Stories of Suffering for Jesus

With the Race being half way over, it’s definitely that time in the journey where things are starting to get harder and more foreign to home. From harsher living conditions (like squatty potties and food that’s hard to stomache), to stronger spiritual attacks against the Enemy to more abandonment, brokenness and full dependency on the Lord, my team and I are definitely heading into the tougher and rougher stages of the World Race. This month, as I stated in my previous blog, we are traveling around Malaysia with pastors who have a vision of seeing this country transformed as a nation for Christ. Every day we get up at the Chinese Presbyterian Church we’re staying in, walk across the town to the pastor’s home and drive from house to house preaching the Gospel of Jesus to everyone we meet.

In every town we enter, in every house that welcomes us, we share our testimonies and express what God is doing in our lives. Then we ask the families if we can pray for them or if they have any illnesses or issues they want to receive specific prayer for. We are always given Nescafe coffee, tay tarif (a Malaysian tea with milk and sugar that is frothy and delicious) or juice and we are always looked at as the strangest sight to be seen. The majority of the families we’ve been ministering to this week are Indian Hindus and I know if I was a practicing Hindu Indian living in Malaysia and I had seven American missionaries come into my home, I would giggle and question too. The more families I meet, and the more stories I hear doing relationship evangelism, the more I realize the true cost of following Jesus.

Here we are, a group of seven 20-something Americans, spending eleven months of our lives living out of a backpack and loving on the “least of these”, thinking that is true sacrifice for Jesus, but in reality, it is only the beginning of what we will walk in as His disciples. Yes, we have given up careers in the States, relationships, the pursuit of ever striving for the “American Dream” and all Western luxuries like air conditioning and toilets with plumming, but this week has especially shown me what true suffering looks like. You need to know, dear reader, that Malaysia is a melting pot of people of all different ethnic backgrounds and religions. There are the Chinese that are Buddhist, the Indians that are Hindu and the Malays that are Muslim…and that’s only the top three groups. These are some cultures with very conservative, narrow minded views and ones that value tradition, family and honor and will do anything to protect those sacred values. When anyone in Malaysia rebukes their former traditions and religions and starts following Jesus, it definitely causes tension, turmoil and suffering between family members and communities.

Our contact this week, Pastor Jesudason, is an amazing man of God who is full of joy and love but has a testimony that reveals the true price of following Christ and spreading the Gospel. Ten years ago, he was doing what is still does to this day, driving around and ministering to anyone who would give him a moment to talk about Jesus. He began discipling a young Malay man who lived in a Muslim compound and Pastor Jesudason worked on getting the adolescent out of a gang and off drugs, and onto a path that was following the Lord. The Pastor had a lot of success with the young man and, all the glory to God, was rejoicing over the fact that another sheep had found it’s way back to the flock when he was met by some Muslim men in the compound community he’d been ministering in. They beat the Pastor up so badly that they believed he was dead and left his body on top of a railroad track. Thanks to God’s divine interventions and His unfailing mercy, a few people found the Pastor lying on the tracks and rescued him, sending him to the nearby hospital for rehabilitation that took over a month.

The Pastor nearly died that, but because of God, his life was spared. He obviously had more things to accomplish for the Kingdom of the Lord and it was not his time to be taken to Heaven, which is why we have the privilege of serving alongside the Pastor today. The Pastor is still physically handicapped from the abuse he suffered that night, and he still deals with lots of hate, adversity and negative advances from the Enemy, but Pastor Jesudason is resilient and confident that Christ will bring him through any and every situation that he will ever face. He is fighting against generations and generations of religious families that want nothing to do with anything different than what they know are are willing to use force to make that clear and yet the Pastor continues to live out every day that following Christ is worth the physical, spritual and emotional abuse. This is a man I admire and strive to be more like.

I heard a story just yesterday doing door-to-door evangelism that shocked me to my core and truly humbled me on the cost of discipleship. When we entered the house and I recognized the two teenagers in the home, but not the parents. I was told that these were the two young adults that we had met at the Pastor’s church a few nights ago and remembered there parents didn’t come to the church because they are Hindu. I learned during our time with the family that the teenage daughter was stoned by her mother four years ago when she first found out she was no longer practicing the Hindu faith and started attending the Pastor’s church. I was stunned, and couldn’t believe it. The Pastor said he gave the teenager daughter a Bible and that she had to hide it from her mother so she wouldn’t get beaten for reading it. She could only read the Bible at night, under her covers with a flashlight. This is the cost of discipleship for this young woman of God.

The mother is a lot better dealing with the fact that her two teenagers are no longer Hindus and are now following Christ, but this is four years after the intial change of faiths. I talked to the mother about my trip to India last summer and how I learned all about Hinduism and the Hindi family life. I told her I knew that tradition and family are of the upmost importance to Indians and that we were not about coming into her home and trying to convert as many family members to Christianity as we could. I said that faith has to be something you have to discover on your own and that each of us has to walk in our own self discoveries of what we believe in, regardless of what anyone else tells us. I empathized with her, telling her I will never been able to understand what she’s going through, I respect her so much, and that it has to be so hard watching your children go down a different path than one, she herself, chose, but that faith is something you find on your own, and that she should be incredibly proud of her children for being such righteous and honorable adolescents who are passionate about their beliefs and ambitious about making the world a better place. I concluded with how I was so happy that we could be friends, respect and love each other even though I am a Christian and she is a Hindu and we believe different things, and that I was overjoyed that she could still love and adore her own children even though they believe different things. I held her hand and hugged her and I knew it was well received and that she understood my heart and my intentions of being there.

The truth is, you can never force someone to accept Truth…as silly as that statement sounds. We can’t come into any one of these people’s homes and make them believe that Jesus loves them and died on the cross for their sins. That’s when the Holy Spirit has to come in, and reveal to their hearts the revelations they need to know to believe it for themselves. Following Jesus is a commitment you make for yourself, not something you do with you family or your friends because it’s expected of you and it’s tradition. That is the hardest lesson the people of Malaysia need to learn. It involves sacrifice to be a disciple of Christ, and sacrifice that is sometimes hard to imagine. I could not fathum what that teenage girl went through when her mother was stoning her for her faith in Christ, and what was racing through her mind. I can’t picture having to hide reading the Bible from anyone, especially my mom, for fear that she would see me, and beat me. I have so much love and respect for this young sister in Christ and I am so overjoyed that her relationship has been restored with her mother and father since coming to Christ. Praise Jesus, for healing all wounds, including relational wounds in the home.

So now I’m here, typing this blog to you, and the only suffering I’ve done this month for the sake of the Gospel has been traveling hours upon hours in a 14-passenger, no AC van that we so lovingly call “The Sweat Box” and withstanding whatever crazy bitter or spicy dishes are set before us at meals. I have not even began to experience the true cost of discipleship, friends, and my prayer is that I will be able to withstand suffering for Jesus, knowing like my new brothers and sisters in Christ living in Malaysia, that it is an honor and a privilege to suffer for the sake of the Gospel, and for Jesus Christ. I pray that God will continue to give me the endurance and strength to withstand anything that comes my way, and that in Jesus’ name, I will endure all trials and tribulations with joy in my heart and light in my soul. I leave you with these scriptures on suffering, and I pray that you will meditate on these passages…

“To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should low in His steps.” -1 Peter 2:21

“As you know, we consider blessed those who have perservered. You have heard of Job’s perservance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about the Lord is full of compassion and mercy.” -James 5:11

“We put no stumbling block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way; in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understand, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in ssincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; through glory and dishour, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.” -2 Corinthians 6:3-10