I was talking with a friend at church on Sunday who is from Indonesia. She was talking about her experience being a Christian in a county that has such limited religious freedom. We talked about people she knew who had been beaten for their faith, churches that had been burned down, and pastors that had been killed. She told me a story about this major Muslim political party that is represented by holding up your finger, making a number one sign. If you do not hold up the sign back to them when they show it to you, you may get beaten. She talked about the tension of having to decide if that was worth getting beaten for, or is it wiser to just do it and if you get beaten, get beaten for worshiping Christ.

...it makes my struggles about when to talk about my faith and with who seem ridiculous. I just wonder how different our life would be if we could go to eternity and look backwards at our life. The fear we had to share the love of Christ with a student or co-worker because they might be offended or think less of us, seems pretty insignificant in light of eternity. How many people work and live along side us on a daily basis and have no idea what we believe and how our belief in Christ shapes our entire being and everything that we do?

Christianity that just blends into everything else is pretty empty and meaningless. If our understanding that the creator of the universe wants to be in relationship with us is not enough to embolden us to preach the gospel every minute of our lives, why even be a Christian? If our fear is keeping us from telling others about God, then that means we really do not believe God to be who he says he is.