he enters the St. Sebastian's Church in Negombo, where "everyone has lost someone".
The Fernando family had taken a photograph at the baptism of their third child, Seth. In Negombo they were all buried together. Father, mother and three children aged 6, 4, and 11 months. According to the New York Times:
"Fabiola Fernando, 6, was an elementary school student. In a photo posted to her mother's Facebook page, she showed off a gold medal, a small smile on her face. Leona Fernando, 4, the middle child in her family, was learning to read and was holding a copy of "Sleeping Beauty" in the picture. Seth Fernando, 11 months, was the newest addition to the Fernando family. He was buried alongside his parents and two sisters."
The silence of the Western intellectual world and the media is particularly deafening. The new humanitarian conscience seems to see only two groups: those who have the right to the compassion and protection of the international community, and those, such as Christians, unworthy of help or solidarity.
The deliberate murder of an 8-month-old baby, Matthew, in a Sri Lankan church apparently did not upset or chill the West, did not go viral on social media, did not to become a hashtag, did not to push the Europeans to crowd into their public squares, did not press the Islamic world to examine its conscience, did not to induce Western politicians and opinion-makers seriously to reflect on who killed that child, or on those who foment and finance the Islamist anti-Christian hatred.
Sudesh Kolonne was waiting outside St. Sebastian's Church when he heard the blast. He then ran inside and searched for his wife and daughter. It took him a half hour to find their bodies.
The attacks also killed three children of a Danish billionaire. Another woman lost her daughter, son, husband, sister-in-law and two nieces. A British father had to make a choice over which of his two children to save. Another British family was destroyed. To add horror to horror, the pregnant wife of one of the terrorists, when police raided her home, detonated a suicide vest, killing her own children.
The Duke of Cambridge, Prince William, just visited the Muslim survivors of the attack on the mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, including children recovering in the hospitals. It was a gesture of humanity and compassion. Why does the same compassion not spur the British royal family to stop in Sri Lanka, their former colony, to meet the Christian survivors, before going back to England? Entire Christian families were decimated in the attack.
Where is the outrage in the West for the annihilation of Christian life and people? It feels as if there is no indignation, only silence, interrupted by bombs and "Allahu Akbar". The history books of the future will not condone this Western betrayal. If the West had taken seriously the persecutions of Christians, now the bell would not toll for the death of the Christian presence -- not only in historic lands of Christianity, but also for the West. Islamic extremists have seen that the West has not mobilized to prevent them from repressing Christians, as if unconsciously there were a strange convergence between our silence and the ethnic cleansing project of the Islamic State, aimed at erasing Christians.
The British author Melanie Phillips has called this persecution of Christians "our guilty secret."
"Religious liberty, the core value of western civilisation, is being destroyed across large parts of the world. Yet the West, myopically denying this religious war, is averting its gaze from the destruction of its foundational creed in the Middle East and the attempt to eradicate it elsewhere. It is therefore no surprise that, faced with jihadist barbarities abroad and cultural inroads at home, the free world is proving so ineffectual".
The jihadist attack in Sri Lanka was not only "the deadliest attack on Christians in South Asia in recent memory." It was also the largest massacre of Christian children. But no newspaper has launched a campaign to raise awareness of European public opinion, no pro-Christian solidarity movement has arisen, no Western leader appears to have visited a church in solidarity, no Western church leaders had the courage to point out the culprits by calling them by name, no Western mayors hung photographs of the 45 children torn to pieces, no public square was filled in thousands saying "Je suis chrétien".
A few years ago, at the height of the migrant crisis in Europe, a photograph conquered public opinion in the West. It was the famous picture of the three-year-old Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, who drowned off the coast of Bodrum, Turkey. That little migrant moved the West. His image went viral. The New York Times called it "Aylan Kurdi's Europe".
"For historical reasons, Angela Merkel feared images of armed German police confronting civilians on our borders," wrote Robin Alexander, Die Welt's leading journalist, in his book, Die Getriebenen ("The Driven Ones"). If photographs of migrant children spurred Europe's leaders to open their borders, the photographs of murdered Christian children -- such as the 45 in Sri Lanka -- apparently left them indifferent.
The appeal of Asia Bibi's daughters to help her mother met a deaf West. The UK refused to offer asylum to this Pakistani Christian family and take persecuted Christians.
"It is with indifference that we witness a catastrophe of civilization with no precedent", wrote the French scholar historian Jean-François Colosimo, commenting on the destruction of Eastern Christianity. No religion, no community, is today more persecuted than Christians. Why, then, this silence by the West? Have we become so foreign to ourselves, to our roots and to our history, that we can contemplate this outbreak of jihadi violence without blinking an eye? Or are we so short-sighted that we hoped to buy "peace" with the Muslim extremists at the cost of abandoning those Christians? The same jihadi ideology that murdered Christian children in Sri Lanka, targeted European children in Nice, Manchester and Barcelona.
Sri Lanka after the massacre is not just a terrible succession of crying mothers and little coffins. Unfortunately, it also tells us a lot about the discouraging state of the West.
~ by Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14142/annihilation-christian-life
Visions Of Jesus - Messiah
Some of Jesus’ disciples took time to come to a place where they recognized this very human being they followed was also God. Interestingly, in Matthew’s account of their journey with Jesus, it was the calming of the terrible storm that finally convinced them:
"Then those in the boat worshiped Him and said, “Truly You are the Son of God!” ~ Matthew 14:33
Jesus later told His disciples that people who have not seen His miracles and still believe are even more blessed. But still today, many people need a supernatural revelation to trust Him.
Throughout the Muslim world come reports of people having dreams and visions of Jesus. In this way, He becomes real to them and further reading of Scripture confirms His status as Messiah and Savior.
Hedayat is an Iranian youth who had always been a good Muslim and practiced the rituals required by his faith, but he had never considered the message of the Quran to be very positive. An Armenian Christian friend of Hedayat sometimes shared a little with Hedayat about the Christian faith of his family. He didn’t say too much, because he did not want to get in trouble for it. But one day he gave Hedayat a movie, warning him to watch it when he was alone.
Watching the movie did not convince Hedayat of the Christian faith, nor his dream afterwards. He says, “I had prayed the prayer at the end of the video, and then I had this dream. I saw a man in my house, standing before me. I saw marks in his wrists and feet, and I just knew this must be Jesus, but I could not respond.”
Hedayat recalls after that, he had felt very confused and did not want to accept any of this. He realized that especially his older brother might become furious if he accepted the Christian faith. So he decided to block any thoughts about this and cut the relationship with his Armenian friend.
Although the Armenian tried to get in touch many times, Hedayat always refused. Four years later the Armenian believer mustered up courage and went to the electronics shop where Hedayat worked. Walking up to his old friend, he shoved a small present over the counter.
“I will never forget you and will always pray for you,” the Christian said. Then he turned around and left the shop, leaving Hedayat astonished.
“From the size of the package, I thought it was a pocket-diary. But it turned out to be a New Testament,” Hedayat remembers. “At the moment I unpacked it, I felt anger coming up, because he was chasing me with his Christianity! I put it away, but in the evening I became curious and wondered if I could discover if the Bible indeed was corrupted, as I was told.”
So Hedayat started reading Matthew, Mark, and Luke. After a few months, Hedayat contacted his Armenian friend at the phone number that was on a little note in the Bible. The Word of God had convinced him that there was no Mehdi coming, as Iranian Shias believe, but that it was Jesus the Messiah he should be expecting. Through his friend, he was soon welcomed into a house church and discipled.
Response:
Today I will thank God for His Son revealed through His Word which is enough for me.
Prayer:
Pray for many more who see Jesus in dreams and visions to come to a place of acceptance.
______________________
~ Open Doors USA, Open Doors USA, PO BOX 27001, Santa Ana, CA 92799 USA
Open Doors USA is a 501(c)(3) compliant organization and a charter member of the Evangelical Council of Financial Accountability. All contributions are tax-deductible.
Religious Intolerance
"Make every effort to live in peace with all men…" ~ Hebrews 12:14
Other religious groups are one of the most threatening tactics Satan uses against the church of Jesus Christ. In the book of Acts we see over and over that the primary opposition to the spread of the gospel in the early church was from religious groups. Again we must never view these groups as the enemy. We know who our real enemy is. In some parts of the world, the small percentage of extremists among Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims have encouraged mob violence and other forms of persecution against Christians. Our attitude toward them should be as Brother Andrew’s acronym for ISLAM suggests: I Sincerely Love All Muslims.
The tactic that our enemy uses in these major religions of the world is the same. It comes from his character of deceiving and lying. Some people are able to perceive elements of truth within the major religions of the world, but their essential teachings are deceivingly false.
Wherever possible, missionaries of cults and other religions do whatever possible to encourage Christians — usually those who are Christian in name only — to convert to their religion. Unfortunately, in countries such as Egypt, a significant number do convert to a cult or to some other religion. The lure to convert can be marriage, money, employment, social acceptance, and any other similar attraction.
Hardini was born to a devout Muslim family in Indonesia where everyone must go to the mosque every day to pray. Her father had strict rules for everyone in the family. One rule was that Hardini should never associate with Christians. Despite Hardini’s devotion to Islam, her heart was heavy and she longed for inner peace. A Christian with a great sense of joy and peace befriended Hardini.
Hardini had the courage to tell her new friend about her spiritual hunger, and the friend offered to pray for her in the name of Jesus. After the Christian girl prayed, peace filled Hardini’s heart and her life radically changed.
When Hardini’s family discovered she had become a Christian, they spent hours and hours trying to entice her with force to recant her new faith. Hardini remained steadfast. Finally her parents made a painful decision — they totally disowned their daughter. That left Hardini with the choices of either recanting her faith or fleeing from her home and family. She chose to flee.
Response:
Today I will pray for believers like Hardini who experience religious intolerance.
Prayer:
Lord, help me to sincerely love all Muslims and people of other faith systems.
https://us13.campaign-archive.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=b541d91c7f
~ Open Doors USA is a 501(c)(3) compliant organization and a charter member of the Evangelical Council of Financial Accountability. All contributions are tax-deductible.
~ Open Doors USA, Open Doors USA PO BOX 27001 Santa Ana, CA 92799 USA
Satan's Changing Tactics
"However, we do speak a wisdom among the mature, but not a wisdom of this age, or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. On the contrary, we speak God’s hidden wisdom in a mystery, a wisdom God predestined before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age knew this wisdom, for if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." ~ 1 Corinthians 2:6-8
Today’s devotional comes from our founder and friend, Brother Andrew:
Have you ever noticed the strategy Satan used throughout Old Testament history? His attacks were aimed at preventing the birth of the Messiah at Bethlehem, but, once Jesus was born, Satan’s tactics changed somewhat. In some instances, he tried to kill Jesus before the Lord could reach the cross. At other times, Satan engineered numerous attempts to discredit Him — to cause Him to stumble or to sin.
But Satan met defeat at the cross. He failed to understand God’s strategy, and his final blunder actually forced events so that Jesus, though innocent, was condemned to die. The Apostle Paul noted that Satan did not understand this in 1 Corinthians 2:8.
Since that time, Satan’s tactics have changed. He’s still concerned about preventing the Word — the Word that was with God and is God (John 1:1) — from reaching people who are under Satan’s dominion. His attack is now two-pronged.
First Satan concentrates on the life and name of Jesus which each and every believer bears as the Lord’s representative. I believe it is important for Christians undergoing persecution to realize the attack they are under is actually directed not at them, but at the life of Jesus in them, a life which they have power to transmit to others.
Satan will make every effort to discredit you, to frighten you and to silence your witness in order that the new life in you stops with you. Sometimes Satan overreaches himself, just as he did at the cross, and sends a believer to a martyr’s grave but that life lives on in other believers who continue to bear witness more gloriously and triumphantly than ever.
That the church not only survives, but grows under such persecution has been demonstrated beautifully by the church in China. After missionaries were forced to leave in 1950, and all ties were cut with the body of Christ, believers were put through the horrible experience of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Christians were killed or imprisoned, Bibles burned, and the remaining believers scattered all over China. The attack was clearly on the life and name of Jesus as manifested in believer’s lives.
