Suffering for doing God's will happens a lot more then we sometimes realize. One of my favorite examples for this is Noah, Noah suffered greatly when he was preparing for the coming flood. Noah was marked as crazy, and received a lot of criticism from his peers during his act of faith. In the same way Christians today are suffering for doing God's will.
These statistics are from 2004:
- More than 43 million Christians have been killed for their faith since the crucifixion of Jesus.
- There have been more than 26 million documented cases of martyrdom in this century alone.
- More than 200 million Christians in over 60 nations face persecution each day, 60% of these are children.
- 150,000 to 165,000 are martyred each year.
- It's been estimated that more Christians have been martyred in the 20th Century than in all the prior 1,900 years combined.
That last statistic might shock us more than all of the previous ones. We are living in this free society and are sometimes blind to things going on in other countries to our brothers and sisters today. Our christian brothers and sisters are giving their lives for doing the will of God. Christian service for us shouldn't be a stretch for us when we see these statistics. Extreme persecution for us isn't a reality for us in this country at this time. Why is it so hard for Christians to do the will of God in this country, when we don't receive this amount of persecution?
There is a book called Jesus Freaks the book of the martyrs. In it there are several short stories about people who were martyred and for standing up for their faith. The one that stuck out to me most was the story of a 13 year old girl. A group of people had gathered in a basement for a small church service. About half way through the service some policemen came in holding guns to their facesa and said that if they didn't deny Jesus and spit on the bible that he had taken from the pastor then the would shoot them. First he called the pastor forward and shamefully he spit on the bible and denied Christ. Then he called a woman forward and she did the same. After that this 13 year old girl walked forward without being told, picked up the Bible, whiped it off and said "Daddy, what have they done to your word?" The officer raised his gun to her head and shot. It took a 13 year old girl to stand up to that man. she truely was a Christian. It doesn't tell you the rest of the story but I'm sure her act of service helped others stand up for what they believe as well. I would like to say that I would have done the same thing in her situation but i honestly don't know and I hope I never have to fine out. I hope if it does happen that I can stand up for my God but I won't know until it happens. Would you be able to serve the same way she did?
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