Tortured for Christ: Solitary Prayer Video
During our service today, we watched a brief part of the story of Richard Wurmbrand (follow the link above to watch the video), a pastor from Romania, who was imprisoned and often tortured for 14 years for his faith in Christ. After he was ransomed out of Romania, he wrote the story of his imprisonment, which is entitled “Tortured for Christ” and later founded the organization known as Voice of the Martyrs. While Pastor Wurmbrand’s story took place over 60 years ago it is a reality that continues to take place, all over the world, today. Right now, there are Christians being imprisoned, tortured and killed for no reason other than their faith. Because we are blessed, and make no mistake about it, we are blessed to live in a country where we are free to worship as we see fit, we tend to believe that our life is the norm and the persecution we occasionally read or hear about is real but rare. We have it completely backwards. According to Christianity Today 64% of the world’s population live in countries where the government highly restricts religion while 74% of the world’s population live in countries where social hostilities involving religion are high, meaning Christians may not be imprisoned but they often lose jobs, family, friends and any sort of part in the community. Because we are free many of us don’t even realize that we live in a world where freedom is rare rather than the rule. Today, I want us to understand that we are not talking about or praying for some small minority that are being persecuted, we are actually the minority, blessed with freedom so that we can intercede, pray for and join ourselves to the majority that are living and serving in places that are not free and are often less than safe. My prayer, as I have shared before, is that we will learn how to fulfill Hebrews 13:3 and “remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.”