As these sufferers scattered, they took the life of Jesus with them, and just as was the case with the early believers in Jerusalem, “Those who were scattered went about preaching the Word” (Acts 8:4). Now we see the harvest in China as millions of Christians are identified, meeting together for fellowship and worship in remote provinces…
I want others to have the one who makes me happy — Jesus.
Response:
Today I will be aware of Satan’s attempts to silence my witness for Jesus and resist him!
Prayer:
Thank You, Lord, for the way You bring good from the evil tactics of the enemy of our soul. Help me stand strong against his attack on the life and name of Jesus in me.
https://us13.campaign-archive.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=589b475150
~ Open Doors USA is a 501(c)(3) compliant organization and a charter member of the Evangelical Council of Financial Accountability. All contributions are tax-deductible.
Open Doors USA, PO BOX 27001, Santa Ana, CA 92799 USA
Open Doors USA
For over 60 years, Open Doors has worked in the world's most oppressive countries, empowering Christians who are persecuted for their beliefs. Open Doors equips persecuted Christians in more than 60 countries through programs like Bible & Gospel Development, Women & Children Advancement and Christian Community Restoration.
What is Open Doors USA?
Open Doors USA is a community of Christians who come together to support persecuted believers in more than 60 countries.
We are a 501c3, non-profit organization with more than 60 years of experience and a long track record of financial integrity.
And we are also a group of friends — a mix of office staff, board members, field representatives, and many, many regular people who stand against persecution. Although we haven’t met every one of our readers and supporters face-to-face, we count each of them as an important part of our work.
How Did it Start?
Our ministry was launched by a courageous Christian man from the Netherlands named Brother Andrew. Many people best know Brother Andrew from his most well-known book, God’s Smuggler, which tells stories of his secret missions to smuggle Bibles into hostile regions.
During his life, Brother Andrew took great risks to sneak the Gospel into communist countries during the height of the Cold War. He did so with a sense of adventure, believing that his faith in Jesus was worth every danger he faced.
Today, although the world has changed, Christians are still persecuted and, in some communities, continue to be forced underground. Like Brother Andrew, Open Doors team members still take on risks to resource these Christians living in hostile regions and to continually work against persecution wherever it exists.
We spend time getting to know persecuted believers on the ground, in their communities, and we are often inspired by the strength of their faith in the midst of great hardship. We believe that they, along with our team of staff and supporters like you, will be the Brother Andrews of this generation.
How to Get Involved:
We invite anyone who is interested in our ministry to become part of the extended Open Doors family. You can start to get to know us today by:
• Browsing our website and reading firsthand reports from believers on the ground in these 60 regions.
• Signing petitions that advocate for the rights and well-being of persecuted believers around the world.
• Subscribing to free email updates that keep you informed about persecution incidents around the world.
• Making a donation to send financial support or Bibles to Christians living in hostile regions.
• Sending letters to encourage persecuted believers.
We know that many of you intentionally donate time, resources, and volunteer hours to worthy causes. We hope that you will consider making “persecution” one of the areas that you are determined to impact over the course of your life. We are in this for the long haul and we would love to offer you a lifetime of ministry opportunities for doing good for the kingdom of God.
About Our Faith:
At Open Doors, we are devoted to Jesus Christ. We are people of the Bible and people of prayer who seek to live and work out of deeply rooted faith in God. These values are part of our daily rituals. Around our organization, it is routine to begin and sometimes also end business meetings in prayer. And every week, our entire staff gathers at least three times to share what God is teaching us and to pray for the persecuted believers we serve.
We stake our lives in Jesus’ Great Commission. We take this command so seriously that we still take risks to this day to get copies of the Gospel into hostile areas. We do this because we love God. We are inspired by the life and teachings of Jesus who often went out of his way to spend time being present with vulnerable people on the margins of society.
We value all the people who work with us at every level — persecuted believers and supporters alike — as we are all family in the larger Body of Christ.
Core Values:
• We are part of the Body of Christ; a people to people people
• We are persecuted church driven
• We are people of the Bible
• We are people of prayer
• We live and work by faith
• We are devoted to Jesus Christ and His commission
• We are motivated solely for the glory of God
Download our monthly Prayer Calendar from here: https://www.opendoorsusa.org/take-action/pray/monthly-prayer-calendar/
Visit our Web Site here: https://www.opendoorsusa.org/
Faith And Fear
"On that day, when evening had come, He [Jesus] told them, “Let’s cross over to the other side of the sea.” So they left the crowd and took Him along since He was already in the boat. And other boats were with Him. A fierce windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking over the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But He was in the stern, sleeping on the cushion. So they woke Him up and said to Him, “Teacher! Don’t You care that we’re going to die?” He got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Silence! Be still!” The wind ceased, and there was a great calm. Then He said to them, “Why are you fearful? Do you still have no faith?” ~ Mark 4:35-40
Storms often bring out our true spiritual condition. Jesus was in the boat but the disciples still feared for their lives. He chastised them for their fear and their little faith! Thus our greatest need is not for the storm to end but to be freed from fear and have faith in Him while the storm rages.
At a Standing Strong Through The Storm (SSTS) seminar in Central Asia, our translator looked at us at the close of our three-day session and commented, “Thank you for teaching us how to stand strong. God spoke to me a lot through this seminar. I was afraid to die but not anymore. I have peace to go and spread God’s Word.” She is now serving the Lord in a dangerous but strategic mission in her region.
A middle-aged man in North Korea was arrested after the police found a Bible in his home. Terribly beaten, he was certain he would die. A Christian friend shared, “When he came to faith, he made the decision that one day he would die for Christ. Every Christian in North Korea has made that choice. Every Christian in the country has the spirit of martyrdom in him. If you lose that spirit for one second, you cannot carry the burden of being a follower of Jesus.”
A significant factor in dealing with fear — especially fear of dying — is realizing that we are already dead in Christ (Galatians 2:20). Former Open Doors colleague, Hector Tamez, says that this concept is clearly seen in the lives of Christians living in war zones of Latin America. The Christians who were caught in the civil war between the government and Shining Path guerrillas in Peru, are a classic example for us. Here is how Hector expresses their commitment:
They know that they are going to be killed. And they say, “In order to be a Christian here, you have to recognize that you are already dead in Christ. Once you recognize this, then any day that passes by in your life is a gain.”
In some countries, surviving one day or one year means that you have one God-given day or year to testify not only with your words but with your deeds. Fear should not control your life! Christ should control your life!
Response:
When storms come my way, I will affirm God’s power to overcome fear and live by faith.
Prayer:
Ask God to forgive you for your times of fearfulness and lack of faith. Pray that all members of the Persecuted Church would have faith in Jesus like these Peruvian believers.
https://us13.campaign-archive.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=ac158a80dd
America, Please Stand for Us: We are Dying!” Muslim Persecution of Christians 2018
DECEMBER 30, 2018
https://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2018/12/30/muslim-persecution-of-christians-sep-2018/
https://twitter.com/creepingsharia
xxxx xxxx
God Bless America
Jesus Talks about His own DEATH and RESURRECTION -
Every Bible Verse
29,879 views
The Endless Love of Jesus
Egypt's Silent Epidemic of Kidnapped Christian Girls
~ Christian women in Egypt face an epidemic of kidnapping, rape, beatings and torture.
Egypt’s Christian community faces dangers that most other Egyptians needn’t fear. Threats of violence during church services, attacks on buses filled with innocent pilgrims and their children, and assaults on successful Christian businesses happen all too frequently.
But only occasionally do they appear in the Western media.
Meanwhile, mass kidnappings, such as the Boko Haram abductions in Nigeria, are widely reported. Even accounts of young Pakistani Christian girls’ abductions have been published from time to time.
However, an ongoing nightmare in Egypt has gone virtually unnoticed for years. Victims fall silent. Authorities turn a blind eye and religiously-motivated kidnappings are extremely difficult to document.
But the truth is that Christian women in Egypt face an epidemic of kidnapping, rape, beatings and torture. Innumerable girls and women vanish forever, and even if they are somehow rescued, their stories are thought to be so shameful that they’re hidden as dark family secrets. Meanwhile, doctors quietly repair internal damage and “restore virginity” to abused teenagers and twenty-somethings. Priests try to protect family reputations when the girls return.
Meanwhile, the devastated survivors will never be the same.
The attacks vary – some happen randomly, when a vulnerable female is spotted walking alone on a sidewalk. Other are plotted by Islamist consortiums, who pay kidnappers as much $3,000 per girl. The assailants rape the victims, hold them in captivity, then demand that the terrified young women to convert to Islam – often violently abusing them until they surrender.
These crimes are particularly common in villages outside Egypt’s major cities, where radicalized thugs act with impunity, sometimes forming raging mobs and leaving behind a trail of blood, ashes and broken people.
World Watch Monitor, an international Christian publication, interviewed a man who had been once an abductor himself. He explained, “A group of kidnappers meets in a mosque to discuss potential victims. They keep a close eye on Christians’ houses and monitor everything that’s going on. On that basis, they weave a spider’s web around [the girls].”
Once a victim is delivered to a radical Islamist organization, he explained, her price tag, payable to the kidnappers, is big money in a cash-strapped country like Egypt. The kidnappers are happy with their share of the loot. However, their radical Islamist handlers have a “higher” aim: to strengthen Islam and weaken Christianity.
The tactics vary. Some of the girls are flattered and romanced by their captors. A starry-eyed young woman falls in love and is delighted when her mysterious lover, who promises to convert to Christianity – if she’ll run away with him. All too often when she does, she is never heard from again.
Other young women are abducted off the street.
One Egyptian teenager – we’ll call her “Samia” – grew up in a Coptic home. Her mother was devout; her father was violent when drunk.
Samia decided to run away, determined to leave her small village in Minya and find a new life in Alexandria. She reached her destination, but as she made her way along an unfamiliar city street, a car pulled over, two young men grasped her and dragged her into the back seat. A brutal foursome later took turns raping her while mocking the small cross tattooed on her wrist.
Samia courageously escaped and made her way home. By then, she had been badly beaten. The cross on her wrist had been burned off with acid – and she was pregnant.
Her mother and sister managed to settle her in a convent; she returned home months later, after the nuns delivered the child, whom she never saw and her father never learned what had befallen her.
Abdel Fatah al-Sisi was elected President of Egypt in a landslide vote in May 2014. His victory was welcomed by many Egyptians, and after his acceptance speech, Sisi was endorsed by several religious and political leaders, including Coptic Patriarch Tawadros II.
I later asked Bishop Serapion, the Coptic bishop of Los Angeles, about the plight of Copts and other Christians in Egypt following Sisi’s election. Were Copts faring better now, under Sisi’s presidency?
Choosing his words carefully, he told me that there has been genuine progress at the top levels of government, but local authorities are still inclined to turn a blind eye to anti-Coptic persecution.
And so it goes. Especially defenseless are the women who are assaulted and taken captive, often in the name of Islam. Local authorities are the last to renounce their small-town power and prestige. And minorities – Copts and other Christian communities – continue to suffer.
Girls and women are abducted and abused. Businessmen are arrested while attempting to collect money owed by Muslims. Instead of fair payment, they are instead accused of having sexual relations with Muslim women or of other scandalous behavior and are jailed – sometimes for years.
My friend and colleague Charmaine Hedding, founder of Shai Fund – a small international humanitarian organization – is presently in Egypt interviewing Christian women who have survived abduction and sexual abuse.
“We do what we can,” she told me. “We’re providing small donations and encouragement. But we also really want to make sure these vicious sexual abuses are made known in the West, where today’s women are especially sensitized to such devastating experiences."
“Perhaps once Western women begin to understand what’s really happening in Egypt, we’ll see more help and concern for the traumatized victims of both religious and sexual abuse.”
~ by Lela Gilbert | December 5, 2018
The writer is an internationally recognized expert on religious persecution, an award-winning author and an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute who lived in Jerusalem for over a decade. Her book Saturday People, Sunday People: Israel through the Eyes of a Christian Sojourner received wide critical acclaim. She is also co-author of Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians, and Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter @lelagilbert.
https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Egypts-silent-epidemic-of-kidnapped-Christian-girls-573614
It Is Harder To Live For Jesus
"Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me…” ~ Matthew 16:24
Jesus’ first call to those interested in Him was “Come and see!” (John 1:39). As His disciples spent more time with Him, Jesus’ call became more demanding and required more commitment.
