Unite in Prayer with Persecuted Believers
This week the blog is sponsored by Help The Persecuted.
“Can I have a Bible?”
The guard studied Qasem. “If you paint the walls of every cell in this prison, I’ll get you a Bible.”
“Where is the paint?”
And so Qasem, enduring what would ultimately be a three-year sentence for running house churches throughout Iran, began the weeks-long process of repainting the walls of the prison that had become his home. The time passed quickly, so great was his longing for the Word of God.
His path to faith in Jesus Christ had been hard. His parents, who were Muslims in Iran, divorced when he was little. As a 13-year-old, he woke up one day to discover his mother lying next to him, dead. Over time, he turned to drugs to cope and fell into a deep depression.
At the height of desperation, Qasem asked Allah, the god of his childhood, to end his life. Instead, he had a chance encounter with a distant relative…who shared the hope of the gospel. Qasem instantly fell in love with Jesus, and his heart finally felt peace! He was discipled in the faith and started many house churches. One grew from four to 200 members—all converts from Islam—in a matter of months.
Then the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence raided one of his house churches. Qasem was arrested and mercilessly blindfolded, interrogated, and charged with apostasy from Islam and conspiring against the government.
In the midst of everything, a surge of hope rushed through Qasem when the prison guard promised him a Bible. When every inch of prison walls gleamed with new paint, he went to the guard and asked for it.
“No, of course not!”
Qasem’s face fell as he thought back to the weeks of labor. Perhaps it spurred the guard to a rare moment of compassion.
“But you normally get six minutes of phone time each day. I’ll give you fifteen from now on.”
It was enough.
Knowing that someone on the other side of the world was praying for him strengthened Qasem’s heart.
Day after day, Qasem smuggled a pen and paper to his phone time, where a friend would dictate the Bible to him in their native Persian. Soon, he had most of the New Testament. He shared it with his fellow inmates, many of whom came from extremist Islamic backgrounds and had never heard about a compassionate, loving God. Conversions to Christ came in droves.
The guards, alarmed by the growing number of Christians in a country where people are executed for apostasy from Islam, quarantined all the Christians in a single block in the prison.
Unable to evangelize, Qasem grew weary and discouraged in his faith. When his Christian friends were denied their rightful release, he went on a hunger strike that lasted 60 days to get the judge’s attention.
On one of his worst days, battling extreme hunger and sadness, Qasem received a postcard in the mail from Denver, Colorado. He later learned that hundreds of postcards had been sent to him over the years, but only this one ever arrived. It said, “I prayed for you today, that our heavenly Father will comfort you, give you peace, and heal you.” Knowing that someone on the other side of the world was praying for him strengthened Qasem’s heart. To this day, he says this postcard saved his life.
Qasem’s friends were released, and a few months later, he was, too. He was told if he remained in Iran, he would be imprisoned again—or worse. He fled to Turkey, where he serves persecuted believers, many from Iran, with the ministry Help The Persecuted, which rescues, restores, and rebuilds the lives of persecuted believers in the Islamic World.
Help The Persecuted has on-the-ground ministers, including Qasem, in 13 countries, the vast majority of whom have faced imprisonment, torture, and death threats for their faith in Jesus. Every week, they meet with persecuted believers like themselves, providing spiritual support and tangible help. In addition, they record the specific prayer needs of each person. Every Saturday, Help The Persecuted sends out a prayer newsletter including 10 of the most imminent prayer requests.
We invite you to join Help The Persecuted’s Prayer Network and commit to praying weekly for the specific needs of persecuted Christians as well as for the growth of the Church in the Islamic World. There are so many more believers like Qasem for whom prayer makes all the difference. Join their Prayer Network here.
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A Man Both Bruised and Broke
With the Easter season fast approaching, I thought I would share a sweet poem by Robert Herrick that considers the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice along with the reality that we still suffer. Here is how he thought about these truths.
Have, have ye no regard, all yeWho pass this way, to pity me,Who am a man of misery!
A man both bruised, and broke, and oneWho suffers not here for mine own,But for my friends’ transgression!
Ah! Sions Daughters, do not fearThe cross, the cords, the nails, the spear,The myrrh, the gall, the vinegar:
For Christ, your loving Saviour, hathDrunk up the wine of God’s fierce wrath;Only, there’s left a little froth,
Less for to taste, than for to show,What bitter cups had been your due,Had He not drunk them up for you. -
Lead for Joy, Not Privilege
This week the blog is sponsored by Desiring God and the post is written by David Mathis.
It is one of the filthiest lies Satan whispers in the ear of our comfortable and entitled generation. From before we can even remember, we have been indoctrinated with the idea that being “a leader” means prestige and privilege. Why would you settle for anything less? Why follow when you can lead? Leadership means privilege, and no generation has considered itself more entitled to privilege than ours.
