I wish you could have been there with me because the atmosphere in the room that day is very hard to describe. It was serious and weighty and heavy, but also sweet and hopeful, and even joyfull at times. There were 21 of us in the room: 19 Indian pastors, my translator and I. We just finished a full day of sharing together. Each of the pastors shared how he and his family were persecuted since my last visit, then we all encouraged him with Scriptures and prayed for him.
A typical story went something like this (I’m paraphrasing and summarizing of course):
“We were holding a prayer meeting in our house, when some young men showed up and started to film the service with their phones. More men kept arriving and soon our house was surrounded by a mob shouting false accusations against us. Then the local police arrived to “investigate” but they were working together with the mob in a coordinated effort. They searched the house for Bibles and ministry materials, collected our phones, and took me to jail where I spent 3 months without being charged. The mob beat my wife and destroyed our property, so she and the children have been hiding with relatives in a different region ever since. We haven’t seen them since but we are able to call and message each other. Our house was destroyed and we can’t go back. In jail, I found other brothers and kept praying and worshipping and sharing our faith despite daily beatings until our brothers posted bail and we were released. The Lord gave me this song to help me while I was in jail…”
At this point they would usually sing the song they wrote in jail to Jesus which helped express the mix of emotions they felt through all the pain, stress, and worry, as well as their faith and gratitude to Jesus and resolve to remain faithful to him and the ministry He has called them to.
The 19 pastors in the room that day had a total of 96 pending court cases among them. They continue to make disciples and shepherd their church members but in smaller groups, meeting at night, without singing out loud, changing houses frequently and constantly dodging surveillance. Collectively our partners in northern India are experiencing increasing persecution, but still planted 169 new churches in 2024.
It sounds like stories from the Book of Acts or possibly a report from the church in Smyrna, doesn’t it? The letter to Smyrna was written to help encourage believers facing hardships and persecution for their faith, but it could have been written to our brothers and sisters in northern India who are both poor and persecuted. Would you please lift up these 19 Indian pastors and thousands of persecuted believers in India today?
They asked us to pray for their families and for the churches to meet again, but most of all, they asked to be found faithful to Jesus in the suffering He entrusted them with. They wanted everyone to know God can trust them with persecution in their life and they are not going to quit living in the way of Jesus even if the earthly rewards of living such a life are taken away.
What about us?
Persecution is not a hypothetical, it is real, painful and costly. It is also something Jesus promised to his disciples, something very familiar to the early church, many saints in history, and part-and-parcel of following Jesus in many places around the world today. In fact, more believers are being persecuted around the world today than at any time in history.
Living in the way of Jesus includes the promise of rejection, opposition, and, yes, even persecution from the world around us, so we would do well not to skip over such passages, but instead “count the cost” and consider for ourselves how we might respond when (not if) it happens to us. How much trouble can Jesus trust us with?
Outreach Team