Here He calls those who would be His disciples to make the ultimate sacrifice and “Come and die!”
Jesus was the last person Sundar Singh was looking for as a late teenager in India at the turn of the 20th Century. After all, Jesus was the “foreign god” of the Christian teachers at his school. A zealous Sikh, Sundar had publicly torn up a portion of the Bible to protest its claims. One night as he prayed he became conscious of a light shining in the room. He looked outside to make sure it was not someone shining a light. Gradually the light took the form of a globe of fire and in it he saw the face of Jesus. Sundar threw himself on the ground and surrendered His life to Jesus.
The following months proved to be very difficult for Sundar and his family. Becoming a follower of Christ was not taken lightly by his family nor his community. He was excommunicated. He cut his hair, a gesture that did not make things any easier with his family who were convinced he had renounced his Sikh heritage.
A month after he was baptized in the year 1905, he took the vow of a sadhu. He gave away his meagre possessions, put on a saffron robe and became a barefooted wandering man of God. Among Christians the world over, this barefoot Sadhu was later called the “apostle of the bleeding feet” because the soles of his feet were often covered in bloody blisters. The life of a sadhu is hard and entirely dependent on God. Sadhu Sundar Singh’s needs were met entirely through the kindness of people he met wherever he went.
Sundar Singh is credited as the first missionary to cross the Himalayan Mountains to take the gospel to Nepal and Tibet. At thirty-six-years-of-age he made his last trip over the mountains. He never returned and is assumed to have been a martyr for Jesus.
In his diary left behind he had written, “It is easy to die for Christ. It is hard to live for Him. Dying takes only a few minutes — or at worst an hour or two — but to live for Christ means to die daily to myself.”
Response:
Today I will do the “hard” thing: die to myself and live for Jesus and others who need His love.
Prayer:
Help me Lord to live worthy of the calling as Your disciple. Show me the cross You want me to carry today.
https://us13.campaign-archive.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=5b4967c23d
Choosing Love Over Hate
"Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse." ~ Romans 12:14
At the early age of eleven, Sam was living a pious Muslim life in the southern Philippines. He prayed at mosques on Fridays and fasted during Ramadan. Sam was the only one of his siblings sent to school where he excelled both in classroom and sports. He was everybody’s favourite, popular and well-loved.
But everything changed one afternoon. After school, Sam passed by his grandfather’s house who happened to be a Christian. He saw a maroon book with ‘Kitab Injil’ (The Gospels) written on the cover. He opened it and started reading. “I was drawn to Jesus because his teachings were so different...Help the needy, obey and respect parents, do not be a false witness...they were not taught in Islam. Before that, I only knew to repay evil with evil.”
So Sam committed his life to following Jesus and His teachings in the Bible. He was just a fifth grader then. Although he was the only Christian in his family, Sam’s parents and siblings respected his new faith. But outside his home, among his friends, it was a different story. “You’re a kafir (infidel)! You are not my friend anymore.”
It was very painful for Sam to be deserted by his friend. His classmates at grade school kept a good distance from him. Some mocked him, calling him kafir. There were times during classes when kids would throw their shoes at him. They bullied him by writing stuffs on his uniform, filling his bag with sand, and even punching him.
One day, a friend-turned-enemy yelled at him. “You Christians are filthy! Christians are garbage!” Sam cried and ran home. There were times when he was tempted to fight back, but he remembered the words of Jesus to love the enemies, to bless and not curse. In his heart, he prayed for those who bullied him and repaid them with a kind smile instead.
Sam, now seventeen, has endured physical harassment, insults, and discrimination from friends and school mates for boldly telling them that he is a Christian.
After Sam joined the Open Doors’ discipleship program for MBB youths, he has become even bolder in seizing every opportunity to share his faith in Jesus. Sam knows that doing so might cost him his life someday.
“When I think of my friends, my heart breaks. I lost them, and though they turned out to be my enemies, I don’t hate them. Instead, I pray for them that one day they will meet my Lord Jesus and be changed.”
Response:
Jesus wants me to not repay evil with evil but rather love, bless and pray for those who are my enemies.
Prayer:
Help me Lord to live among those who oppose me with the character of Jesus and respond to them with love and not hate.
https://us13.campaign-archive.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=13b6c19e26
Two secret churches in North Korea show how powerful the Bible really is...
~ By Rachel Godwin
In the early morning light, a small group of North Korean believers meets on the riverbank, lugging their fishing gear with them.
Quietly, they load into a small boat and push off from land. It’s not until they’re far into the middle of the river that they dare to dig through their gear and pull out their Bibles.
This is the only place where they feel safe enough to worship together and study God’s Word. And even then, they are constantly on alert.
If they are caught reading the Bible, they could immediately be sentenced to 15 years in a labor camp – or worse. They’ve heard the stories of what happens to people who are heard speaking the name of Jesus. Many of them have family members and friends who are living in the camps now … or have been buried there.
That’s why when another boat approaches, they panic and scramble to hide their Bibles. “It’s the police!” someone shouts.
Only after the man in the boat greets them in the name of Jesus and tells them he has a gift for them do they start to calm down. He asks to see their Bibles, and the believers who own one hand them to him.
There are only a few Bibles among the church members – not nearly enough for everyone. And each copy is practically falling apart. After years of being carefully studied and then hidden over and over again, the bindings have come loose and pages are beginning to slip out. Many of the Bibles have water damage from these early morning meetings on the boat. But they are still these Christians’ prized possessions … they risk their lives for these Bibles.
So when the stranger pulls out a box of new Bibles provided by generous World Help donors, there is an immediate celebration on the boat. The believers clutch God’s Word to their chests and many of the people who had not had one previously break down into tears.
To them, a new Bible is the greatest gift they could receive.
There are still countless believers across this dark nation who are desperate for Bibles. Some people have never even seen a copy of the Scriptures in their life … but they know they would do anything to get their hands on one.
After the man delivered the new Bibles to the secret church on the river, he took the damaged copies back to the hotel where he was staying and hid them. But soon afterward, they disappeared.
He later discovered the janitor had found the Bibles. Instead of reporting them, he took them. It turns out that he was a Christian himself, and his tiny house church of four people had been praying for Bibles.
He praised God for the Bibles – even as damaged and falling apart as they were – because he and his friends could finally study God’s Word for themselves. That’s how desperate North Korean Christians are for copies of Scripture!
The story above is true. We heard it from our partners – defectors among them – who help us smuggle Bibles into North Korea. They also told us the No. 1 request from the church in North Korea was getting more Bibles. So, a year ago we set the goal of sending 100,000 Bibles to North Korea. It was both a daunting and ambitious goal, but we knew these Christians are longing for a chance to have a Bible, despite the risks.
A year later, we are not far from reaching our goal. With the help of generous supporters more Christians in North Korea now have access to a Bible of their own.
Today, Nov. 4, is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. Christians in America and across the world will dedicate time in their services and personally to pray for those who are suffering persecution because of their faith. I hope you will join us in praying for these brave men and women.
---------------------------------------
Rachel Godwin writes for World Help, a Christian humanitarian organization serving the physical and spiritual needs of people in impoverished communities around the world. To learn more about religious persecution in North Korea, click here.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/two-secret-churches-in-north-korea-show-how-powerful-the-bible-really-is
No Turning Back
“Whoever does not take up their cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me.” ~ Matthew 10:38
In northern Nigeria, confessing Christ by word of mouth is not the only test of a believer’s sincere submission to the authority of Christ — particularly one coming to Christ from Islam. A true follower of Jesus must be prepared to carry the cross, or else he falls away.
For 25-year-old Akin, his cross came quickly. His father and uncle took him from the home of one Islamic scholar to another, trying to convince him to compromise his faith in Christ. But all their efforts proved fruitless. Finally, as a last resort, Akin’s family took him to an Islamic reformatory where he must either accept Islam, or die.
“There, I lived with thieves, murderers, alcoholics and drug addicts whose parents or relatives had brought them there to be rehabilitated. I did not belong there…Immediately, they had my hands and feet chained. The chains fastened on my legs were worse, as they joined the metals directly on my legs. They also beat me consistently. The experience was agonizing, but I had to endure, because I had seen the light in Christ and accepted it,” said Akin.
“They maltreated us, but mine was more severe because the Islamic teacher told them I had blasphemed against the prophet of Islam,” said Akin. “I wore the same shirt and trousers for nine months. I could not even wash them since I was chained, hands and feet.”
After nine months in chains and under the cruel treatment of outcasts and the Islamic teacher, the Islamic teacher took Akin back to his father’s house in the village. “My father was very upset and asked the Islamic teacher to take me back, since I had not recanted my faith in Christ,” Akin said. But the teacher refused. “He handed me over to my father and left.”
Because staying with his parents would mean his death, he immediately fled to a pastor’s house for refuge. Akin stayed indoors for two weeks until the church relocated him to a more secure environment. Akin was discipled over the next two years, and then called into ministry.
Now in a Bible school, Akin still cannot go back home. The church in his village is small, with almost no means to support him. His Christian mentor is the only source of help for his school fees, books and provision of food.
“For me the battle continues, although I know it is Christ who rescued me,” says Akin. “This is a constant reminder that Christ actually gave up his life for me…So my experience in that [Islamic reformatory] was just a part of the road that leads to eternity with Christ. He has told us the journey will not be easy, but we must press on, no turning back.”
Response:
Today I will persevere in following Jesus no matter what obstacles I face. I will not turn back!
Prayer:
Thank You, Lord, for the example of believers like Akin whose example imitates Yours in teaching me to follow after You, no matter the cost.
https://us13.campaign-archive.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=02d13ad4c8
US pastor freed from Turkey prays with Trump in Oval Office
WASHINGTON (AP) — Freed American pastor Andrew Brunson fell to one knee in the Oval Office and placed his hand on President Donald Trump’s shoulder in prayer on Saturday, asking God to provide the president “supernatural wisdom to accomplish all the plans you have for this country and for him.”
Trump welcomed Brunson to the White House to celebrate his release from nearly two years of confinement in Turkey, which had sparked a diplomatic row with a key ally and outcry from U.S. evangelical groups.
Read more...
https://apnews.com/1d27849b00a745979699c996adcee7d7
Pastor Andrew Brunson Freed!
Over the last two years since Pastor Andrew Brunson was first detained in October 2016, the global Body of Christ has been praying and interceding for him and his family. Today, October 12, 2018, we thank God and praise Him for this miracle we have prayed for…
Pastor Andrew Brunson is free!
At his fourth hearing near the coastal town of Izmir, the judge ordered the release of the 50-year-old pastor and lifted the ban on travel — making him free to leave the country where he led a church for 25 years before his arrest. He will soon be heading home to North Carolina with his wife, Norine.
You can read the details of Pastor Brunson’s release here: Read More
Throughout his imprisonment, Open Doors has asked you to write and share your prayers on our Prayer Wall for Pastor Brunson. Between it and comments you’ve left on social media posts, the Open Doors community has left more than 4,000 prayers longing for his release.
And now we take this time to thank our God who is “the Mighty Warrior who saves us” (Zephaniah 3:17). Now, we’re asking you to share your gratitude and praises on our new Andrew Brunson Praise Wall.
Share Your Praise
"Give thanks to Yahweh; call on His name; proclaim His deeds among the peoples. Sing to Him; sing praise to Him; tell about all His wonderful works!" ~ 1 Chronicles 16:8-9
Pastor Andrew’s story also offers a critical reminder to us that while we rejoice for his freedom, as the Body of Christ we also continue to remember thousands of believers still imprisoned and enslaved for their faith. We ask for God’s hand to move and set captives free in Turkey, North Korea, Pakistan, Iran, China, Eritrea, Malaysia, Nigeria and in the many other countries where believers are suffering for following Jesus.
We can also continue to pray with the Brunsons, for their safe return, transition, and physical and emotional healing.
