Soldiers die in the name of freedom. Revolutionaries fight tooth and claw for the glorious revolution. Suicide bombers sacrifice their own bodies for salvation.
What does the Christian Martyr die for?
Well, we say, the Christian Martyr dies for Christ.
But do we truly understand what this means? Do we truly understand what makes the Christian Martyr different from the soldier, the revolutionary, and the suicide bomber? Do we truly understand what inspires crowds to take up the same cross that a martyr has died on?
Listen to Pastor Foley’s sermon this week to find out:
Suffering is not always followed by healing. Christians are perhaps more aware of this fact than anyone else.
Missionaries give up everything to evangelize in Africa, only to find that their message is rejected.
Christians in the Middle East lose their families when they accept Christ. Instead of finding peace, they find their conversion met with increasing amounts of persecution.
Christian brothers and sisters in North Korea are caught and sent to prisons for Christ, only to find their grave.
“I have already given you so much,” we sometimes cry to God. “Why would you ask more of me?”
Pastor S, however, sees things in a different way.
Pastor S is a Christian from Sri Lanka who gave up everything she had to follow Christ. She and her husband traveled to an area in Sri Lanka renown for its violence to Christians. They were verbally abused, physically assaulted, and continually threatened. But they endured this violence for Jesus’ name.
After all this suffering, Pastor S and her husband were both shot by a neighbor.
Pastor S survived. Her husband did not.
Yet she continues to preach about God’s goodness and love in the very same area she was shot in.
“God has given me so much,” she says. “I am indebted to God and will do whatever I can for him.”
How can Pastor S think this way? Watch this week’s podcast to find out:
Being an atheist in middle school, high school, and (most of) college meant that I was a mission field for my Christian colleagues.
“I value your bravery,” Christians students would tell me. “It must be very terrifying to live in a world without God.”
Looking back with a Christian lens, I realize that in many cases, I could have told them the same exact thing.
The thing I remember most about the Christians at my school was that these Christians always seemed very fragile. They would know the right words to say, but they never seemed to mean what they said. They would always smile, but the smile never seemed real. The Christian community at my school was always experiencing some form of drama, but none of the Christians seemed interested in resolving these conflicts.
People outside of the Christian community called them hypocrites. We never took their attempts to evangelize us seriously. Come to think of it, we never took them seriously.
But now that I am a Christian, my heart goes out to the Christians who tried to reach out to me. I understand now that the brothers and sisters who approached me knew that the world saw God through them. They felt burdened by this reality and were always trying to represent Him well.
“If I cry, the world will think that God doesn’t provide for me,” they would think. “If I tell my friend that she hurt my feelings, the world will think that God doesn’t bring unity.”
My heart breaks to understand the burden which they daily took up. They were always looking over their right shoulder and their left shoulder to see who was watching. They were always worrying what others thought of them. They were so focused the world around them that they forgot to look in one very important direction: up.
If you feel that you are carrying a similar burden, please listen to Pastor Foley’s sermon:
Do the Word 