Full time career or freedom for ministry?

John Piper on Biblical womanhood says his prayer for women :

• That you not assume that secular employment is a greater challenge or a better use
  of your life than the countless opportunities of service and witness in the home, the
  neighborhood, the community, the church, and the world; that you not only pose the
  question: career or full-time homemaker?, but that you ask just as seriously: full-time
  career or freedom for ministry? That you ask: Which would be greater for the Kingdom to
  work for someone who tells you what to do to make his or her business prosper, or to
  be God’s free agent dreaming your own dream about how your time and your home and
  your creativity could make God’s business prosper? And that in all this you make your
  choices not on the basis of secular trends or upward lifestyle expectations, but on the
  basis of what will strengthen the faith of the family and advance the cause of Christ.

• That you develop a wartime mentality and lifestyle; that you never forget that life
  is short, that billions of people hang in the balance of heaven and hell every day, that the
  love of money is spiritual suicide, that the goals of upward mobility (nicer clothes, cars,houses, vacations, food, hobbies) are a poor and dangerous substitute for the goals of living for Christ with all your might and maximizing your joy in ministry to people’s
  needs.

John Piper had much more challenges than those two as far as defining Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. You can go here to know more. It's a bit much so Pages 45-47 are a summary of John Piper's challenges.

Please continue to pray for the christians in India as they are being persecuted for their faith in great numbers this past few week. Please pray for God to remind them of his sovereignty in such spiritual distress. May they know that Jesus says "blessed are those who persecute you in my name." May they rejoice in his name, and dance for joy. I cannot understand what they are going through, but I do know that they are literally taking up their cross, which is what God asks for those who desire to follow Him. for more information, here is a video from a brother in India.

2008: Persecution for Jesus

Sign the petition to free our persecuted brother in China!

http://www.freepastorbike.com/

On a side note, let me share something Richard Wurmbrand shared with me in his book during his time in prison being persecuted for his faithfulness to Jesus:

"Sometimes I was filled with joy that i felt I would burst if I did not give vent to it. I remembered the words of Jesus 'Blessed are you when men come to hate you, when they exclude you from their company and reproach you and cast out your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy.' I told myself 'I've carried out only half this command. I've rejoiced, but that is not enough.'

When the guard next peered through the spy hole, he saw me springing about my cell. His orders must have been to distract anyone who showed signs of breakdown, for he padded off and returned with some food from the staff room: a hunk of bread, some cheese and sugar. As I took them, i remembered the conclusion to the verse in St. Luke: 'Rejoice in that day and leap for joy- for behold your reward is great." It was a very large piece of bread: more than a week's ration.

Friends to whom I spoke later of dancing in prison asked, 'What for? What use was it?' It was not something useful. It was a manifestation of joy like the dance of David, a holy sacrifice offered before the altar of the Lord. I did not mind if my captors thought me mad, for I had discovered a beauty in Christ which I had not known before."

Let us labor in prayer for brother bike and even the unnamed ones who are persecuted... for we are their brothers and sisters.

September 10, 2008 UPDATE

Pastor Bike is FREE! On Friday, August 29, prominent Chinese house church leader Zhang Mingxuan, affectionately known as "Pastor Bike," his wife and a co-worker were released from Chinese custody. Pastor Bike was arrested along with his wife and co-worker August 6, two days before the Olympic Games began in Beijing. An outspoken evangelist, Pastor Bike has travelled on his bike to many places in China, handing out Christian literature and Bibles and preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Instead of being held at a prison or a detention center Pastor Bike and his wife, Xie Fenglan, and their co-worker were taken to resort hotels on a "forced vacation" designed to ensure that they couldn’t talk to any foreign media. Pastor Bike was scheduled to do an interview with the BBC the day of his arrest.All three believers are in good health and spirits and praising God for their release, according to our co-laborers at China Aid Association. The detainees said during their confinement they had opportunities to witness to guards and even high-ranking government officials staying at the hotels where they were held.