I hope you’ll share this good news, keeping God in the center of it. And I hope this story of God working in the midst of the storm emboldens your own faith today as you sing His praises proclaim His greatness and tell about His miracles.
Have a great weekend!
Best,
Lindy Lowry, Open Doors Weekly editor
Andrew Brunson to Wait for Next Hearing in Grim Turkish Prison
“I’ve never done anything against Turkey. I love Turkey. I’ve been praying for Turkey for 25 years. I want truth to come out.” ~ U.S. Pastor Andrew Brunson (during his opening statement)
After only one day of testimony, the outcome of the first hearing for U.S. Pastor Andrew Brunson has not gone as we hoped. Late on Monday, April 16, a Turkish judge ordered a continuation of the Brunson trial with the second hearing scheduled for May 7.
In another devastating blow, the judge sent Pastor Andrew back to the prison where he was originally held. He will have to wait out the next three weeks in a grim prison notorious for its overcrowded conditions where almost two dozen prisoners are held in one cell.
As the Body of Christ, we are called to stand with Pastor Andrew, bearing each other’s burdens. Open Doors invites you to write and share your prayer on the Prayer Wall we created specifically for Pastor Brunson. (If you’ve already written a prayer, you can leave another and read the powerful prayers of hundreds of other Christians.)
“Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” ~ Romans 8:26
https://www.opendoorsusa.org/christian-persecution/stories/join-open-doors-in-praying-for-u-s-pastor-andrew-brunson/
China Announces A Mark Of The Beast NWO Plan -
Those Who Are Mistreated
"Remember the prisoners, as though you were in prison with them, and the mistreated, as though you yourselves were suffering bodily." ~ Hebrews 13:3
As we see in Hebrews chapter twelve, once we “keep our eyes fixed on Jesus,” we will be aware of how we should then live. The writer now turns to the issue of remembering those who are mistreated. And again he adds an empathic and personalized application. Remember them as if you yourself were the one suffering!
Dr. Jan Pit often shared the poignant story of a young Christian in Egypt he met named Timothy. Through the Christian radio broadcasts of Trans World Radio Timothy was introduced to Jesus whom he received into his heart and began to follow.
But when he shared his new faith with his Muslim family, they reacted so strongly that he was told to leave home and never come back. After several years of living with other Christians, he decided to try and make contact with his family again. On his mother’s birthday, he bought some flowers and walked to his family’s home. When he knocked on the door, his mother opened it.
“Happy birthday, Mother!” Timothy said. “I brought you these flowers because I love you!”
Timothy’s mother turned to him with a stern look and said, “I don’t know who you are!” And she slammed the door.
Timothy said to Jan with tears streaming down his face, “I don’t have a family any more. Will you be my family?”
Today you can be a surrogate family for Christians treated this way. You can also remember to pray for Christians like fifteen-year-old Shirin who has gone through a difficult time of persecution.
When Shirin became a believer he also met with much opposition from his relatives. They shouted at him, threatened him and finally gave him a choice: Jesus or the family.
He chose Jesus and then left his home. He was living on the streets; alone, hungry and very poor. A local Christian saw him, had pity on him and took him into his house.
Shirin loves God with all his heart! He is witnessing to many about God’s great love which has been revealed to him.
Response:
Today I will remember those believers who are mistreated and do everything possible to assist them in the way I would want assistance if I were in their shoes.
Prayer:
Lord grant me empathy and a giving heart for those being severely persecuted today.
https://us13.campaign-archive.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=637a01005c
Difficult Assignments
"Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach." ~ Deuteronomy 30:11
It is possible! The Persecuted Church by example prove to us that it is indeed possible to lose everything...to suffer everything...to endure everything...yet maintain a joyful spirit and heart of love for the Lord.
So often our major shortcoming is simply to doubt that we could go through those experiences and come out of them as refined and triumphant as we have witnessed others in these devotionals. Jesus never promised that our life would be easy — just fulfilling. He never promised that things would be fair — only that He would be just.
Though we might think that life is too hard for these brothers and sisters about whom we’ve been reading, we have been given perhaps an even tougher spiritual assignment. Yet the principles in dealing with it remain the same.
Ruth Graham shared a convicting story about a Christian who had just arrived in a free country from years of persecution. He was appalled at the seeming casual commitment to Jesus and materialistic contamination of these Christians. And he said so. Sometime later he returned to visit the friend to whom he had spoken so bluntly when he first arrived:
He asked if his friend remembered what he had said, the bitterness of his criticism. The friend remembered. The man stood silent for a few moments, reflecting. The friend tensed for a second attack.
“I have come to apologize both for what I said and the way in which I said it,” he said simply. “I was merely afraid. I did not know how dangerous freedom could be. It has been a year now. And I am worse than those I criticized.”
Then he added a significant statement:
“It is more difficult to live the Christian life under freedom than under repression.”
Iranian Christian leader Luke Yagnazar lives in the United States. He concludes, “It is more difficult to be a Christian in the USA than in Iran. There you are either a Christian or not!”
Pastor Samuel Lamb in southern China says, “We have physical persecution but you have materialism. Your lot is harder because we know what we are spiritually fighting. Many times you don’t.”
Another Chinese church leader adds, “Once you are chasing after money there is no time and energy for church affairs...And the government knows that materialism will destroy the church faster than persecution can...I tell my co-workers in China that the biggest enemy we’re facing is no longer communism, it’s materialism.”
We must remember we are in a spiritual battle and we fight with spiritual weapons only.
Response:
Today I resolve to begin the New Year ahead accepting the more difficult assignment and putting God and His Kingdom ahead of all others and all else.
Prayer:
Lord, help me accept the more difficult assignment putting You and Your Kingdom first.
https://us13.campaign-archive.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=4c376b1437
Deliverance Comes Through Endurance
"This is a trustworthy saying: If we die with Him, we will also live with Him. If we endure hardship, we will reign with Him. If we deny Him, He will deny us. If we are unfaithful, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny who He is." 2 Timothy 2:11-13
Open Doors colleague, Ron Boyd-MacMillan, shares the following insight from his teaching, “Why I Need to Encounter the Persecuted Church.”
Christian testimonies on the whole tend to be dominated by those who experienced wonderful deliverances: deliverances of healing, from cancer or other life threatening diseases, or deliverances from debt, or romance less marriages. Even when it comes to reporting on the persecuted, we read of Chinese house church leaders released from the grip of a deadly fever, or border guards with eyes miraculously blinded to the Bibles sitting in plain view on the back seat.
Yet it has to be said that deliverance stories — though they tend to grab the headlines — are not the norm. A dear old Christian in Beijing used to say to me, “Remember, for every deliverance story you hear, there are a hundred endurance stories.” He was right. The story of the persecuted is primarily one of endurance.
I never saw this principle better illustrated than in the story of an old Chinese woman known throughout the world as “Auntie Mabel.” A doctor in Beijing, she was well known for her bright Christian witness. She never married in order to look after a sick brother. Her family was wealthy. They lived in a large house in central Beijing. All that changed abruptly in 1949. Her large house marked her out as one of the landlord class. She was evicted from her house and forced to live in a garden shed, with just a stove, two deck chairs and an old bed.
The Red Guards — teenagers who were given power to direct the Cultural Revolution — began to visit her, beating her up, parading her in the streets, and forcing her to wear a placard with her crimes written on them. So thorough were the Red Guards that they erected a large sign outside her house declaring her a pariah because she had distributed “imperialistic literature.” Mabel was shunned by neighbors, victimized daily by her work gang, and regularly beaten by Red Guards.
Many years later, she knew why she endured all this. In the early eighties, after Mao died, Mabel began to receive a stream of visitors saying, “During the Cultural Revolution, there was a large sign outside your house full of your crimes. One of them was that you had distributed Bibles. So I’m here on the chance that you have some left.”
Amazingly that sign which made her life such a misery became the means of a new ministry. It kept people away from her during the Cultural Revolution, but afterwards, after she had endured, it drew them. A number of high-ranking members of the Communist Party in China today owe their faith to her endurance.
She reflected, “It’s been nice to know why. It helps my faith. But it was hard. Every day was hard. I can’t say I saw Jesus, or even felt him close most of the time. I just got the strength to keep going, and that was enough.”
God can deliver us by transforming a situation, but more often He delivers by giving us the strength to endure the situation. That way, others are transformed as well as ourselves.
Response:
Today I will endure all challenges knowing that God has a purpose and I am in His hands.
Prayer:
Thank You, Lord, for saints like Aunty Mabel who are such an inspiration and testimony.
https://us13.campaign-archive.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=aeb39399bc
Pray for the Persecuted Church – Abroad and at Home
Sunday, November 12, 2017, has been designated as the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.
I planned to write about this topic and focus on anti-Christian persecution overseas at this time. And then came this tragedy—the mass shooting in a church in Texas, killing 26 and wounding 20 on Sunday. The killer was described as one who “preached atheism” and “hated religious people.”
Of course, killing Christians just because they are Christians is the exception in America. However, in about sixty countries on earth, for millions of professing Christians, it is dangerous to be a practicing believer in Jesus, yet God is using Christian martyrdom to grow the church.
“We are witnessing an astonishing escalation in Christian persecution, like we have rarely seen since the first century,” writes Johnnie Moore in his new book called The Martyr’s Oath: Living for the Jesus They’re Willing to Die For. Johnnie wrote a book a few years ago that was a bestseller, called Defying ISIS. After writing that first book, he was able to raise $25 million on behalf of the persecuted church.
In a radio interview with him about his new book, Moore told me he got involved in this because, as a college student at Liberty University, he witnessed an unusual (to him) graduation ceremony in India.
Moore said, “There were 2000 graduates to this Bible school…and yet, before they got their diploma and a bicycle and a one-way train ticket to an unreached place of their choice, they had an extra step. They had to actually stand up and take a ‘martyr’s oath.’ They had to pledge that if they had to die for their faith, they would be willing to die for their faith.”
“I AM A FOLLLOWER OF JESUS. I believe he lived and walked among us, was crucified for our sins, and was raised from the dead, according to the Scriptures,” begins the “Martyr’s Oath,” which Moore includes in the appendix of his book. This is the same type of pledge that the Indian bishop administered.
The oath continues, “I believe he is the King of the earth, who will come back for his church….As he has given his life for me, so I am willing to give my life for him. I will use every breath I possess to boldly proclaim his gospel.”
Moore reflected on how this struck him at the time: “Here I was, a sheltered American, never having been exposed to such a thing; and all of a sudden, I was in the heart of the persecuted church. And I felt like I was standing in the book of Acts.” He notes that persecution of Christians has often been the norm in history, not the exception.
Moore told of a Muslim couple that converted to Jesus and left Syria for a neighboring country. One of their relatives wrote, saying he knew what they had done (leaving Islam), and he knew where they lived. When he caught up with them, he would crucify them, unless they changed back.
Moore said the couple wrote back to the relative, answering that they were glad to know Jesus and were willing to die for Him — but that they were not worthy to die in the same manner as He did.
“There’s always been crucifixions of Christians because it’s the obvious thing to do if you hate them and you want to get rid of them.” So said the late Dr. David Barrett, a leading church statistician and researcher, who was the founding editor of the massive World Christian Encyclopedia (1982) in a Christian-TV interview I did years ago.
Barrett said, “Martyrdom is a continuing phenomenon, affecting roughly one in every two hundred Christians. Some time or other in their lives, that number of people will be murdered for their faith or they will lose their lives. And it’s been the same, right from the beginning. People tend to think that martyrdom belongs to the early church, the first three centuries; but it went on after that, and it is going on exactly the same rate today — 0.5% per annum.”
Barrett even told a humorous story, where he was once addressing a large group of Southern Baptists. During an open mic session, a very wealthy industrialist asked: “What is the single most significant way I can help promote world evangelization?” Barrett answered, “Well, the main factor, as I see it, is martyrdom.” This elicited laughs from the audience, but the industrialist didn’t laugh. After a few moments he asked what the second most important way is.
It is good to pray for the persecuted church and do what we can to help them. Not just one day of the year, but throughout as well.