As novel and inspiring as it may seem, it’s a very old deception. From the garden to the modern world, the natural, human, sinful way to think about leadership is to be king of the hill — to view leadership as the ascent to honor and comfort, rather than the descent to attend to the needs of others. One of the distinct marks of Satan’s influence in society — evidence that the god of this world is blinding unbelievers en masse — is that leaders lord their leadership over those for whom they are supposed to care.
Not Lording It Over
The voice that calls most clearly for the true path of leadership — leadership as a sacrifice, not a privilege — is Jesus himself. He warned sharply against both the pagan and religious leaders of his day who sought to use their people for their own benefit.
You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:25–28; also Mark 10:42–45)
For a follower of Jesus, greatness in leadership is not defined by how many you have beneath you, but how consistently and significantly you are led by the Holy Spirit to take initiative and make personal sacrifices to serve the true needs of others.
And why do Christlike leaders take such initiative at such cost to themselves? According to the apostle Paul, they labor for the joy of those in our charge. “Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith” (2 Corinthians 1:24).
Sacrifice for Joy
Christian leadership is fundamentally about giving, not taking. Christian leaders are not empty, immature individuals looking to prop themselves up with new privileges. Rather, they are those in Christ who have become secure enough, and mature enough, to empty themselves for the good of others.
Mark this, fellow husbands, dads, and pastors, the very essence and heart of leadership is taking initiative we otherwise wouldn’t take and make sacrifices we otherwise wouldn’t make, to guide our people somewhere good they otherwise would not have gone. We are among those who are learning that life’s greatest joys come not in private comfort and ease, but in choosing what is uncomfortable and hard for the sake of others’ joy, and our joy in theirs. Like the Son of Man, we lead not to be served, but to serve. We die to self so that others might live, and in that dying, we find true and lasting life. It is our great joy to be workers for their joy. -
Navigating the Space between Singleness and Marriage
There’s little doubt that the modern world creates some unique challenges when it comes to navigating the space between singleness and marriage. There are a host of factors that exist across Western culture and a separate bundle of issues that exist within Christian culture. Put together they can create significant difficulties in successfully pairing up and transitioning from singleness to marriage.
This challenge is the topic of Paul Grimmond’s new book Water For My Camels. Though the title is clever (at least if you can catch the biblical reference) the subtitle is far more descriptive: Navigating the space between singleness and marriage when the Bible doesn’t talk about dating. And, indeed, while the Bible clearly commends marriage and expects it for the majority of people, it offers little guidance on getting there. While it describes a number of ways in which people moved from singleness to marriage in the past, these are only ever descriptive and never prescriptive. So what are we to do? We are to apply biblical wisdom. “What does it mean to apply biblical wisdom to the process of this thing our culture calls ‘dating’? That’s the big question that this book will seek to answer.”
Grimmond does this by taking three key steps. First, he turns to the Bible to establish a series of principles that are meant to guide and shape our understanding of dating. Second, he contrasts the Bible’s ancient and timeless approach with the current cultural moment and with contemporary attitudes to dating. Third, he seeks to apply the Bible’s commands to the reality of dating today. He also addresses a very long and thorough list of questions about the topic.
And overall I think he does this very well. He uses ‘dating’ as a kind of blanket term “to describe the process of making some kind of commitment to another person so that together you can work out whether marriage to one another is in your future”—a very reasonable definition. He helpfully establishes principles like the fact that we were made for marriage, yet marriage is not ultimate. He shows from Scripture how sex and marriage are always meant to go together and how Christian marriage must only ever be “in the Lord.” He lays out the cultural factors that make dating especially confusing and difficult. He gets practical with counsel about who should date, how they should date, and at what stage of life. He cuts a good middle ground between dating with marriage in mind and burdening a new relationship with talk of nuptials.
In quite a lengthy FAQ chapter he answers more than 50 questions of the kind young people are actually asking as they consider forming romantic relationships and moving toward marriage: How do I know if it’s God’s will for me to get married? If I’m same-sex attracted, is it okay to date someone of the opposite sex and get married? Do I need to disclose my past sexual history to someone I’m dating? How important are parental expectations and family culture when dating? When should I consider choosing to be single for the sake of the kingdom of God?
Water For My Camels is a brief book, but a very helpful one. Grimmond is currently the Dean of Students at Moore Theological College in Sydney, and prior to that he worked in ministry to university students. This long experience shows in his understanding of the kinds of questions people are asking and in his skillful answers to them. Those who are currently navigating the tricky space between singleness and marriage would do well to consider reading his book. I’m quite certain they’ll be glad they’ve done so.
(The best place to order may be directly from the publisher.)
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