I have been having a hard time, I started reading a book a few days ago, JESUS FREAKS by DC Talk, the book is full of hundreds of stories of men and women all over the world for the past 2000 years who have risked and given their lives to fallow Jesus. There was one women in the early 1500’s who stood out to me, she was a very beautiful young women, a maid, who loved and fallowed Jesus, with out have ever even seeing Him with her own eyes. A group of men from the government of the town she lived in came to the home that worked and lived, they had heard rumor of bibles in the home, in her country it was illegal to have a bible and the punishment if caught with one was death. The men rushed in, they had found a bible and began to interrogate the family that she worked for asking whose bible this was. The young woman stepped forward and said “I am the one who reads it.” The family insisted that she was confused, she owned the book but never read it, then the women said firmly, “This is my bible and it is my dearest possession.” She was taken away and sentenced to death by suffocation, she was placed in a hole in the wall of a building and she was to be bricked over, sealed in where she would die a slow death. Several times while beginning bricking her in the officials pleaded with her, “If you just say that you do not believe we will let you go free.” Her response was, “Jesus died for me, and I will die for Him!” Then the last brick was laid.

 

So I have been having a hard time reading these stories, not because I am overwhelmed with grief for their torturous deaths, but I am having a hard time with how spoiled I am, how spoiled the entire United States is. This book, Jesus Freaks, is not a book of die hard Christians, but it is a book of REAL Christians, these stories are stories of people who GOT IT! They are stories of people who truly Know Christ.

 

I was watching TV last night; you know how when you get to about 9pm there is nothing on so you just kind of flip through the channels, well that was Josh and I last night. Josh left for a moment to do something so I kept flipping, I stopped on one of those “Christian” channels, and I just watched. To be honest it made me sick to my stomach. These Christian channels are broadcasted all over the world, seen by millions of people, and millions of people are learning all about Jesus from the fruit of the people on these channels. The people that have been chosen to represent me and every other Christian and even worse Christ Himself, are furthest from what I know to be Christ. All I see is big hair, layers of makeup, gold chairs, (HA! As if Christ has ever sat in a Gold chair) and then there is this fake lifeless holy talk that probably was the worst of it for me. Those people aren’t real, I don’t even think that they know what a real person looks like. Hey and I know that it is not their fault, they are who they are because that is all that they know, When you know better you do better. I am beginning to see that it is not their fault at all, the people on the Christian channels, they are paid to be who they are, and lost in all that money they have lost Truth, and worst of all they, Probably most of them, have lost their freedom and peace in Christ if they have ever truly known it. So it is not their fault it is ours, being the people who get it, the ones who truly know Christ. We are so worried about what other people will think of us that we Hide Christ in our homes, in our heads and in our hearts.

 

So I just keep thinking about this young woman who was willing to be tortured and killed by suffocation to keep Christ ALIVE, I want to be her, I want to do what it takes to Keep Christ ALIVE.

 

~C