~ By Dr. Jerry Newcombe
https://constitution.com/pray-persecuted-church-abroad-home/
Pray with the Persecuted
"You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit — fruit that will last — and so that whatever you ask in My name the Father will give you." ~ John 15:16
The first request of us from the Persecuted Church is that we pray for them. And correspondingly, they are usually great models of people of prayer which we can emulate. But we often need to be reminded that they do not ask us only to pray for them but also to pray with them. If we only pray for them, we will pray for their safety and the termination of their persecution. They want us to pray with them which means we will pray for: the advance of the gospel in their land; that they will bear fruit that will last; and for perseverance and fearless courage in the face of suffering.
Pastor Samuel Lamb from Guangzhou, China, has an interesting prayer for severe situations of persecution which expresses his trust in a great God. He prays: “Lord, I rejoice in how You are going to work this out.”
Moses Xie, a Chinese church leader who spent more than twenty years in jail for his faith, says that when asking visitors to pray for him he is really after three distinct outcomes:
“First, I want them to experience the blessing of prayer for themselves. They will go to God on my behalf, but they will receive a great blessing from being in the presence of God.
Second, I know that as they pray, their burden for the persecuted will increase, and as their burden grows, so their commitment to assisting us in all sorts of other ways will increase also. Prayer alone makes them be the body.
Third, I want them to release more of God’s power into our situation through intercession, since I know that God has bound Himself not to act until we ask.”
Today is a great day to glorify God in our lives and those of the Persecuted Church.
Response:
Today I will not only pray for the persecuted but I will also pray with the persecuted.
Prayer:
Lord, may my life glorify You today and may I be a lasting fruit bearer who only desires that Your will be done.
https://us13.campaign-archive.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=188ae99380
Choosing Not to Hate
"And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." ~ Romans 5:5
Rami Ayyad was assassinated a few years ago on October 7th for his work as the head of the Bible Society in the Gaza Strip. His murder left his wife, Pauline, burdened with three young children and a heart full of hatred for his killers.
While Rami was locking up the bookstore owned by the Palestinian Bible Society in Gaza, a vehicle pulled alongside him, and several men forced him in the back seat. Rami, remaining calm and trusting in the Lord, was allowed to call his wife. “I’m going with some young men somewhere, but I’ll be home soon,” he tried to reassure her. That was the last time Pauline would hear her husband’s voice.
Hours later, his body was found. He had been brutally tortured and shot twice, a bullet in the chest, and one in the head. A spokesman for the Palestinian Bible Society said, “He’s a martyr for Christ.” Pauline recalls, “I was so broken after the death of my husband, and I hated the people who did it.”
There has been no progress in the hunt for Rami’s killers. A local Christian commented, “Many of the Muslims believe that Rami was evangelizing people so it was okay to kill him.”
In such an environment of hatred, Pauline’s resentment festered. However, the Holy Spirit in His gentle but insistent way kept whispering to her until she could carry the hatred no further. “It was then,” she recalls, “that the Lord poured over me forgiveness for those who killed Rami and those who I used to blame.” Her heart was set free and she heard the Lord say, “It’s not everybody who gets to be called a martyr’s wife.” Deep in thought, she reflected, “That’s a great honor.”
Brother King from International Christian Concern (ICC) writes:
“Pauline’s experience reflects that of the Persecuted Church in general. Abused, spat upon, beaten, tortured, raped, and killed, these believers suffer as Jesus did. Sometimes they respond in very human ways, but when they listen to and follow the Holy Spirit, a great power comes into them and they possess what they could not have imagined previously – peace, love for their enemies, and forgiveness for those who delivered only pure evil to their lives…This is the gift of the Persecuted Church. In the furnace of affliction, the Spirit of God is set ablaze in their hearts. In turn, their hearts become a beacon to all they come in contact with.”
Response:
Today I will thank God for the gift of His Holy Spirit. I will listen to Him and follow Him.
Prayer:
Thank You, Lord, for the example of Pauline. Strengthen her as she raises her children.
http://us13.campaign-archive2.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=81fba5fa87
Overcomers
"Those who are victorious will sit with Me on My throne, just as I was victorious and sat with My Father on His throne." ~ Revelation 3:21
Christians in areas of persecution have used many metaphors and similes to describe the victory of following Jesus and becoming an overcomer as He was. Here are some examples:
• In the former Soviet Union, believers said:
"Overcomers are like nails. The harder you hit them, the deeper they go!"
• In China believers said:
"Overcomers are like bamboo. The more you cut them down, the faster and stronger they grow back."
• In Iran believers said:
"Overcomers are like rubber balls. The harder you throw them down on the floor, the higher they rebound! And, Overcomers are like flowers. The more you crush them, the stronger and sweeter the fragrance."
• In the Philippines believers said:
"Overcomers are like stained-glass cathedral windows at night. Their true beauty is revealed only when there is light from within."
• In India believers said:
"Overcomers are like tea bags. You have to put them in hot water to know how strong they are!"
You can be an overcomer! And you can stand strong through the storm!
Response:
Today I will be an overcomer standing strong through the storm.
Prayer:
Pray that all Christians living under severe persecution will be encouraged and understand what it means to be an overcomer…as well as anticipate the many rewards Jesus promises to overcomers.
http://us13.campaign-archive1.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=05950c520e
God First
"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, because it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek. For in it God’s righteousness is revealed from faith to faith [revealed out of faith into faith], just as it is written: The one who is righteous by faith will live." ~ Romans 1:16-17
Eighteen-year-old Nina lives in an Asian country where Buddhism is the faith of the majority. Since her mother is a devout Christian, she is constantly exposed to stories and lessons from God’s Word. At school, her faith in Jesus Christ is often tested. Because Nina showed great aptitude at school, she was selected to be part of a team that would compete in a high school annual science competition. On the day of the competition, however, the Vice Principal, a very strict disciplinarian, decided to take the team to the Buddhist temple first. Nina fidgeted anxiously in her seat while aboard the school bus with her teammates.
As she tried to figure out what to do upon arriving at the monastery, the first of the Lord’s Ten Commandments resonated in her mind — no other gods, except Him. I can’t disobey my God, after knowing who He is, she thought. Nina felt trapped and confused. Obeying God meant disobeying the Vice Principal. Nina uttered a silent prayer. “God, you changed the hearts of many kings before, surely you can do it again! Please Lord, speak to his heart!”
When the team reached the temple, everyone entered except Nina, who stood at the gate. As Nina’s teammates came out of the temple, the Vice Principal approached Nina with a stern look on his face. “Why did you not come in the temple with us?”
“Sir, I was born a Christian. When my mother gave birth to me, I was weak and at the point of death. Christians prayed for me and God heard their prayers,” shared Nina.
“You could have just entered with us and not participate in the ceremonies,” explained the Vice Principal, whose face and tone softened. Nina knew then that God had just answered her prayers.
“I did not have peace in my heart. I felt that I would be disobeying God if I entered the temple, sir,” Nina responded. The Vice Principal did not pursue the matter any further; neither did he chide Nina for it. The team placed third during the science competition.
Nina testified during a youth training program that Open Doors organized. “I was surprised to see how God suddenly changed his heart; he rarely speaks that way to students. He is often firm and strong…His wife has had many miscarriages. I’m praying for his wife to have a baby soon. I’m also praying for him to know Jesus Christ. I’m sure it will happen someday!”
Response:
Today I will put God first in every situation I face.
Prayer:
Pray for all young Christians who face the cultural challenges against putting God first.
http://us13.campaign-archive2.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=3ff8769d8e
Purified by the Refiner's Fire
"He will be like a refiner and purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver. Then they will present offerings to the Lord in righteousness." ~ Malachi 3:3
It sounds easy to say we will always forgive others but what happens in your heart when your own son is brutally murdered. How can God make good come from that terrible event?
For answers, we go (in two parts) to the southern Philippines where a decade ago Severino (Junie) Bagtasos, a young pastor, was sitting in the front row of his church in Alat listening to his sister conclude her Sunday message about heaven. Suddenly a man barged into the chapel. Two loud bangs were heard. Before anyone could make sense of what happened, Severino lay lifeless in a pool of blood. The killer made his escape as the distraught church members gathered around their pastor, killed instantly by gunshots to his chest and cheek.
His mother, Purificacion, says, “I miss my son. Junie was the most caring of all my children. He would always offer help when I was cooking. He would often ask me and his father advice whenever he was beset with difficulties in the ministry because his church members were older than him. I was blessed by Junie’s sincerity and faithfulness in the ministry. Nothing could hinder him from going to his Bible studies. Heavy downpours and floods could not keep him from bringing the Word of God to those who needed to hear it. Death threats did not stop him.”
There is not even a hint of bitterness as Purificacion speaks of that painful time. “During one of the services held at the wake of my son, my husband told the congregation, ‘We forgive the person who killed our son. If that person is here, I want you to know that we forgive you. If he is not here, and if anyone of you knows him, please tell him that we forgive him. The God we serve is the God of love and we want to show that love to you.’”
But there were those who didn’t share these convictions. She adds, “Some of my husband’s relatives who were also Muslims got angry at him for saying this. They were eager to avenge Junie’s death. It’s part of their culture. But my husband restrained them and told them that our God is a God who also forgives. We chose to forgive our son’s murderer.”
Purificacion shares what she thinks now was one of God’s reasons for her losing Junie. “After my son’s death, many Christians whose faith had grown cold were ushered back to the Lord.” Now after a decade has passed, she continues to see God’s hand in it all. She adds, “I believe Junie’s death was part of God’s plan. It was His way of opening the doors that have long been shut. You see, before the death of my son, Chinese-Tausug believers were scattered all over Jolo [their island in southern Philippines]. Many of them stopped attending the worship services.
When my son began the work in Alat [a predominantly Muslim town], little by little these believers started to gather again. Junie, their pastor, loved them dearly and was truly passionate for the ministry. One by one they started coming to church again. Before long, these believers were on fire once more and got involved in the work of God.” God’s refining at work!
Response:
Today I will live in the awareness of God’s refining plan for His Kingdom’s expansion.
Prayer:
Lord, purify Your church and help me to accept whatever consequences this will have.
http://us13.campaign-archive1.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=cd2343a8df
Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." ~ Matthew 5:6
This attitude portrays a maturity of belief that shows a servant is ready for service. When completeness or wholeness is achieved, the servant receives the satisfaction of being used of God for that which they have been called, trained and equipped.
In ancient times, wages were very low and men often could not earn enough for the family to eat well. Water was also a precious commodity. The emphasis in this Beatitude is the passionate desire for the whole, for complete righteousness as a matter of life and death. Blessed indeed is the one whose most passionate desire is to love God and to love others as they ought. Thus: Blessed are those who long for total righteousness as a starving person longs for food and as a person perishing of thirst longs for water, for they will be truly satisfied.
People of other faiths are impressed with those who take their faith seriously. They do not respect people whose religion is merely outward form, who are just “weekend Christians.” Much of what they see is materialistic, that is, “carnal” or “worldly” (see 1 Corinthians 3). Christianity turns them off — the low regard for moral purity, the hedonism, the wishy-washiness, the unwillingness to suffer or make sacrifices, the fear of making a stand.
As Brother Andrew says, “How can Muslims respect a church that is in hiding?” Christians need to acknowledge their beliefs and be willing to suffer for their faith and convictions. A more complete righteousness will definitely have great impact. It will earn respect for our preaching the gospel.
During a visit to Indonesia, a coworker had the wonderful opportunity of participating in an Open Doors SSTS seminar held in an area of intense conflict. The constant presence of armed soldiers outside the building confirmed that this seminar was far more than theology – this was reality! More than 700 churches were already burnt to the ground and the church in the region was facing a severe onslaught.
On the second day of teaching, he remembers one pastor suddenly jumping up and with all his heart cried out, “My brother, please don’t teach us to survive, teach us to be faithful.”
Response:
Today I am so grateful for God’s presence in my life that I yearn for more of Him.
