I can't stop thinking about this

"I recently had dinner in Seoul, South Korea, with an amazing man. He was one of the twenty-three missionaries who were held hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan in July 2007. For those who don't recall the story, the Taliban executed two of the missionaries before a deal was reached with the government of South Korea and the missionaries were released. 

This man told me about the horrors of being locked up in a cell, knowing that martyrdom was a strong possibility. He also shared about the amazing time they had on the last day they were all imprisoned together (their captors later divided them into groups of three than took them to remote areas).  Each of the twenty-three missionaries surrendered their lives to God that night and told Him they were willing to die for His glory. There was even an argument over who would get to die first.  One of them had a small Bible that the Missionaries secretly ripped into twenty-three pieces so each could glance at Scripture when no one was watching. The Word of God and the Spirit of God got them through the forty days of imprisonment. 

One of the most fascinating things this man told me was about what has happened since. Now that they have been back in Seoul for a while, several team members have asked him, 'Don't you wish we were still there?' He tells me that several of them experienced a deep kind of intimacy with God in the prison cell that they haven't been able to recapture in their comfort."

I first heard Francis Chan tell this story in a sermon he was preaching and was so glad to find it written in his Forgotten God book about the Holy Spirit.

I can't stop thinking about this.

It's been in my head and my heart for a while now. I didn't really know what to do with it.

Then Secret Church came.

I'm not even going there right now, but what constantly rang through my head during the 6 (almost 7) hours of teaching was this:

I know nothing of suffering. 

I don't. I worship freely in a free country where no one really cares if you are a Christ follower or not. 

I couldn't get around, past, through or away from that.

So me, being me, thought this: Maybe I want to suffer for Christ just so I don't have to feel guilty about not suffering for Christ. 

That's messed up.

But yes, that's what I thought.

I said it. Ugh.

Or maybe I'm just jealous for that kind of intimacy with Christ.  

As I pondered all this with my precious, patient friend, her point was this: "It's the curse of the American church, this comfort we have."

That set me back a bit. It's almost our cross to carry.  Not only "to whom much is given, much is required" (Luke 12:48) it goes beyond this. It's a huge burden to bear. It hinders us and binds us to this world and it's huge and dangerous and it terrifies me. I mean really. I have thought about this a lot, in an almost "wringing my hands" sort of way.

I have a choice here. I can wander off and delve through everything I think regarding the American church and how we treat God, Jesus and the Spirit and the Word and the church and believers and missions and the poor and orphans and children and youth and women and money and church buildings and stuff and you know what? I just can't. Not today. 

The short point is this: Is what I read in the Word real enough to me to die for? Or to suffer for?

That's it for today.