Hope for hard times

Series: Why Should I Encounter Persecuted Christians?

I need to encounter persecuted Christians because they give me hope when all I'm reading is bad news in my daily newspaper.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have an idea of what God is really up to in this world?
The story of the world as we find it in history books and newspapers is not to be confused with the real story of what God is doing underneath.
Underneath what we call history and read about all the time - the antics of celebrities, the discoveries of scientists and the power politics of the dominant empires of the moment - God is somehow, somewhere, building His kingdom.
That's the real reason there is a universe in the first place.
But what is God's story as opposed to history? What's He really up to?
Must the daily diet of wars, murder and mayhem in my newspaper always get me down?
Can I ever be sure something is going on underneath?
We can't know perfectly, as "His ways are so much higher than our ways," (Isaiah 55:9). But we are afforded glimpses.
This glimpsing excited the early Christians. You can hear the delight in Paul when he writes: "God's secret plan has now been revealed to us" (Ephesians 1:9).
The persecuted seem to get more glimpses than most.
I think of China. The headlines said in June 1989 that a terrible massacre took place. Five thousand young people were mown down by the Chinese army.
The headlines all mourned the death of the pro-democracy movement. It was terrible.
But what was God up to underneath?

Life out of death
Out of that massacre came a remarkable turning to Christ among China's students for the first time in history! The headlines never saw it. It's not part of history. But "His story" went on.
I think of Afghanistan. When the Soviet Union invaded that country in 1980, the world was outraged. The headlines were all full of fierce denunciations of the action, and rightly so.
But I remember meeting a missionary from Kabul who said: "Yes, what the Russians did was wrong. But the fact is it is now much easier under the Russians for Christians to evangelize than it was before, under the Islamic regime."
Again, another more significant story, of God building His kingdom, was going on undetected by the world at large.
I think of Sudan. The headlines in the 1980s were full of a dreadful civil war which isolated the Dinka people from the outside world.
It was terrible. There was untold suffering on vast scale.
But underneath, God was bringing the two million Dinkas to himself. By 1993, 80 per cent of them were Christians - and this among a tribe that was historically very resistant to the Gospel.
Notice that these are all stories from the persecuted. They seem to be better placed to notice the real story. So I need to keep in touch with them because this glimpse delivers me from despair.
In 1989 in China, there was not just a massacre, but a revival.
In 1980 in Afghanistan, there was not just an occupation, but new missionary opportunities.
In Sudan over the last 20 years, there was not just a brutal war that killed two million people, but a new kingdom of believers erected among a people who never knew Jesus before.
So every day when I open my newspaper, I remind myself of two things, thanks to the persecuted: The story I see is not to be confused with the kingdom story and that, underneath even the saddest news, God is surely up to something good.
There is hope because God is always at work.

Other articles in this series:

• Achievement or Sacrifice?
• Stop Complaining
• Our Debt to Spiritual Ancestors
• The Battle for Religious Freedom Never Ends
• Seeing the Bible through Persecuted Eyes
• Death Loses its Sting
• The Power of Song
• Simple Faith
• Key Ingredients in Hospitality
• The Beauty of Mystery
• Awakening to Struggle
• Obstacles to Instruments
• God is Not Safe
• Deliverance Comes Through Endurance
• Imperfect People Do God's Will