Prayer:
Lord I long for total righteousness so that the world will see more of Your faithfulness in me.
http://us13.campaign-archive2.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=c657812a5d
Worthy to Die, Living for Jesus
"Don’t be afraid of what you are about to suffer. Look, the Devil is about to throw some of you into prison to test you, and you will have affliction...be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life." ~ Revelation 2:10
Polycarp was the pastor of the early church in Smyrna. He was asked to renounce his faith in Christ and offer a pinch of incense to Caesar. He refused and said, “Eighty and six years have I served Him, and in nothing hath He wronged me; and how, then, can I blaspheme my King, Who saved me?” When they heard that, they clamored to burn him at the stake. They brought their wood and heaped it around his feet. And then Polycarp prayed, ““I count it a blessedness to be thought worthy of a place among the martyrs of Jesus Christ.” And when that fire was kindled around his feet, he was heard singing and praising the Son of God.
Most of us will not die at the stake, be carried to the wall and shot, or be imprisoned for the Lord Jesus Christ. We may not have a chance to die that way, but can we not die to this vile world? Can we not die to our plans and our ambitions? And can we not say that Jesus Christ is Lord?
~ Pastor Adrian Rogers
Download Your Copy Of Presence Magazine
For centuries, women have been overlooked and oppressed figures in several countries in the Middle East. They have not been given the opportunity to write their own story, rather cultural and social pressures have written it for them.
Many of these women are citizens within the countries listed on our World Watch List. Not only are they persecuted for being female, but now more than ever, they are persecuted for their belief in Jesus Christ.
In spite of these injustices, women in the Middle East and across the globe have decided to rise up in the face of oppression. It is estimated that today, 10.5 million women in these dangerous countries are choosing to put their faith in front of their fears. Each day, they are stepping forward in bravery and perseverance to follow Jesus Christ no matter the cost.
They have made the daring choice to be the authors of their story.
Join their story, and read more in the newest edition of Presence Magazine.
DOWNLOAD NOW Link: https://www.opendoorsusa.org/presence-magazine/
See What Is Happening On The Frontlines Of Persecution
Dear Friend,
Do you feel a lack of connection with believers on the frontlines of persecution? Or have you wondered how your gifts and prayers are making an impact through our work in the field?
If so, this webinar is for you.
Join us for a meeting with the National Director for Open Doors in one of the largest nations in the world – a nation where the Church is experiencing explosive growth, and persecution is on the rise.
You’ll be able to ask questions, get answers and pray alongside our field staff and fellow believers from around the world on behalf of persecuted Christians. This will be a tangible illustration of the Body of Christ in action that is sure to bless us all – don’t miss it!
Date: Tuesday, July 25, 2017
Time: 9 p.m. Eastern
8 p.m. Central
7 p.m. Mountain
6 p.m. Pacific
Registration Link: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/6046125763915259139
http://us13.campaign-archive1.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=250e878b9f
Speak On Behalf Of Those Who Suffer
"At my first defense, no one stood by me, but everyone deserted me. May it not be counted against them." ~ 2 Timothy 4:16
The Apostle Paul knew exactly what it was like to be alone, to be deserted by all who called themselves “brothers” and “sisters.” A former colleague who has done considerable travel among the persecuted says, “It is hard to believe that Christians are the largest persecuted group in the world today. But it is even more difficult to believe that this is so seldom mentioned in our gatherings and church services. More Christians know the names of their favorite actors than their fellow believers who are in prison.”
He continues, “With every trip something in my heart breaks as I hear the echoes of suffering:
• I remember the echoes of an Egyptian mother as she shared how her young boy was stuck in a haystack because she refused to deny Jesus.
• I remember the sounds of weeping as fellow students in Indonesia shared how Sariman, their co-student, was hacked to death.
• I remember the cries of anguish as we walked from church to church that was burned to the ground on the island of Lombok.
• I remember the tears of Rebecca in Iran as she showed the picture of her father who was stabbed to death for sharing the gospel.
• I remember the voice of Pastor Daniel in Vietnam as he shared how he was chained to the ground for six months.
• I remember the fear of Grace from Sudan as she shared how her church was attacked and her friend was shot through the head.
• Oh, I remember the cries of Caleb in Eritrea as he shared with tears how two dear friends were executed in front of him because of their faith.
• And I remember the tears of Joy in the southern Philippines as she shared how her fiancé was shot to death in their church in Mindanao.
But, most all, I remember the deafening sounds of silence every time I return home.
Response:
How can I be silent today? How can I not speak on behalf of those who suffer? How can I desert those that belong to the same body that I belong to and who desperately need the encouragement of my intervention on their behalf?
Prayer:
Lord, broaden my awareness of the needs of my suffering brothers and sisters. May I not be known for my silence.
http://us13.campaign-archive1.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=f7216a0a6c
Holy Spirit Calling
"When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth. For He will not speak on His own, but He will speak whatever He hears [from God]. He will also declare to you what is to come." ~ John 16:13
Johnny Li of Nexus ministry shares today the story of his “calling” by God’s Holy Spirit:
“Your son asked me to come and visit you!” As I spoke these words to the elderly man in front of me, I could see the utter surprise and even confusion in his eyes. Suddenly the man grabbed me and quickly jerked me inside the small room."
"My mind began to retrace my steps and all the events that had led to this: first meeting young Brother Wang in Hong Kong after his daring escape from China; then the challenging request from my pastor to take Bibles to the family of Brother Wang in China; then the daring and dangerous expedition that led me here."
"Mrs. Wang quickly excused herself and I spent the next hour bringing greetings and love from Brother Wang as well as all the other believers from our small church in Hong Kong. Curious about the sudden disappearance of Mrs. Wang I enquired where she went. “She is in the room next door praying for our safety,” Brother Wang’s father replied."
"After memorable fellowship, the final words of Brother Wang Sr. pierced my heart. “You must come again,” he pleaded."
"I smiled politely but in my heart I knew I would not likely return. The trip was much too risky and dangerous for my liking. Being Chinese I knew that my destiny would be prison if I were caught. “You must come again and bring more Bibles,” old Brother Wang pleaded as if he could read my troubled mind."
"I gave the only correct answer I could think of. “I will pray about it.”
"In a daze I walked to the train station and boarded the first train home to safety. My heart was torn because this was the country responsible for arresting my mother and causing me to grow up as an orphan. I decided I would not return!"
"Then I heard the unmistakable voice of the Holy Spirit, “Do you need a calling, Johnny?”
“Lord what do you mean,” I asked? “You have seen the need. You have heard my voice. Why do you need a ‘calling’ to respond?”
"I knew I had no choice. The Lord had spoken. I knew this was the way for me."
"This was thirty years ago and Johnny Li has been an immense blessing in assisting the fast-growing church in China. He’s been responsible for producing the first Chinese Children’s Bible in modern Chinese and has delivered thousands of Bibles and other Christian literature into China. Today he trains Chinese missionaries committed to take the gospel to the Muslim world."
Response:
Today I will listen to the Spirit’s voice before making decisions and plans.
Prayer:
Lord, help me to listen to Your Spirit’s direction in my life since He will direct my steps.
http://us13.campaign-archive2.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=0b5d1e7d70
Teach Your Children
"These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up." ~ Deuteronomy 6:6-7
An extraordinary life in Christ does not just depend on teachings, circumstances or comfort. In many countries in the world today there are severe restrictions and obstacles facing parents in instructing their children in the ways of the Lord. In communist countries like China and Vietnam it is officially against the law to share the gospel with anybody under the age of eighteen years, including your own children.
In the Middle East, Christian schools are non-existent and Christian children are forced to attend Muslim schools and receive instruction from the Koran and Muslim teachers. Yet, it seems as if Christian families in restricted areas are more Godly and committed to the Lord than their counterparts in the West, where opportunities abound and Christians live in abundance.
The lessons that we learn from the Persecuted Church are of far more value than seminars or devotionals can ever be — the lessons of true discipleship and wholesome living. Lessons that are neither theology nor speculation but teachings of life, reality and practice.
Gerhard Hamm was one of the thousands of faithful believers through whom God’s light continued to shine in the Soviet Union during the years when communism reigned there.
He grew up in the Ural Mountains where his parents farmed. But then communism arose and in 1929 the “bandits” came, as Gerhard later often called the Bolsheviks. Because his father was a Christian and of German descent, he was arrested and exiled to Siberia. The farm was confiscated.
Mother Hamm and her twenty children also moved to Siberia. For a few years, the family was together. Then Gerhard’s father was taken away from his family and never came back. None of the family knows where his grave is. All the churches were closed and atheistic propaganda was being disseminated all around
As a young boy Gerhard lost his father, his security, his home and his freedom — all because of the name of Jesus. Hunger and cold were his daily lot, an obvious reason for a young teenager to resent God and His commands. But despite the difficulties, ridicule and persecution, Mother Hamm prayed every day with her children, and they read the Bible together.
When Gerhard Hamm died in 1999 at the age of 76, he left a legacy of faithful children behind. All of his children and their spouses were devoted Christians. His grandchildren have all committed their lives to the Lord. All of Gerhard’s nineteen brothers and sisters and their spouses and children followed the footsteps of Jesus and many are still involved in various ministries reaching all corners of the globe.
Response:
Today I will take seriously the challenge of teaching, training and discipling my children or young people with whom I have close relationship.
Prayer:
Lord, help me to live a life of self-sacrifice so young people will see You and want to follow.
http://us13.campaign-archive1.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=3ef3379eca
Has God Forgotten His Children?
"O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way? How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand?" ~ Psalm 13:1-2
If any believers can identify with this cry of David, it is those in North Korea. Today we hear from our co-worker, Jan Vermeer:
Looking at the desperate condition of the scattered North Korean church is a test of faith. Was the church meant to be underground or to be a bold witness? Should the name of Jesus Christ be proclaimed or whispered in silence? And if Jesus is King, why doesn’t He come to the rescue of his followers? Why do hundreds or even thousands perish in prisons or death camps each year?
An Open Doors contact in North Korea talks about their prayer meetings. “If you could attend one of those rare prayer meetings, your hearts would break,” he says. “We cover the portraits of the leaders on the wall and then we kneel down in a circle. We pray for strength and endurance. We pray that God will keep our country. ‘Father,’ we say, ‘The Israelites sinned and you made them wander in the wilderness for forty years. But for us, Lord, after more than fifty years we are still being punished. However, we have sinned and You are just. We bowed before the idols of Kim Il-Sung and before that to the idols of the Japanese. Forgive us. Please Father, restore the churches of past times in North Korea.’”
Feeling that sense of guilt in the North Korean believers is utterly painful. It makes you cry out with them the words of David, “How long, oh Lord? Will you forget me forever?” It’s a heartfelt cry, but is it the truth? Has God forgotten His children in North Korea? For that answer we have to investigate the spiritual life of North Korean Christians.
The Open Doors contact adds, “If you do that, you’ll find North Korean Christians are very mature. They know how to approach unbelievers and how to train new Christians, including their children once they are old enough. The Christians don’t mind to be tested. In fact, they are determined to sacrifice themselves for the Kingdom of God. They see trials as purifying.”
North Korean Christians know that when they pray earnestly, God will answer. The contact continues, “Whenever we do a project with Open Doors, first we fast for seven, sometimes ten days. Only when God tells us separately that we can continue with the project do we give the green light and carry out the project. Sometimes we have a very vivid dream in which God tells us what to do and sometimes we all just feel exactly the same about the project. Our believers are bolder and stronger than before, even though the persecution is also stronger.”
Where people love and follow Jesus, there is always hope!
Response:
Today I bask in the sunshine of this hope. God does not ever forget His children!
Prayer:
Pray today for isolated believers in North Korea who do not have the warmth of Christian fellowship and group prayer.
http://us13.campaign-archive1.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=ac26a118b7
Communication With God
"Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful." ~ Colossians 4:2
Pastor Ha’s church in Vietnam grew from twenty-nine to over 5,000 in just a few years during the communist regime in the late 1970’s. When asked the secret of this phenomenal church growth, Pastor Ha replied, “I have a very simple theology. When you have problems, pray! When you have more problems, pray more!” Every morning this church had a well-attended prayer meeting at six a.m. And the church grew and grew. Although they were constantly living under pressure, there was one Scripture text chosen for the wall of their sanctuary, “In everything give thanks.”
