Here is a blog that my teammate Tiffany Prater wrote that explains the next month of our race.
This month is what we call “Ask the Lord” Asia. Adventures in Missions gave us a choice of 5 countries in Southeast Asia for our teams to pray about and the 7 teams of V Squad will be going to 3 of those countries this month.
My team has decided not to get online while in our country and we’ve also decided not to share what country we will be in until afterwards because it is a closed country. We are currently in Thailand until then.
I read a book last month called Radical by David Platt. In the first chapter, he describes a scene, which is like many I have heard of about the country we are going to:
Imagine all the blinds closed on the windows of a dimly lit room. Twenty leaders from different churches in the area sat in a circle on the floor with their Bibles open. Some of them had sweat on their foreheads after walking for miles to get there. Others were dirty from the dust in the villages from which they had set out on bikes early that morning.
They had gathered in secret. They had intentionally come to this place at different times throughout the morning so as not to draw attention to the meeting that was occurring. They lived in a country in Asia where it is illegal for them to gather like this. If caught, they could lose their land, their jobs, their families, or their lives.
I listened as they began sharing stories of what God was doing in their churches. One man sat in the corner. He had a strong frame, and he served as the head of security, so to speak. Whenever a knock was heard at the door or a noise was made outside the window, everyone in the room would freeze in tension as this brother would go to make sure everything was okay. As he spoke, his tough appearance revealed a tender heart.
“Some of the people in my church have been pulled away by a cult,” he said. This particular cult is known for kidnapping believers, taking them to isolated locations, and torturing them. Brothers and sisters having their tongues cut out of their mouths is not uncommon.
As he shared about the dangers his church members were facing, tears welled up in his eyes. “I am hurting,” he said, “and I need God’s grace to lead my church through these attacks.”
A woman on the other side of the room spoke up next. “Some of the members in my church were recently confronted by government officials.” She continued, “They threatened their families, saying that if they did not stop gathering to study the Bible, they were going to lose everything they had.” She asked for prayer, saying, “I need to know how to lead my church to follow Christ even when it costs them everything.”
As I looked around the room, I saw that everyone was now in tears. The struggles expressed by this brother and sister were not isolated. They all looked at one another and said, “We need to pray.” Immediately they went to their knees, and with their faces on the ground, they began to cry out to God.
They audibly wept before God as one leader after another prayed. After about an hour, the room drew to a silence, and they rose from the floor. Humbled by what I had just been a part of, I saw puddles of tears in a circle around the room.
In the days since then, God has granted me many other opportunities to gather with believers in underground house churches in Asia. Men and women there are risking everything to follow Christ.
There are teenagers who have been sent out from house churches in their villages to undergo intensive study and preparation for taking the gospel to parts of Asia where there are no churches.
One of them said to me, “I have told my family that I will likely never come back home. I am going to hard places to make the gospel known, and it is possible that I will lose my life in the process.”
Another one added, “But our families understand. Our moms and dads have been in prison for their faith, and they have taught us that Jesus is worthy of all our devotion.”
Please keep our squad in your prayers, as many of us feel that God has called us to closed countries this month. By closed I mean that locals can be imprisoned or tortured for being Christians and we, as visitors to their country, could be deported for being Christian. Please pray for:
- Supernatural protection (and even supernatural invisibility when needed)
- For our Bibles, books, journals and clothing that have verses in or on it to go undetected
- For Him to guide our every step
- For wisdom with the words we speak
- For our faith and love to be so strong that God’s love will pour out through our actions
We will be ending this month’s ministry on October 18th so look for an update shortly after that!
