Enter his gates with thanksgiving;
….go into his courts with praise.
….Give thanks to him and praise his name.
For the Lord is good.
….His unfailing love continues forever,
….and his faithfulness continues to each generation. Psalm 100:4-5 NLT
Acts 16:1-6(<<click here to read the passage)
I was a little tentative at first, but I’ve been delving into TikTok. Like all social media platforms, you have to be careful what you watch, because whatever you linger over, its algorithms will then send you more of similar nature.
I’ve been getting lots of music-oriented videos (surprised?) and quite a few faith-based videos – no surprise there either! I even archived a few because I really appreciated the thoughts shared.
One that I watched today featured a speaker who had ministered to Christian leaders in China. I have a general idea of what can happen to believers in China but in this short clip he shared quite a few things.
He opened by asking the 22 gathered to hear him speak, “If we get caught what will happen to me?” They replied, “Oh, you’ll get deported in 24 hours and we’ll go to prison for 3 years.” He was surprised and asked how many have been in prison for their faith. Out of 22, 18 raised their hands. He then asked them how many people total they oversaw in their underground small groups from all over the Hunan Province. After a bit of figuring, the number they gave him was astounding – a little over 20 million!
He shared a lot more but at the end he asked how he could pray for them. Because they are unable to worship openly with one another for fear of persecution they asked that he pray that they could be like those in America – “…pray that we can be just like you.” His reply, “I will not do that.” Big incredulous eyes looked at him and they asked, “But why?” He answered, “Because you guys rode a train for 13 hours to get here. In my country if you gotta drive for more than an hour, people don’t come. You sat on a wooden floor for three days. In my country if people have to sit more than forty minutes, they leave… In my country we have an average of 2 Bibles per family, we don’t read any of them. You hardly have any Bibles, and you memorize them from pieces of paper. I will not pray that you become like us, but I will pray that we become just like you.”
Very humbling, huh? Far too often we follow Jesus but only when it’s convenient, when it comfortably fits into our lives.
As I read today’s passage Timothy a young convert to the Way of Jesus, who happened to have a Jewish mother and a Greek father (we learn that from Paul’s epistles), did what many would have thought unthinkable. Church leadership had even said it wasn’t necessary. But Timothy agreed to undergo circumcision. “…he voluntarily did this to overcome any barriers to his witness for Christ. Sometimes we have to go beyond the call of duty in order to further the Kingdom of God.” *
Timothy did what needed to be done. Chinese believers do what needs to be done. What about us?
* Life Application Study Bible
May 19th, 2022, Thurs, 12:35 pm
