Part 2: One Man’s Journey in New Faith
For those who faithfully follow, God promises a hundred times more of what we have given up for His sake – homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields – and with them, persecutions (Mark 10:30). Yerri is facing persecution that millions of new believers around the world face every day.
The hardship he experienced at first was fairly mild: as friends found out about his Christian faith, they accused him of converting in exchange for cash and food. “Do you think that’s why I became a Christian?” he challenged them in turn. “Just follow me to church one day, and see whether anyone gives me anything for coming.”
But then his father and uncle found out about Yerri’s new faith, and evicted him from the father’s home; for now, Yerri is living with a friend. “If you don’t take care,” his uncle warned his father, “all of your children will become Christians. You must act firmly.” Of course, our prayer is that this is exactly what will happen: that each of Yerri’s sisters will come to Christ, even as Yerri and his brother Amos have already done. All of the persecutions Yerri is experiencing are part of his counting the cost for following Christ: as you’ll recall, I carefully warned him of these possible repercussions just before he decided to become a Christian, and he agreed and accepted the potential cost; only now is that price being realized.
Through your gifts for convert care, God has provided a temporary job for Yerri at the Center of Good News. SGM’s financial commitment to him (although he doesn’t know that we have anything to do with his getting a job) ends after three months; at that time we will all see what God has in store for him. One thing we’ve observed is that Yerri does need to improve his work ethic; but he’s still a new Christian, so please pray with us for his character development in this and other areas.
Please pray with us that God will be merciful to him and not add any more to his burden of suffering at this time. And please pray that God will give me wisdom in how to guide Yerri as we consider each other family now…and that Yerri will steadfastly trust God for guidance and provision, seeing his hope in Jesus alone.
Thanks for your prayers!
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 1:41 pm and is filed under Ministry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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