Our New Book on North Korean Christian Persecution Is Now Available!

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Pastor Foley

We’re punctuating this month’s study of ransoming the captives with the release of our new book, These are the Generations: The Story of How One Christian Family Lived Out The Great Commission for More than Fifty Years in the Most Christian-Hostile Nation in Human History.

Mr. and Mrs. Bae and their children once enjoyed a prosperous existence in North Korea, but their life was decimated following the North Korean government’s investigation of Mr. Bae on suspicion of Christian activity. Mr. Bae was held without charge in a North Korean jail for more than a year, but during that time his faith grew even as his health faltered. Mr. Bae is the first 3rd-generation North Korean Christian known to have defected to South Korea. He carries a wealth of previously unknown historical information about the unique ways the North Korean underground church lives, worships, and evangelizes in the most Christian-hostile conditions in human history.

Mrs. Bae is a former North Korean schoolteacher who met and married Mr. Bae during his university studies. She unknowingly inherited the family’s faith. During her marriage she came across puzzling clues about her husband’s outlawed beliefs, until his imprisonment led to her own costly journey of faith with her mother-in-law.

Though Mr. Bae was ultimately miraculously released from prison without being charged, the Baes were reduced to the life of vagabonds by the stigma of his imprisonment. They lost their home, job, friends, and health but gained something infinitely more valuable: deep, unshakable faith in Christ. While continually on the move ahead of the authorities, they raised their children in the faith and led other family members and former friends to Christ.

They eventually responded to God’s call to leave North Korea in order to share their family story with the world. The Baes cautiously tell all they can about this previously unknown part of the body of Christ. Their identities are protected so as not to further endanger those they left behind, including Mr. Bae’s parents who are currently imprisoned in a North Korean concentration camp because of their own evangelistic activity.

I wrote something in the conclusion of the book that is particularly germane to our discipleship about ransoming captives. It goes like this:

An estimated thirty thousand of today’s North Korean Christians—Mr. Bae’s mother and father among them—are living out their faith in concentration camps. Our first instinct is to work tirelessly to free them. But our second instinct ought to be to remember that God does not look at freedom the same way we do. An estimated one hundred fifty thousand to two hundred thousand North Koreans are prisoners in those camps. Many will end their days there. How could a God of boundless love not reach out personally to comfort those people, assuring them that they are not forgotten? And, if he did reach out, why wouldn’t he do it the way he always has—through people he has specially trained for the task, in barren fields and temporary exiles, whom he has walked with daily and who he speaks to as his friends?

I am humbled by all I learned about ransoming captives while writing this book with the Baes. I hope reading the book can convey some of that same learning process for you. You can purchase These Are The Generations today through amazon.com.

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Here’s What Makes Ransoming The Captive The Hardest Work Of Mercy To Understand

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Pastor Foley

This month we focus on what is typically the hardest Work of Mercy for Christians to understand and thus put into practice: Ransoming the Captive. We begin with Pastor Foley’s Heuristic Helper for the month:

If something is hard for Christians to understand it is usually because: (1) we haven’t studied the fullness of Scripture on the subject; (2) we did study the fullness of Scripture on the subject but still felt something was missing, so we took it on ourselves to fill in the blank; and/or (3) Scripture seemed to be telling us to do something so contrary to good common sense that we assumed God would of course never ask us to do such a thing, and so we walked away shaking our heads and muttering. (I like to call this The Rich Young Ruler Syndrome.)

All three confusion causers are operative with regard to the subject of ransoming the captive. As we’ll see this month, folks teaching on this subject often:

    • miss some of Scripture’s most crucial verses about ransoming and captives;
    • are tempted to speak where the Scripture is (purposefully) silent on the subject;
    • overlook the fascinating stories in church history of Christians who put this Work of Mercy into practice at the cost of their lives, finances, and reputations.

The one thing that’s for sure is that it’s going to take a good month of posting to identify and then work through the misunderstandings on this subject. The payoff is, of course, that  once we have a solidly Scriptural grounding in the matter we’ll be confronted with the kind of call to life-disrupting practice that will leave us longing for the days of gentle confusion where we could just shrug our shoulders sheepishly and not let the whole thing bother us too much. After all, there is one thing harder than not knowing what God wants from us; namely, knowing what God wants from us.

But, profoundly convinced of the boundless grace of God, let us be wise men rushing in where fools fear to tread as together this month we tackle the subject of Ransoming the Captive.

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Is It A Sin To Do [X]? And How Do We Know?

Posted on September 28, 2012 by Pastor Foley

What is the question I receive most frequently from the Christians I’m discipling?

“Is it a sin to [X]?”

Books may be written about the far more glamorous themes of discipleship–subjects like calling, spiritual gifts, and church planting and multiplication–but by sheer frequency, in the deepest and most authentic discipleship relationships of which I’m a part, what Christians want to know is whether something they are doing–or thinking about doing–is wrong.

When the question comes up, I like to refer people to Susanna Wesley’s definition of sin:

Take this rule: whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off your relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself.

I learned this lesson not from reading Susanna Wesley but from watching and listening to Rev. Bill Rogers, the first man who discipled me, when I was 19 years old and Bill was pastoring Mt. Olive United Methodist Church in Sweetser, Indiana.

Bill and his gracious wife, Sandy, had invited a bunch of us over to his house on New Year’s Eve. We spent the evening playing various kinds of board games and generally having a good time.

Finally, someone suggested we play a card game–euchre. Not being from the Midwest, I had never heard of euchre before and was eager to learn. As we began, Bill stood up and cheerfully cleared the used plates and cups from the table and took them to the kitchen.

“What’s the matter, Bill?” I jeered playfully in an annoying 19-year old way. “Do you think playing cards is a sin?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Bill, thoughtfully. “All I know is that it is for me.”

Bill explained to me what Susanna Wesley explained above: We above anyone else will know what leads our hearts away from Christ. Something may have no effect on the hearts of others in this regard (or it may and they simply prefer not to admit it, even to themselves), but we need to follow the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 6:12 in remembering that

“Everything is permissible for me”–but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me”–but I will not be mastered by anything.

In our purported fear of works righteousness we Christians tend to chafe at specific commands for conduct in the Christian life. It’s fascinating that we have the opposite insistence when it comes to sin. We like to define sin narrowly and specifically.

But in matters of discerning right conduct or wrong, as Susanna Wesley noted and Bill Rogers lived out so well, the same principle is at issue:

[W]hatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself.

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