We have been blessed with a wonderful family here in Serbia. They are members of the small church we are working with. Since Serbia was under Communism only a decade earlier there are very few believers. Out of a population of 1 million in the Eastern part of Serbia there are only 150 believers!
The church we are working with is the first and only established Christian church in the area and currently meets in a small garage. Pastor Dragon and his wife began in 1995 where four of them would meet in a local park. It has grown to a group of 30 that meet regularly.
Being a Christian in Serbia is much different than in America. The government supports the Orthodox Church and doesn’t acknowledge any other form of religion. This creates a lot of persecution against the church and its members. The church has had to move multiple times due to the opposition, rocks being thrown through the windows and the church being publically slandered on multiple occasions.
Families even persecute each other; a woman’s husband beat her and kept her from her children because of her faith, others have been completely shunned by their families because they choose to follow Jesus. This type of persecution is not only occurring here in Serbia but all over the world. The majority of China and India, home to 2.9 billion people, are only able to worship in small secretive house churches and are regularly persecuted by the government.
I think how lucky we are in America to be able to freely worship whatever God we choose. I listened to a sermon about the underground church in China and when the American pastor told the Chinese crowd about how in America people will switch churches due to the music or because they didn’t like the childcare the entire crowd burst out laughing, not believing that we have such freedom in America.
When asked if there were people in China who just call themselves Christians but don’t actually have a relationship with God, again they laughed “Why would we do that, when we say we are Christian, we lose everything, isn’t that what it means to be a Christian?”
The more I travel and see how Christians around the world have put their life and all their trust in Jesus the more embarrassed I become by many American Christians. We complain about our churches, that the music is too loud or the pastor is boring and we take for granted that we are able to not only choose what we want to believe but which church we want to attend. Not only do we take our freedom for granted, but many never truly trust in Jesus. We have our savings accounts or our possessions to trust in and we go through life halfheartedly trusting.
For so many around the world, with no possessions and barely enough money for food, all they have is Jesus and how beautiful their trust and faith is. It is sad that many people will go through life never putting ALL their trust in Jesus because they miss out on the amazing peace and joy it brings.
