Having grown up in the United States and living in the self proclaimed “Christian bubble” of Western Michigan for the past 4 years, persecution has never been on the forefront of my mind. I never suffered for my faith and hardly ever had to defend it or explain it to anyone. It is safe to assume that everyone was a believer and the phrase “I’ll keep you in my prayers” is exchanged as frequently as the warm hellos and hugs. Everyone has heard of God and Jesus and while there are many differing opinions on the topic, Christianity is the norm.
But this is not true for most of the world. It has been in incredible blessing to have spent a 1/3 of my Race thus far in closed countries, places where Christianity is anything but widely accepted. What “closed” meant differed drastically from Malaysia to Vietnam to Laos and the level of precaution we took and persecution present in each country varied significantly. In Malaysia, it was illegal to preach the gospel to Malays but Indians, Chinese, and Taiwanese were fair game and the government didn’t care to persecute those Christians. Because of this and to protect our contact and his ministry, we didn’t talk about Jesus outright but rather tied in his teachings into the English curriculum that we taught.
Vietnam seemed to be a step up in its “closedness” from Malaysia and we were warned before we entered the government was much stricter but our contact boldly proclaimed the Gospel to everyone who walked into the coffee shop where we worked and we spent much of the month talking about Jesus with locals in the park by our hostel (most had never heard the name of Jesus before!). My month in Vietnam was defined by sharing the Gospel and I was blessed to have been used to help bring people to the Lord. While knowing full well that Vietnam was a closed country, we proclaimed the Good News without hesitation or backlash so it was easy forget that it was a closed country; the “closed” seemed to be more about government regulation of social media than an actual persecution of the Church.
I was blessed to have spent last month in Laos, a country that has a fascinating history full of secrets and cover-ups. (A not-so-fun fact: Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the world thanks to the good ol’ US of A. During the Vietnam war, over 500,000 flights dropped left over bombs from their air attack meant for Vietnam on Laos – who was declared neutral by NATO and the United Nations – and over 30% of those bombs did not detonate and remain active today, exploding, killing and maiming thousands of people every year and perpetuating the cycle of poverty because these undetonated bombs severely limit the use of the land). Laos is REALLY closed – the government closely monitors Christian activity and Lao Christians have disappeared without a trace, pastors have been murdered in their homes, and missionaries are tracked and kicked out of the country permanently. There are areas of the country that are off limits to everyone and it is believed that there are government work camps occurring in some of these areas. Our contacts asked us to exercise extreme caution while we were staying with them – meeting only in a room where the noisy air conditioner would cover up all conversation, prayer, and worship so the neighbors wouldn’t become suspicious, using code words when we talked about the Big Guy online, and not proclaiming outright that we were Christians, but rather allowing people to approach us and ask questions about why we were different.
It wasn’t until a worship night at our squad’s debrief in the Dominican Republic that I realized the weightiness and significance of persecution. As I stood in a backyard in the DR surrounded by 42 God-fearing believers, worshiping with our hands outstretched wide, quite literally shouting from the mountain that God is Lord with no fear and in complete freedom, I was overcome with emotions. I had received word from my contact in Vietnam earlier that day that one of my Vietnamese friends who I had met in the park, invited to the coffee shop where we worked that month, had hung out with numerous times during the month and who had accepted Christ on our last night in Saigon, was facing heavy persecution by her family, including enduring physical abuse for her faith in Christ. I thought about a missionary I was privileged to work with in Laos who had recently found out that he has been added to the blacklist and is unsure of whether or not he will be allowed back into Laos when he returns back from a trip to the States to visit his family (and he has been living in Laos as a missionary for over 20 years).
The freedom we have to openly worship and proclaim Christ’s goodness is NO small thing and I all too easily forget that not everyone is privileged to experience this freedom. We hear stories about Christians being persecuted from time to time, stories like the martyrs in North Korea that captivate our attention for a few days but we quickly forget and move on with our lives. Persecution is something that feels so distant and far off because it is not apart of our daily reality in North America.
But Jesus never said it would be easy; in fact he said quite the opposite,
“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world!” // John 16:33
And Peter reminds us in his first book,
“Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come to you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the suffering of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed” //1 Peter 4:12-13
The Gospel is not merely a self-help, feel good, warm-and-fuzzy story of a God who loves us. The Gospel bleeds and warns us that if we are serious about following Christ, we will too.
So please join me in prayer for my friends and for believers around the world who are currently undergoing persecution. Pray for perseverance and for unexplainable joy amidst it all. Praise God for their sufferings and for the glory that it is bringing Him. And pray for yourselves as well – that even though you might not be currently enduring persecution, that the power of the Gospel in your life has the same weight and realness as it does our persecuted brothers and sisters and that you are compelled to act boldly and step out in faith for God’s glory.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God //I Corinthians 1:18
