June 29
Persecution
A few years ago at a Mission’s Conference at Glorieta, New Mexico I met one of our missionaries to China. She told me about a Christian friend of hers who was attending the “three self” church. Three self stands for Self governing, self supporting and self propagating-it is the official church, the government-controlled church in China. Unfortunately, the pastors of these churches are usually not Christians and are placed in the position so they can identify Christians in the congregation and report their activities to the government, resulting in persecution that includes getting fired from their jobs or even jail time.
According to the missionary, the pastor identified her friend as a true believer and was beginning to report her to the authorities. It looked like she was about to come under persecution, so they began to pray for God’s intervention. Soon after they began praying, the pastor was fired and then turned to the woman she was trying to destroy for help. What should she do? Should she take a chance that the ex-pastor was sincere? Or should she remain silent? Could this just be a ploy to get firm evidence of her faith, or did the ex-pastor really want to know about walking with the Lord?
Today, the ex-pastor is walking with the Lord, with the other believers in the underground church in China-a church that is growing daily. According to the Commission Magazine, one Christian woman in Northern China wrote the teachers of an evangelism class that she took that she could not return to take the second part of the course. She reported that in the ten months that followed the first class she led over 4000 people to Christ and helped establish 60 churches.
One woman faced persecution, but because of the prayers of a Missionary, was able to bring her enemy to faith in Christ. Another woman received training and is watching God save souls and establish churches in an unprecedented way. Whether the result is one person or thousands, the truth remains, when it came to crunch time, both of them delivered.
Jim L. Wilson, Fresh Start Devotionals (Fresno, CA: Willow City Press, 2009).
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