Persecution

Please pay attention to the above map.

Do you live one of the countries colored or mentioned?

If you DO NOT, then you DO NOT have an excuse! You are free to share the gospel with your neighbor, the bus driver, the postman, your doctor, your coworker and your family members. You will not get killed! You have the amazing privilege of living in a free country, where your biggest enemy isn’t the government or pressure groups but your own fear. Do you fear to be rejected? To be discriminated? To be seen as a religious nut? Who cares! The Lord entrusted you with the gospel, the only way that people can be saved from a well deserved eternal punishment. Go and share it! Write an email, hand out a tract, call someone, do something! Today you are free to do it, but that freedom will be taken away from all of us one day. Soon. Very soon.

If you DO live in one of the above colored countries, thank you! Thank you for being an example to follow. Our prayers are with you and your families. Click HERE to learn more about the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.

Please watch the following interview with Andrew and Deborah Drapper, that should motivate us to reach out the lost, today… while we still have time.

You can download the map HERE.

For a related post, please click HERE.

Privilege

privilege |ˈpriv(ə)lij|
noun. A special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people.

I met a 5 days old baby with a very rare syndrome that caused her brain to slide down and out of her skull because the bone was not fully formed. I actually saw part of her brain. Her head looked more like a mass of brain tissue that sticked out from her neck. Inside her body, something happened that caused her left lung to collapse, switching her organs from the left to the right side of her chest. I could hear her heartbeat in the right side of her chest. The baby had multiples cysts in the kidneys and one of the hands had more than 5 fingers.

A Minister visited the family to offer support and prayer. Before he began praying, he asked the baby’s father if he wanted to pray first for the baby. The father stared at the mother who was holding he baby and he said “It’s just that… I don’t know how to pray”. I remembered how Jesus gave the disciples instructions on Matthew’s gospel (chapter 6) and an example of how to pray.

Then the baby’s father said to the mother “You… you pray… you are better in those things.” To what she replied “Just… pray ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ ” (Mat 6:9-13). The father then said “Well… I don’t know it very well”.

In that room there was a 5 days old baby with an infinite amount of birth defects. There was a father and a mother with perfect bodies but an infinite abyss between them and God. They were alone. Hopeless.

How many times a day, even without thinking, we address ourselves to God saying “hopefully there won’t be any traffic on my way to work”, “thank you for this day”, “please help me to …” and many other short prayers? What about those long prayers, when we are in distress and know that the only way out is with God’s intervention?

We talk to God without realizing how important it is and how privileged we are. Do we know that He listens? Has God said to you with an audible voice “alright” or “Ok, I know that, you already told me”? Not to me. But I know that he listens and cares about what I say. If we could get a receipt from God as a proof of our heard prayer, then we wouldn’t need faith. It wouldn’t be faith. The Bible says “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (Heb 11:1)

What an invaluable privilege we have! We can communicate with God!

We talk to God in prayer and He answers through his written Word, the Bible.

Just when I thought I understood a little bit more about God’s grace, the next day another Minister visited the same family. The Minister asked if they wanted to talk or to be alone. The father said “We prefer to be alone, please”. The Minister answered “Don’t worry dad, even when we don’t know what to say to God, He listens to our hearts”.

I have seen an abyss separating these parents from God and now, I could understand how God’s grace extends and stretches beyond that abyss to listen to the silent prayers of their hearts.

In the exact same way, God listens to me.

What a privilege we have in talking to God, the Creator of the universe! Who am I to talk to God? Who am I to suggest that God listens to what I have to say? If I have transgressed his Law (10 Commandments) and rebelled against Him, how can I even approach Him in prayer? If I was dead in my transgressions and was object of God’s wrath (Ephesians 2)? Because by repentance (turning from my sins) and trusting in Jesus, I have been declared righteous in God’s eyes and now I can approach him through with confidence through faith. Even if I have broken God’s Law, Jesus paid my fine when He suffered and died on the cross, He rose from the death and now is the mediator between us and God.

The Bible says that “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” (James 5:16). We are not righteous, no one is, the Bible says. Our hearts are excedignly wicked. But by faith alone, in Christ alone; we can be declared righteous. God can credit Jesus’ righteousness in our lives!

Repent and trust in Jesus today! Become righteous in God’s eyes and enjoy the enormous privilege of talking directly to the God of the universe!