Simple Faith

Series: Why Should I Encounter Persecuted Christians? I need to encounter persecuted Christians because they help to keep  my faith simple.

On his first visit to America, I took a  Chinese Bible teacher to a Christian bookstore. I was not prepared for his  reaction.
  I thought he would be overwhelmed by the  variety of Bibles, reading aids, books and multi-media material on display. 
  He was, but not in the way I expected. He  stopped in the middle of the store, turned to me and said: "It must be very hard to be a Christian here."
  "Why do you say that?" I asked.
  "Because how are you going to keep  your faith simple with all this available?"
  We walked around the store as he told me what he meant. 
  He picked five books off the shelf. All had similar titles like "The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life".
  He leafed through them and said, "Each book seems to say there's a secret to living a happy life in Jesus.  But their secrets are all different. They all say there is one secret, but each  has a different secret? That's confusing."
  "Well, that's just marketing", I  explained, a little defensively.
  But he went on: "Does that mean I  have to buy all five books to really know Christ? That makes me anxious. What  other secrets might I not be aware of? I have to buy more books. And soon, I would have more books  than I could read, and I would not be happy, but guilty that I had spent money on all these books that I had no time to read."
  He put the books down on the floor and  said quietly, "In China, I prayed for God to bring me books. He did, but only at the rate of about four per year. So I read those books thoroughly. I  copied out passages. I made summaries for teachers. I learned whole chunks by heart.These books really formed me."
  "The point I'm trying to make is that if you have too many books, it's difficult to read one properly. I'm not saying it's impossible, just hard. And this variety actually makes faith more complicated than it really is."
  
  Seduced by plenty
  It's true, but so difficult to see when we are constantly seduced by the latest, the best, the newest, even within the Christian subculture. 
  Persecution pares life down to its essentials and keeps the practice of the faith simple.
  My friend went back to China to keep the basic routines that have given him life. As he put it: "Every day, make sure you pray, witness to others, and above all, praise God."
  He taught me a daily habit he learned in  prison: "Every morning when you wake up, don't get up; just stay in bed for 10 minutes and thank God for anything that comes into your mind. It might be the wallpaper, it might be for friends, it might just be for life. Anything. Once you get going, you discover  that the world is full of grace. God's grace."
  "With that attitude you are ready to  live the day for God - because you are overwhelmed at how generous God is to you, to everyone."

 It's so simple, and yet isn't there something in us that finds the simplest activities so hard to keep up?
  Maybe that is why we pack our lives with an infinite variety of routines and habits. Anything but just continually doing what is simple.
  As a Vietnamese evangelist once said, "Christianity is the only religion that never believes in graduating anyone - we are to stay at the first grade all the time, grateful to Jesus, repentant for our sins, expectant for His coming. Don't graduate, or you'll leave the basics behind."

 Other articles in this series:

• Achievement or Sacrifice?
• Stop Complaining
• Our Debt to Spiritual Ancestors
• Hope for Hard Times
• The Battle for Religious Freedom Never Ends
• Seeing the Bible through Persecuted Eyes
• 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