With the approach of Halloween and All Martyrs’ Day (the original name of “All Saints’ Day”, November 1st), I devote this blog to the persecuted portion of the global Church. The following true story was told to me by the victim, whom I have known for several years. Details have been disguised to protect him.
Photo by Pascal Bullan on Unsplash
An unsuspecting 18-year-old, let’s call him Ahmed, was asked to substitute one time as the sole night watchman at a factory in his rural region in the mountains of Central Asia. He willingly took up his lonely post expecting an uneventful night, but others had plans for him.
About 9 PM Ahmed’s uncle and 20 or so of his friends arrived with a message for him. His recent decision to follow Jesus was unacceptable. It shamed and angered his uncle, the Islamic leader of the region. The angry group set up the situation so they could punish the young man for his foolishness and force him back onto the path of Islam.
In turn the men berated Ahmed and told him what a worthless piece of scum he was. They demanded that he have no more to do with Jesus or the “Baptists”, a term for any follower of Jesus, used with the same level of disparagement as the “N” word in English. When my friend did not agree to their demand, they beat him, harangued him more, and then gave him another chance.
Ahmed kept refusing to disavow Jesus, and the cycle continued all night. He was conscious through the whole ordeal because they were trying to beat some sense into him, not knock him out or kill him. As dawn approached, they finally left, and he dragged himself home in great pain.
That wasn't the end of it. There was follow-up pressure to abandon Jesus, provided by relatives and neighbors. Ahmed was mocked constantly at home and on the street. His mother told him she wanted him out because of the disgrace he was bringing on the whole family. As he seriously considered caving in, he went to the church again in spite of the pressure.
The sermon that day was about how much Jesus had suffered for us. After church, Ahmed went out into an empty field to cry out to God. At first he told God that he did not think he could bear this level of attack and ostracism. It was too much. But after he had prayed for a while, something suddenly happened to him. He says God put the Holy Spirit into him, and he “accepted his fate”. He told God, “OK, even if I am beaten every day for the rest of my life, I will be loyal to the one who died for me.”
Fast forward a few decades. Ahmed is now running a successful business outside his home region and leading a network of house churches. He considers each day without a beating to be an unexpected bonus in his life, but he does not take any day for granted. “I am already dead,” he says, “I died years ago with Christ, and I only live by his grace and for his purpose.”
Government pressure on the churches will greatly increase in his country if the parliament approves a proposed law on religious groups, which looks likely. Community pressure on followers of Jesus is increasing, largely because of the influence of a wave of Muslim missionaries from Saudi Arabia and huge injections of Saudi money to build hundreds of new mosques all over the country. But my friend is not going to back down under the growing pressure. He is “already dead,” and it is hard to intimidate a dead man.
On the contrary, as Halloween reminds us, dead people are the ones who scare the living. My “dead” friend scares the power holders. Somehow they can tell that the One in him is greater than the one in them, and they do not like it.
My friend knows what he is worth in God’s eyes, and that puts steel in his soul. Threats, insults and attacks cause much pain but they cannot convince him that he is worthless. He is like Jesus, “. . . who for the joy that was set before him despised the shame” (Hebrews 12.2).
Do you know what you are worth? You probably have never been attacked by a gang of Muslim vigilantes, but we often doubt our own worth--even when no one is attacking us at all. May your sense of worth go up as you use the resources in the Worth Season Tool Kit. All eyes on Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith and our worth! (See Hebrews 12.1)
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