And yet after his years of imprisonment, Pastor Ha said, “When I had my freedom, I worked with prayer sometimes in the background. In prison, I discovered that prayer is everything. It’s like a pilot using a checklist before he takes off. If he skips the first item, many lives might be in danger. The first item on our checklist should always be prayer. If we skip it, the whole mission is in jeopardy.”
Vietnamese Pastor Cuong also spent over six years in prison. He says this about prayer:
"In my work I was so busy I had no time to pray. But in prison, I was thankful to God that He gave me time for prayer. I had about six hours of prayer every day. I had time to recall every member of my congregation to pray for them. Before that, although I served the church, I didn't have enough time to pray for them. I learned about the real presence of God in prayer there. When you kneel down and pray wholeheartedly with the Lord, you feel His answer right there."
"All of the world's major religions emphasize prayer. The Buddhists repeat their prayers fervently, although they do not believe anyone is listening. The Hindus pray regularly, believing one of their many Hindu gods may be listening, but they do not really expect any response to their prayers. The Muslims pray five times a day. They believe that Allah is listening, but he will not alter his plans to meet their needs."
"Devout Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims consider Christianity a prayerless faith, because they rarely see Christians praying. Yet we believe — and know — we have a God who not only hears our prayers, but also will answer them in mighty power!"
Response:
Today I recommit to spending time in communication — prayer — with my Lord.
Prayer:
Pray that all Christians in prison will experience God’s presence in a special way today.
http://us13.campaign-archive2.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=bab018e8d5
The Bible
"First of all, you should know this: No prophecy of Scripture comes from one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the will of man; instead, men spoke from God as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." ~ 2 Peter 1:20-21
Daniel, a Chinese brother from Singapore, sat in the chair still shaking his head in unbelief. He had just returned from his first extensive visit to the People’s Republic of China. Now in the freedom of his home city, he was trying to assimilate and communicate all the impressions and messages he had received.
“How would you summarize what you learned on your visit, Daniel?” I asked him. He continued to shake his head and smile. Finally he began to speak.
“Probably by my visit to one particular house church,” he slowly replied. “It numbers several hundred believers who have had a lot of persecution over the past years. I asked them how they had been victorious and even grown in numbers during such terrible experiences. They quickly replied, telling me three things,” he continued. “First, obedience to the Word of God; second, communication with God, that is, prayer. And third, love for the brothers and sisters.”
This group memorized one chapter of the Bible every week. They began doing this because of a lack of Bibles, but continued doing so after they realized the blessing it brought to their lives.
The Bible is God’s written revelation of Himself and His desire for a relationship with people. It is more than just a revelation of God’s character. It is also a revelation of His intricate plan for the world. We could never have understood our great God if He had not chosen to reveal Himself.
His greatest revelation of Himself was when He came to live among us in a human body and was known as Jesus Christ. But even our knowledge of that revelation depends upon His written Word, the Bible.
Satan has conducted a massive propaganda campaign in the last century in an attempt to discredit the Bible. He would love to see Christians lose faith in the Word of God. In spite of his efforts, however, no one has ever been able to disprove its reliability. It remains the only absolute truth known to humankind.
The Bible is our God-given basis for faith, doctrine and practice. Many times Christians have knowingly departed from its teachings and suffered because of doing so. Many times when Christians depart from the Word, it is because they do not know or understand it.
The church can only be true to the revealed Word of God when its people know what it teaches. Study of God’s Word is an essential part of the Christian life. When Christians doubt, ignore or fail to understand the teachings of Scripture and depart from its principles, they lose their spiritual power.
Response:
Today I will recommit to the daily study and application of God’s Word, the Bible.
Prayer:
Pray for believers in many parts of the world who still yearn for a copy of the Bible.
http://us13.campaign-archive1.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=4ecef464f1
Hope In The Face Of Bad News
"For as heaven is higher than earth, so My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." ~ Isaiah 55:9
Open Doors colleague, Ron Boyd-MacMillan, shares the following insight from his teaching, “Why I need to encounter the Persecuted Church.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have an idea of what God is really up to in this world? One thing we can be very sure of — that the story of the world as we find it in history books and newspapers, is not to be confused with the real story of what God is doing underneath. But what is God’s story as opposed to history? What’s he really up to? Must the daily diet of wars, murder and mayhem in my newspaper always get me down? Can I ever be sure something is going on underneath? Well, we can’t know perfectly as “His ways are so much higher than our ways” (Isaiah 55:9). But we are afforded glimpses. This glimpsing really excited the early Christians. You can hear the delight in Paul when he writes, “God’s secret plan has now been revealed to us...” (Ephesians 1:9). The persecuted seem to get more glimpses than most.
I think of China. The headlines said in June of 1989 a terrible massacre took place. Five thousand young people were mown down by the Chinese army. The headlines all mourned the death of the pro-democracy movement. It was terrible, but what was God up to underneath? Out of that massacre came a remarkable turning to Christ among China’s students for the first time in history! The headlines never saw it. It’s not part of history. But “His story” went on.
I think of Afghanistan. When the Soviet Union invaded that country in 1980 the world was outraged. The headlines were all full of fierce denunciations of the action, and rightly so. But I remember meeting a missionary from Kabul who said, “Yes, what the Russians did was wrong, but the fact is it is now much easier under the Russians for Christians to evangelize than it was before under the Islamic regime.” Again, another more significant story, of God building his kingdom, was going on undetected by the world at large.
I think of Sudan. The headlines in the 1980’s were full of a dreadful civil war which isolated the Dinka people from the outside world. It was terrible. There was untold suffering on vast scale. But underneath, God was bringing the 2 million Dinkas to himself. By 1993, 80% of them were Christians and this among a tribe that was historically very resistant to the gospel.
Notice that these are all stories from the persecuted. They seem to be better placed to notice the real story. And so I need to keep in touch with them because this glimpse delivers me from despair. In 1989 in China, there was not just a massacre, but a revival. In 1980 in Afghanistan, there was not just an occupation, but new missionary opportunities. In Sudan, there was not just a brutal war that killed millions, but a new kingdom of believers among an unreached people.
So every day when I open my newspaper, I remind myself of two things, thanks to the persecuted: the story I see is not to be confused with the kingdom story; and underneath even the saddest news, God is surely up to something good. There is hope because God is always at work.
Response:
Today when I read or hear the news, I will thank God that He is at work behind the scenes.
Prayer:
Thank You Lord, for Your promise to bring good out of the terrible events of this world.
http://us13.campaign-archive1.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=f068278fce
Defeating The Enemy's Attacks
"You are from God, little children, and you have conquered them, because the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world." ~ 1 John 4:4
Ung Sophal established eight house churches in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and the surrounding provinces. He and his wife lost their third and youngest child during the Pol Pot genocide. After many close calls, he was separated from his wife and children and sent to work in the fields. During these very difficult times, he still was able to lead sixty-five people to Jesus and even water baptize them. God miraculously spared his life on numerous occasions.
When the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1979, Ung Sophal was able to return to Phnom Penh. It was now a ghost town. With a handful of other Christians, he started a house church, which grew from five members to six hundred in eight months.
That Christmas he invited some Christians to his home for a fellowship — including some Christian Westerners working for aid organizations. Two weeks later he was arrested for this “illegal” activity and accused of holding a political meeting with CIA participation.
He was interrogated for days and beaten severely. When the interrogation proved profitless, he was left in prison for five months chained hand and foot. He lost seventy-five pounds and was very sick but he heard the Lord instruct him to fast and be silent for three days.
The authorities became alarmed at the end of his fast and took him to the hospital thinking he was dying. There he constantly heard the sounds of other people being tortured with electricity and being beaten and kicked. “Even without the beatings it was very hard,” he said, “I had a taste of hell, but God protected me.”
Ung Sophal was successfully treated by a Cuban doctor who was also a Christian (God has his people everywhere). One night when the electricity went out because of a tropical storm, the doctor helped Ung escape. Later he fled with his wife and children to Thailand and spent ten years ministering to other Cambodian exiles — the last five years as a widower.
In 1990, as restrictions against Christianity began to be eased in Cambodia, Ung made his first visit back to his homeland to encourage and teach the church. Word of his return spread quickly and three hundred people came to see him. He is eager for the task ahead. “I want to build my people,” he said. “God has a great work yet to do in Cambodia.”
Response:
Today I will stand strong in Jesus’ strength no matter what Satan throws at me or against me.
Prayer:
Lord, thank You for encouraging testimonies of faithful people like Ung Sophal. Continue to grow Your church in Cambodia, I pray.
http://us13.campaign-archive2.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=58c1d24be7
Never Shaken
"I am at rest in God alone; my salvation comes from Him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold; I will never be shaken." ~ Psalm 62:1-2
In December 1999, a Muslim mob attacked the Doulos Bible School on the outskirts of Jakarta, Indonesia. One of the main aims of this Bible School is to evangelize among the 30-million-strong Sundanese, the largest unreached people group in the world, who live in West Java. One student died and forty-four other students were wounded. About eighty percent of the buildings were destroyed. Domingus is a young student who was injured. He shares his personal story of the events that fatal evening:
That night I was asleep in bed so I didn't know what was happening. Suddenly a friend woke me up and shouted that we were being attacked. The building was already burning and I did not know where to run to. I knew if I ran to the main gate I would be killed. I ran to the back of the campus where my friend lived. I prayed “Lord, if I die, I know I will go to heaven.”
Suddenly the crowds arrived and they shouted to kill me. They grabbed me and blindfolded me. The Lord spoke to me “Don't be afraid, I will be with you.” They hit me with a big stick and I lost consciousness. I felt my spirit leave my body. Through a sequence of events I was brought to a place where people were singing and worshipping God. I saw a very bright light and I closed my eyes and bowed down. A voice said “Your time has not come yet, it is time to go back!”
I regained consciousness and realized where I was. I tried to look at my watch but I discovered my neck was very badly cut. I saw all the blood. I prayed that the Lord would send someone to take me to hospital. I thanked the Lord that I could be persecuted for the gospel and that through this I could meet Him.
When the police arrived they asked, “Where did you find this corpse?” They took me to hospital. I tried to open my eyes and I still saw the angels around me. The doctors said I would be paralyzed but as you can see I am not.
Upon the conclusion of his testimony, Domingus was asked the obvious question: “What now? They will come back to finish the job and kill you. What do you want to do with your life Domingus?” He replied with great conviction, “I just want to serve Jesus.”
Response:
Today I reaffirm my faith in God as my only protector who does not allow me to be shaken.
Prayer:
Thank You Lord, that only in You can I find safety and protection. You have promised that You will always be with me.
http://us13.campaign-archive1.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=7dc54f3f2e
Overcome Evil With Good
"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." ~ Romans 12:21
Colleague Ron Boyd-MacMillan shares part two of his experience in China:
The Chinese house church pastor put it this way:
“Confront the defining evil in your area or your society–that will bring persecution. For us, the evil is obvious; for you, it may be more subtle.”
You won’t necessarily be persecuted if you speak out against evil. You won’t necessarily be persecuted if you write an article about the evil. You won’t necessarily be persecuted if you organize a prayer meeting to pray against it. But you will be persecuted if you become a threat to the evil.
One pastor went back to his church in an inner city area of London. He asked the question, what’s the defining evil of this area? He became convicted that the youth gangs were the defining evil in the area, especially as they were going on killing sprees and starting to become drug pushers.
He began prayer meetings, and outreaches to the gangs. He even became a chaplain to a particularly violent gang. After a while, he saw fruit, but he also got a visit from a local gun runner,
“Leave the kids alone, or else” he said, “You’re bad for business.”
One night, six months later, a bullet came through the window as the church baptized five converted gang leaders. The reaction of the pastor could have come from the mouth of the Chinese house church leader. He said, “It was a beautiful bullet…because now we knew we were making a difference.”
That pastor had joined the Persecuted Church, and led his congregation into a greater awareness of worldwide Christian persecution. They wanted to know about their brothers and sisters in Eritrea, China, North Korea and Iran not just because the Christians there needed their prayers and their money, but because they were one in the same battle. Christians in the West need the insights and prayers of suffering Christians around the world to fight their own battles better.
