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Daily we hear reports about violence against Christians all around the globe. But how does this affect us as believers in America? During the first week in November, we will take the opportunity to seek God for nationwide spiritual awakening as we learn from and uplift our brothers and sisters who are suffering for their faith in Christ.

This hour-long concert of prayer broadcast consists of teaching by Nik Ripken, author of The Insanity Of God, interviews with ministry leaders, music by Meredith Andrews and prayers from our studio prayer team made up of students at the Moody Bible Institute. The goal of this hour is to bridge our need for awakening with the experience of those awakened by persecution as we cry out for a new work of the Holy Spirit in America.

For more information about the OneCry movement, visit www.OneCry.com.

Listen to the program.

It was 16 years ago when I watched my 16-year-old son die in Nairobi, Kenya, as a result of a severe asthma attack. 

His death on an Easter morning wounded the hearts of an entire community.

People asked me, How can God allow your son to die on Easter? You were only seeking to serve and praise Him among peoples unreached and untouched with the Gospel. How can a father handle watching his son die long before his child’s dreams could be realized?

I imagine God’s thoughts when Jesus died on the cross could have been similar to this:

My Son was a skilled carpenter, but I knew that He was made for something more than shaping wood with His hands. He was made for shaping lives with His words, with a touch or even with His tears. 

His life’s work was that of doing the miraculous — He healed the sick, fed thousands, allowed those without worth and unclean to touch Him and to be touched by Him. 

He could weep over the death of a friend and almost in the midst of a sob call him from the grave to life again. People were enamored with the miraculous things He said and did. A few people began to discern that it wasn’t what He did that was miraculous. 

The real truth, they began to discover, was not that He did miracles but that He was The Miracle.

Others feared what they did not understand. I saw my Son arrested and ridiculed. Their spit ran down His face, their jeers rang in His ears and their tools of torture caused blood to disfigure His countenance.

Cheers from the days before when He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey turned to the jeering of a mob as they watched my Son drag His own cross up to a hill of death, where they raised His mutilated body, nailed upon a wooden cross, to the sky.

Today, I watched my son die.

The political and religious leaders of His day thought this was the end of the threat. Those who had followed Him believed their hope was dead, so they denied they had ever known Him. Both sides deeply believed this was the end of the story, this death, this killing of My son — once praised, now once and for all, crucified to death.

And here was everyone’s mistake, their misunderstanding. They believed that crucifixion was the end of the story, that death ended all things — the threat to the reigning government and the people’s hopes for an earthly Messiah.

Everyone was wrong. My Son was not to be defined by the waving palm leaves of the adoring multitude or by the shouts of the jeering crowd. Neither would He be defined by a crucifixion.

There was more to come — more to the story. This was my plan. The crucifixion by man was a prelude to the resurrection by the Father. I allowed and watched my Son die, to be crucified, to demonstrate my love and forgiveness for all people, for all times. 

But I am not only a Father of love, I am a Father of power.

And while my love allowed for the crucifixion of my Son, my power would not allow Him to stay dead because I had determined that crucifixion was just the prelude to the resurrection.

For my family, the anniversary of my son’s death at Easter brings this bittersweet reminder — There is no shortcut, no easy way out, no way to avoid wounds made inevitable by living in a broken, imperfect world.

Like God’s Son, my son died way too young and, at least for a season, for unacceptable reasons.

But my family knows that this earthly life is just a prelude to the eternal life we can have through and with Christ. Jesus’ crucifixion was for a moment in time. His resurrection is forever.

John 3:16-17 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” RSV

It was a soul wrenching time for our family-which is not a surprise to anyone as we were working in Somalia at the time. While there were believers in Jesus from Muslim background inside the country, they were often scattered, alone, and afraid. We were seeing many children and older people die of starvation.  Often we had to wait for those who died during the night to be buried before we could feed those still left alive. Though we began as a mom-and-pop organization late in 1991, we soon had teams in 3 different countries doing everything from food relief, irrigation, resettling refugees, and tons of mobile medical clinics. Soon a team of 8 were feeding 50,000 people per day.

All of this was done in an environment of famine and civil war. I often wondered which classes from my Christian college or from my degrees in seminary were responsible for preparing us to minister in Jesus name in such a tough environment? It was like this; we didn’t mind being “sheep among wolves” as we understood this to be a biblical command and a constant reality. What I objected to was being a sheep among the wolves where the wolves were in the majority and, can I say honestly, we had been sent out as stupid sheep among the vicious wolves.

