by Here in America, we can hardly fathom being tortured for our faith. Watching our husbands or wives being beaten, electrically shocked, knifed, used as urinals. Enduring repeated imprisonments because the call of God for the lost souls around you is so great, and God’s love is so much a part of who you are, you can’t take care of #1 with any kind of peace. Having to send your children to safe houses so they aren’t targeted by child-prostitution/slavery rings as a deterrent to your dedication of staying the course God has set before you.
Is God speaking to you this week, today? Are you feeling an urgency to share your faith with your co-worker, a fellow bus-rider, that teenager dying with cancer? What about showing compassion, Christ’s love, to those you’d rather ignore and hold bitterness against?
Listen to this from the first part of Hebrews 2:3,
…”how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?”…
How can we neglect our salvation? How can we disobey, through negligence, what God has called us to do in this lifetime. We have only one, and it could end any minute. What would you do differently if you knew it would? Live like each day is your last. No more procrastination, no regrets either. I’m preaching at myself here, and it is heavy on my heart.
If persecution comes to our country, will you be able to stand? Will your children? Are you letting God’s light infiltrate every facet of your life, private and public? Are you seeking His ways in His book to us? Are you willing to trade your dreams for His? Are you willing to die to self?
Are you scared of what others will think, how they’ll react? If you’ll be prosecuted, or targeted by special interest groups? How minor these things appear in light of torture and death of loved ones, yet they cripple Christians in America on an hourly basis.
“It must be understood that there are no nominal, halfhearted, lukewarm Christians in Russia or China. The price Christians pay is far too great. The next point to remember is that persecution has always produced a better Christian–a witnessing Christian, a soul-winning Christian. Communist persecution has backfired and produced serious, dedicated Christians such as are rarely seen in free lands. These people cannot understand how anyone can be a Christian and not want to win every soul they meet.” –excerpt from Richard Wurmbrand’s book, Tortured for Christ. (www.persecution.com for free copy of book)
Hebrews 2:1,
“For this reason, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.”
Lest we drift away and neglect what Christ did for us on the cross.
That resurrection power is alive and at work in places where His people live, work, breathe and die for Him. We don’t have, because we don’t ask. It’s much to easy to drift away. Seek Him with a pure heart, and prepare to be amazed at what He has for you.
All He’s asking for is obedience. Do you have it in you?
“A faith that can be destroyed by suffering is not faith.” –Richard Wurmbrand
The thought of being persecuted for your faith is almost unthinkable in this country, and yet the culture and society can change so rapidly. We can only pray for the preservation of the faithful in this land and in others, that regardless current events, such as our president’s quest to destroy the unborn with taxpayer funds, that God would forgive us, and will not turn His back on our land.
As many Christians know or should know by now, that words are cheap and worthless, it’s all about the action.
Whether we like it or not people study other people and we are representatives of Christ. So, we have a bigger responsibility of behaving our Christian convictions.
It is not easy and there are times that we will fail, I know that I have, but we cannot give in.
The world wants Christians to fail and fall flat on our faces and we cannot let that happen. Christ died so that we may live, what better way to honor our most Beloved Savior then by simulating His actions and love.
Wow, great thoughts from both of you! Thanks so much for sharing these.
Nice Article. I agree with Leticia, we should always show that we are great full that Christ saves us from our sins
(might have been Chuck Swindoll), You might be the only Bible some people ever read. Still, all of us will be renlpssiboe, not for what we decided about Christians, but what we decided about Christ Himself.