Response:
Today I will respond to the defining evil around me and overcome it with good.
Prayer:
Lord, I need Your power and strength to effectively overcome the evil I experience. Help me stand strong in my opposition to the evil one.
~ Excerpt from: Standing Strong Through the Storm Devotional
http://us13.campaign-archive2.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=6d5480a117
Persecution Can Happen Here!
"...I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one." ~ 1 John 2:14
Colleague Ron Boyd-MacMillan recounts an interesting experience in China:
There’s a house church in Beijing I like to take my friends to visit. The members are all young professionals, about twenty of them, and they meet in a huge, darkened, open-plan office at midnight once a week. It’s totally illegal. Some of them are quite high ranking members of the communist party. If their faith is discovered, it would end their careers…or worse.
At the beginning of each meeting, the leader goes round and asks each member this question – the most challenging question I’ve ever heard in church: "What are your wounds for Christ this week?"
On one occasion I had brought two pastor friends, and the same question — through translation — was put to each of them. They replied, “Oh, we are not wounded or persecuted, you see, we live in Britain, where we have religious freedom, and we are so grateful for that!”
This reply was greeted with uncomprehending silence by the Chinese house church. Then a young woman spoke up, and without a trace of irony asked, “You mean, they don’t let the devil into Britain?”
The house church leader patiently explained to the visitors their biblical understanding of persecution. “In the Bible, to be persecuted means to be pursued by the enemies of Christ. When we become a Christian, his enemies become our enemies, and we are pitched into a battle with the world and the devil, and this fight will draw wounds. So it doesn’t matter whether you are in Beijing or Birmingham, the fight is the same, only the degree and type of suffering may differ. You’re going to get pursued…that’s persecution.”
“But we thought persecution was legal discrimination, or being put into jail for one’s faith” replied the pastors. The house church leader answered, “That’s the extreme tip of it. Look, we may not sit on the same thorn, but we all sit on the same branch.”
Still the pastors did not look convinced. Another Chinese member said, “If you don’t have wounds for Christ, how do you know you are alive in Christ? Wounds bring joy, because then you know you are making a difference.”
This struck a chord with the visitors. As preachers, they knew that nothing communicates like joy. That’s why Persecuted Churches are growing churches — they are alive in Christ, and they know it because they have wounds! So find the source of resistance to the gospel in your local area, and when you apply the gospel, watch the fight begin.
Response:
Today I will accept negative reactions as a sign that I am making a difference in my community.
Prayer:
Lord, may I also experience the joy resulting from doing right and opposing evil in my sphere of influence.
http://us13.campaign-archive1.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=3a477949c4
The Examples Of Mothers
Corrie ten Boom, a close friend of Brother Andrew’s in Holland, was well-known for her statement: “When God has a task to be done, he calls a man. When He has a DIFFICULT task to be done, he calls a woman!”
Motherhood is often one of those difficult tasks for women. I can remember how difficult it was for my own mother in the 1950’s to raise a family with four active, hungry boys on a total budget of twenty-five dollars a week. Yet she was such an example to us of sacrifice, commitment, and faithfulness. We knew she would give everything she had for us and our father.
The Apostle Paul reminded the Thessalonian church that the apostles could have become a burden to them but instead they treated the new growing church gently, like a mother caring for her little children, willing to give everything — even their lives.
Today mothers in the Persecuted Church continue to reflect the example of Jesus in sacrifice, commitment and faithfulness. I think of the wife of Santiago, a dynamic church pastor in one of Colombia’s deeply troubled areas. Santiago’s life is threatened because has an intense love for God’s people, and a deeply ingrained sense of justice. His strength comes from the Lord. But his second source of strength is his wife, Deborah, who stands by him no matter what.
Recently, she opened up her heart to a small group of visitors. “I feel a profound emptiness and fear that can only be mitigated by the Lord. Although many people claim that the war here has dwindled, I cannot agree because I still see what the people here go through. Just yesterday four people were murdered in our town, two of them very close to our church.”
At that point, the tears flooding Deborah’s eyes reveal one of the deepest fears of her heart. “I beg my Lord not to take Santiago away from us, as it would be an extremely painful blow. I remember having the doors locked, believing that at any moment they would come looking for Santiago to kill him. Every time he left for church, my children also waited for someone to arrive bearing the horrible news that he had been murdered. The children beg him, ‘Daddy, please quit the church. We know that people in the area are speaking badly of you, and you know that several other pastors have been murdered.’”
Deborah continues, “God changed our plans to leave. It is not His will that we run away, and our brothers and sisters would not allow us to do so either.” Then she pleads, “I request your prayers for the Lord to heal the wounds of my heart, to remove the fear, so that I can continue fighting. But, more importantly, that I will know how to pray according to His will.” Deborah’s deep devotion to her husband and children is obvious. She is also their tower of strength.
Response:
Today I will honor mother and encourage other mothers I see struggling with life’s issues.
Prayer:
Father, bless Deborah today — and others like her — with courage, strength and faithfulness.
http://us13.campaign-archive2.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=d87947ba33
Without Women There Would Be No Church
"Many women who had followed Jesus from Galilee and ministered to Him were there, looking on from a distance." ~ Matthew 27:55
New Testament records the fact that many women were among the larger body of disciples that followed and served Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, we only know the names and stories of a few. They were more loyal to Jesus at the time of his crucifixion than his male disciples.
Despite the patriarchal society of that day, four women — two of them Gentile foreigners — were named in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel chapter one.
It is significant that Jesus included women in his teaching putting them on equality with men. The same ethical and moral standards were demanded from both genders and the same way of salvation was offered for both.
Throughout the Bible, women filled significant roles — from leadership like Deborah to unique motherhood like Mary. The same has been true of those in the Persecuted Church.
A pastor in Cuba once told me, “Lenin said that without women there would be no revolution. I say that without women there would be no church!”
In China, the group of Christians who have had a major role in the revival and church growth are referred to locally as “Bible Women.” Chairman Mao once said, “Women hold up half the sky.” But it is estimated that about seventy per cent of the active Christian workers and church leaders in China today are women.
For example, Chinese Bible Woman, Ding Xianggao, has an incredible testimony. She is a young itinerant evangelist in China. Very much aware of the cost, she says, “In my country there are many brothers and sisters who suffer for Christ. Some of my co-workers have spent thirty years in prison for the sake of the gospel.”
Two of her associates were actually martyred. Because she is a hunted woman, she often sleeps in caves and fields to avoid capture.
Her commitment is expressed this way: “Jesus died for me. The least I should do is die for Him. To suffer and go to prison for Him is my honor, and I look forward to it.” She ended up in a large prison with over eight hundred inmates involved in prostitution, murder and kidnapping. But Ding believed God had placed her there for a reason. After three years she was released from prison. But not before seventy-eight people had made a personal commitment to Christ.
Sister Chan was sent to prison for six months for public preaching in central China, a prison with six thousand other women. During her time there, she led eight hundred women to faith in Jesus.
God uses everyone who is available in establishing His kingdom on earth.
Response:
Today I will not assume that I am not useable by God. I will make myself available to Him.
Prayer:
Pray for the ministry of Christian women around the world — especially those who serve our Lord in difficult assignments or places.
http://us13.campaign-archive1.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=1cdbef459f
5 Ways to Pray for Persecuted Christians
“This is a dangerous time for Christians around the world,” Franklin Graham wrote in a recent Facebook post. “We see the reports every few days on the news. … Reports show that some 215 million Christians experience ‘high, very high or extreme persecution.’
“We can’t sit idly by while these atrocities continue.”
The time to take action is now, and prayer is the first step. Here are five ways you can immediately start praying for persecuted Christians worldwide. Please continue to pray as the World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians gets underway on May 10. The event will raise awareness and advocate change as hundreds of church leaders, victims of persecution and others gather to talk about the recent, unprecedented persecution of Christians throughout the world, from Mexico to Syria.
“Prayer is the Christian’s greatest weapon,” Billy Graham once said. Consider the following five points as you battle for your fellow Christian brothers and sisters worldwide.
1. Pray for those in the midst of persecution:
"Remember the prisoners, as though in prison with them, and those who are ill-treated, since you yourselves also are in the body." ~ Hebrews 13:3
Global watchdog Open Doors reports that 322 Christians are killed every month for their faith while millions more suffer persecution on a routine basis. Please pray that these believers will not only stay committed to the call of Christ but also will respond in love to the evil shown by their aggressors. God’s love will open doors for these believers to share the Gospel even more.
2. Pray for those who are doing the persecuting:
"But I tell you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you," ~ Matthew 5:44
Pray that God would open the eyes and soften the hearts of these individuals who bring unfathomable abuse upon Christians. Remember as you pray that God sent His Son for the whole world:
"For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world that He might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him." ~ John 3:16-17
He does not want anybody — even these individuals — to perish:
"Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” This is the declaration of the Lord God. “Instead, don’t I take pleasure when he turns from his ways and lives?" ~ Ezekiel 18:23
3. Pray for the families and loved ones of those being persecuted:
"Therefore let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us at the proper time." ~ Hebrews 4:16
Ask God to comfort families who many times do not receive updates about their loved one and are not allowed to visit, or it’s simply not safe enough to do so. Pray they, too, will remain faithful to the calling God has placed on their lives.
4. Pray that churches would rise up:
"When they had prayed, the place where they were assembled was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak God’s message with boldness." ~ Acts 4:31
Support from the body of Christ is so critical. Whether we are giving up our time in prayer or our resources in physical support, the church must rally around those suffering for Christ. American Christians also should rattle the door of Washington by writing their elected officials. Remind them the persecution of Christians is a real issue that must be addressed.
5. Pray that world leaders would do all they can to fight this persecution:
"So now, kings, be wise; receive instruction, you judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with reverential awe and rejoice with trembling." ~ Psalm 2:10-11
God makes it clear in His Word that leaders have a responsibility. Pray God would stir their hearts, and they would not only draft but enact the necessary policies and procedures to make a lasting, global difference.
https://billygraham.org/story/5-ways-pray-persecuted-christians/
Merchants and Mobs
"But the Jews became jealous, and they brought together some scoundrels from the marketplace, formed a mob, and started a riot in the city. Attacking Jason’s house, they searched for them to bring them out to the public assembly." ~ Acts 17:5
The next two groups of external tactics Satan used in the New Testament are merchants and mobs. Merchants or businessmen represent the economic establishment and are often opposed to Christians purely because Christians are a threat to their business.
The two clearest examples of opposition from businessmen in Scripture are when Paul visits Philippi and later Ephesus (Acts 16 and 19). In Philippi, Paul and Silas ended up in jail because of the actions of the owners of a demon-possessed slave girl who was healed. Seeing their source of income disappearing because of her conversion, her owners pressed a false case against Paul, and had him jailed for “disturbing the peace.” But the Scripture makes clear their economic motive, “when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone…” (Acts 16:19).
Then when Paul gets to Ephesus, the impact of his preaching is so great it causes the former members of the Artemis cult to hold a bonfire of their trinkets and shrines. A shop steward called Demetrius, on behalf of the silversmiths of the town, figures anything that reduces the appeal of the temple of Artemis is going to be bad for business. He stirs up a riot and Paul has to hurry out of the city.
Mobs play a major role in persecution, often when an elite group cannot induce the government to do their dirty work for them. Mobs are easily manipulated. They can be believers swayed by the heady rhetoric of clerics, or ruffians ready to commit grievous bodily harm for the sake of money and excitement.
Christians in Pakistan and Indonesia face the constant threat of annihilation of their property by mobs. A news agency journalist said:
“I am amazed at how quickly a mob can get going in Pakistan. It just takes three phrases from a mullah at Friday prayers, and five minutes later thousands are streaming out into the streets bent on inflicting injury or even killing Christians.”
Response:
Our enemy, Satan, uses every tactic possible to come against those in the kingdom of God.
Prayer:
Pray for Christians in areas noted above that they will be protected from Satan’s arrows.
http://us13.campaign-archive1.com/?u=4095fe8e93e66f79fa4625ef7&id=e9561aa064
Volume | |
Day Range: | |
Bid Price | |
Ask Price | |
Last Trade Time: |