It’s challenging when you have civil war and famine as your ministry environment while most of your training has been to prepare you to be a sheep serving the sheep.

After numerous trips into Somalia my wife and I had an intense, heart-to-heart conversation. Coming to a deeply held consensus together, we called our 3 sons to join us so we could unpack what we felt the Holy Spirit was saying to us in regard to our ministry in Somalia. This conversation with our boys may not have represented the most articulate moment of our lives, but it certainly was heart-felt. We began the conversation something like this,

“Boys there was a time, early in our lives, when your mother and I had to decide whether or not we were willing to live for Jesus. As a pastor’s daughter, your mother can hardly remember not knowing Jesus as a young girl. My journey to Jesus was much rougher and you know I did not discover who Jesus was until 18 years of age. But both your mother and I made the conscious, spiritual decision that we would live for Jesus no matter what.

When Shane was around 5 years of age and Timmy a little past 3, we experienced a renewed call on our hearts concerning taking the love of Jesus to those who have little or no chance to know him. We heard God’s command clearly asking us if we were willing to go anywhere in the world for Jesus. Without any doubt your mother and I answered this question; it was God’s prerogative to send us wherever He determined. It was not too difficult to decide to both live for Jesus and to go anywhere in the world with Jesus.

All of this was before Somalia. Now we don’t know if going and living for Jesus is enough.

As a family we know that Somalia is a very dangerous place. Though we as a family are living in Kenya, we and our teams are inside Somalia and near its borders in many places. Your mother and I have talked and we want to share something as a family. You’ve heard us talk about our willingness to live for Jesus, giving our lives to Him, alongside our willingness to go anywhere He commands us to go. For this season of our lives it does not seem to be enough to simply be willing to go for Jesus, living for Him wherever He may plant us. We don’t want to scare or frighten you but we want to look at the cost of following Jesus as a family. There is a new question and reality we need to ask ourselves alongside our willingness to live and to go for Jesus.

The question is, are we, as a family, willing to die for Jesus as well as live and go for Him?”

Though the boys might have a difficult time remembering this conversation, it is etched deep within my soul. You see, my culture had taught me a lie. Even my Christian culture bought into this lie. The lie goes like this; “If you love and serve Jesus you are entitled to live a long life, free from serious injury or illness, and never have problems within your family. You are further entitled to a big house and 2 cars alongside a retirement dividend which will allow you to travel and relax for many years. When you reach old age you are to be free from illness and allowed to die peacefully in your sleep.”

Where is a willingness to die for Jesus in the midst of all this cultural Christianity? Who was supposed to model the trifecta of living for Jesus, going with Jesus, and even be willing to die for Jesus? What class or sermon should have prepared us for such an environment as Somalia?

There was no place in my world for such an environment as Somalia and there was no place for a faith which could sustain and grow in such an environment like Somalia. Most of my classes and the sermons I both heard and gave myself prepared me to serve in a white-collar, Christian environment. The blue-collar camel herders of Somalia were a class or a sermon consistently omitted from my nurturing within the church or in my training within denominational entities.

We still struggle consistently with Christ’s command to live for Him, go with Him and, if necessary, die for Him.

Gal 2:20-21 “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose.” RSV

Now I have to admit this is one of my pet peeves. It amazes me how often single women are stepping up to do the tough things for the kingdom of God while single men are astonishingly absent. This challenge crosses denominational lines and is to be found anywhere within the Western Christian environment. It has been our observation over the last decade or two that for every 1 single man on the mission field there are seven single women! As we noted in another article it is as if single men are praying, “Lord here am I, send my sister.”

This has reached epidemic proportions as men today are, seemingly, not tough enough to go to the tough places. While women are prepared to go as “sheep among wolves,” it seems to me believing men want to remain as “sheep among sheep.”

What has brought us to this global challenge?

Let’s focus on our issue men; why are we not showing up? Why are there scores of women prepared to go to the tough places and do the tough things while we stay home? Dare I suggest the location of this unscriptural behavior lies within the broader Body of Christ itself? While women are quietly serving all the way from Jerusalem to the uttermost parts of the earth-men stay-at-home. Why? In the West men have two models, vocationally, to choose from. Vocation, position, power, and salary packets are important to us men. Our male role models are in pulpits and in classrooms. Yet those without any access to Christ dwell in the deserts, the famines, and the war zones of the earth. Conversely, Christian men in the West are increasingly white-collar while those without Christ are tough blue-collar or no collar men.