On August 26, The Voice of the Martyrs and China Aid Association launched an international online petition drive advocating for Pastor Bike, his wife and co-worker to be released. On September 4, China Aid Association delivered the petition — which had more than 57,000 names printed on 619 pages — addressed to Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Washington, D.C. Included was a letter thanking the Chinese government for releasing these house-church Christians.We are thankful to you and the thousands of others who logged on and signed the petition. Christians in free nations often wonder if we can really make a practical difference for Christians in persecuted countries. Pastor Bike’s release shows that WE CAN!Continue to pray for Pastor Bike, his wife and their co-worker and for other believers in China.

Richard Wurmbrand quote

"Forgetting that pastors are also men, people require them to be models of wisdom, purity, love and truthfulness. So, in smaller or greater measure, they begin to act the part. As time passes, they can hardly tell how much of their behavior is playacting.
I remembered the perceptive commentary that Savonarola had written on the fifty-first Psalm, in prison, with his bones so badly broken that he could sign the self-accusatory document only with his left hand. He said there were two kinds of Christians: those who sincerely believe in God and those who, just as sincerely, believe that they believe. You can tell them apart only in moments of crisis, and then by their actions.
Did I believe in God? Now the test had come. I was alone. There was no salary to earn, no opinions to consider. God offered me only suffering- would I continue to love Him?"

Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand were not saved when they get married. He often cheated on her with other women, and they were also known as party animals living the night life drinking and smoking till the late mornings. Then God opened his eyes, changed his life, and transformed him into a pastor. Sabina, disgusted by her husband's new hobby, refused to get sucked into his new Christian lifestyle. Yet God's sovereignty, changed her life too. T

hey then began to pray together each night that God would let them bear the cross.
He became a pastor and prayed that God would take them to Russia to witness to the communist. But God brought communism to them.
Romania then was taken over by Russia and communism.
At a pastor's conference, Sabina could not believe the words that were being spoken about Jesus Christ so she told her husband
"Go and wash this shame from the face of Christ!"
He replied "If I do, you'll lose your husband"
"I don't need a coward" Sabina replied.

He spoke up. And because of that, he spent 14 years in a communist prison, given a chance to love his enemies, those who beat him, urinated on his face and tortured Him. God was glorified through Richard and Sabina bearing the cross.

My prayer is to bear the cross.

Why staring at the wall?

Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, died in 2001 and spent 14 years of his life in a communist prison in Romania. In his book, Christ in the Communist Prison, he writes:

"I was made to stand facing a wall with my hands raised above my head so that my fingertips just touched it. "Just keep him there," the chief of the prison told the guard.

"So at last my tortures began, tortures common to all Secret Police prisons: a dreary round of indignities and pain. First I stood for hours, long after my arms had lost all feeling and my swollen legs had begun to tremble. Then I was allowed to collapse on the floor, given a crust and a sip of water, and made to stand again. One guard relieved another. Sometimes two or three would share the sport of forcing me to adopt ridiculous or obscene postures and this went on, with short breaks, for days and nights. Always there was the wall to look at, only the wall.

To make time pass, I thought of the many walls referred to in the Bible, recalling a verse from Isaiah which saddened me: God says Israel's wrongdoings put a wall between Him and the people. In the same way, the failures of Christianity had allowed a communist triumph, and that was why I had a wall before me now. Then I remembered a phrase, "With my Lord, I jump over the wall." I, too, might vault this wall into the spiritual world of fellowship with God. I thought of the Jewish spies who returned from Canaan to report that the cities were great and walled- but even as the walls of Jericho came down, so the wall before me must also fall at the will of God. When pain was overwhelming me, I silently recited a phrase from the Song of Songs: "My beloved is like a roe or a young hart; behold he standeth behind our wall." I imagined that Jesus stood behind my wall, giving me strength. I remembered that as long as Moses held up his hands on the mountains, the chosen people went forward to victory; perhaps our sufferings were helping the people of God to win their battle, too."

So staring at the wall, I created this blog so that I too may know and understand scripture the way Richard Wurmbrand could. He found strength in the Word, though he could not even see a Bible for 14 years. He had hidden the Word in his heart, and was able to flip through his heart like a PC study Bible concordance searching the scriptures that contained the word "wall". May my life hide His word in my heart, so that no matter what comes my way in the future, I will find strength in the Word and only the Word. Because persecuted christians are not of the past, but of the present. May we labor fervently in prayer for these people because they are our brothers and sisters.

To learn more about Richard wurmbrand, go here.