“This man [Saul] is My [God’s] chosen instrument to carry My Name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for My Name.”
Acts 9:15-16
Before Paul had been baptized, before he had begun persecuting the early church, before he had even been born, the Lord had set him apart as His chosen instrument (I’ve been listening to Lon Solomon’s sermons on the life of Paul- it’s pretty incredible stuff and I highly encourage you to listen to them). But what he had been set apart to do was not easy, in fact, it was probably one of the hardest lives a man of his day could endure.
But the payoff was well worth it.
Being a Christian in Nepal carries a similarly high price tag.
One of the people here (for his safety I’m going to leave him unnamed) is the only Christian in his family- a family of very powerful Hindi ‘jugglers’ (I think that means magician, but basically they tap into some serious demonic power). His family obviously doesn’t approve of the fact that he’s a Christian and they are doing everything in their power to make his life a living hell. They’ve burned his Bibles, they’ve harshly interrogated him, they’ve threatened to disown him (in a culture where he’d end up on the streets with nothing). He wants nothing more than to see his family saved, yet he isn’t allowed to speak the name of Jesus in his home.
We didn’t get the whole story (again, for his safety), but the little we got brought tears to his eyes.
This is what it means to be a Christian in Nepal.
“The apostles left the Sanhedrin [after being flogged for preaching the Gospel], rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering for the Name.”
Acts 5:41
Do you rejoice over being counted worthy of suffering for the Name of Jesus?