Years ago in China I was privileged to stay among three church planting movements. If I were to ask the young men inside those movements what they wanted to be when they grew up, they would quickly answer, “We want to be evangelists and church planters.” While central to the New Testament, these roles for men are virtually nonexistent in most of our churches and seminaries in the West. We train men to be pastors, shepherds of sheep. Shepherds seldom put their sheep at risk, even for the sake of the kingdom of God! I was reminded of this as I read an article the other day. In this article, a major league baseball player talks about how he avoided Christianity as he felt it was soft and for sissies. Yet he found Jesus to be tough, willing and able to die on a cross – Jesus was a “beast,” a real man. Read the article for yourself.

Where are the men? Are we tough enough to serve in the tough places? Are we able to be a beast for Jesus?

We love nurses and all types of medical people.  When needed the most throughout the Horn of Africa, especially Somalia, believers who are medically trained had come out of the woodwork to give some of the most sacrificial service to God imaginable on the planet.

In horrific places they had helped us reduce malnutrition rates from 85% to 8%.  In another environment we found that 87% of the children had never been inoculated.  By the time we were forced from that region seven years later, the rate was in the single digits also.  For decades in the Northeast Province no twins had survived in living memory.  We began a goat project for mothers of twins and the occasional triplets.  Any mother who could present us with newborn twins or triplets would get a milking goat that would supplement the mother’s milk, virtually guaranteeing the survival of these newborn babies.  Over the next few years it was a joy to see the first-ever twins and triplets survive due directly to a simple goat project.  Yet local people must’ve thought this white man from Kentucky looked simple of mind and could be easily fooled.  Arriving at various villages, once the goat project became known throughout the region, mothers would present us with their “twins,” one which was obviously a newborn, with the second “twin” being old enough to have a full head of hair, a number of teeth, and walking!

Sometimes we gave them a goat anyway just for their creativity.

All of the environments in which we sought to serve were very hostile to the person of Jesus and those who called themselves His followers.  In the beginning we had poor language skills and our medical efforts were often staffed by young nurses fresh out of school.  As older nurses joined our projects we purposely sought to increase our witness, sharing with local people our motivation for coming in assisting those in need.  Our older nurses began to pray for those we would treat, even in the most hostile of environments.

It is hard to close both eyes and pray in a hostile environment when those who curse at the name of Jesus are those holding weapons.

Prayer became a miraculous tool of faith and healing as it was in the New Testament.  In every situation, while we washed our hands with an antiseptic, our oldest nurses would gather around the patient, lay hands on the ill or injured one and pray for them.  Though often met with hostility, this practice grew and led to many spiritual conversations.  While we knew that such a practice was risky in places where believers in Jesus had seldom lived or were wanted, we were impressed that the minimal witness we were willing to leave behind was the witness of and through prayer.

Often our oldest nurses insisted on being the ones who would pray over the recent casualty of war; be it a wounded or starved child.  Their thinking was that since they were so old, it would be better to risk losing an older nurse to persecution than a younger nurse who had so many years left to serve!

In a war zone it is difficult to gauge the effectiveness of one’s prayer, actions, and verbal witness.  One’s ministry is so fluid as it ebbs and flows as often as civil war advances and retreats.  There were places where we could return to many times and others we were allowed to visit only once – leaving hungry and wounded children behind.

One day was particularly frightening as we entered a village where fighting had erupted and a child tried to pick up a hand grenade with terrible results.  Pulling into this village we were confronted with the evidence of a small, mangled body.  Our team immediately went into hyper-mode, preparing to do whatever we could to save this child’s life.  As our medical team began to work on this small boy, they were grabbed from behind by gun-wielding Somali men while also being restrained by the child’s mother.

We had no choice but to step away from the bench transformed into an operating theater, turning to face the threats of the moment.  We began to voice our concern for the child, questioning why we were being restrained from treating him.  The answer was not long in coming.

The mother of the wounded child took the lead in exclaiming, “You will not treat my son until you have prayed for him.  We have watched you pray over so many of our children and they have been healed.  You will not operate on this child without praying because it is your God who has healed so many children in this village.”

We had to be reminded by Muslims to be like Jesus.