If I Perish, I Perish
"Esther is about 40 years old but looks much older. Both of her parents died of starvation in North Korea. Esther left North Korea for China...She worked on a fish farm & found out that some of the workers there wanted to sell her. She met a man at the fish farm who was a believer & told him about the plan to sell her, so they ran away together.-from The Voice of the Martyrs, October 2006-
They had no money, no food & it was very cold in the Chinese winter. Hiding out in a run-down old house, she began to seek the Lord. They asked the man's older sister to bring a Bible. Esther came to know the Lord...
One day, Esther was returning on a bus from an errand, she came upon a roadblock...& she was repatriated to North Korea. There, she was beaten & tortured almost to the point of death. After she recovered, she escaped again to China.
Whenever she prayed about North Korea, she received a vision that...showed she was to return to North Korea & share the Gospel...Her heart was very heavy but she was going to share the Gospel with her nation, & like Esther from the Bible said, 'If I perish, I perish.' Though afraid, Esther was returning out of obedience.
After 3 months...Esther was doing well, but traveling so much that all 10 of her toenails had fallen off. Like the Apostle Paul, she bore the marks of Christ for her nation. She is grateful to be in North Korea, but said she is in a difficult place. Please pray for Esther."
It has never cost me to follow Jesus. Not here. Some temporary scorn, some alienation from those who I was once close to, some relationships permanately ended, but never suffering, & I have all 10 toenails.
I wonder, perhaps the reason we have to have conversations and conferences on relevance is because the Bible of Jesus and Paul and Joseph and Moses and Jeremiah and Job (the list goes on and on) is written from the pen of persecuted Christians. They could truly say the call to follow the Lord was a call to die. How relevant are the Words of a suffering Savior to a culture that simply wants comfort and coolness - to claim Christ on the one hand while living as much like the world as possible on the other so that you "don't miss out." If we are to "enter the Kingdom through many tribulations," then why I am so healthy, wealthy (relatively), and safe? It isn't God's Word that is irrelevant for our lives, but rather our lives that are irrelevant to God's Word - we can't identify with His suffering saints & so we point the blame at the Book. God, forgive us for using our love of self to cloak our lack of faith and our fear of being obedient to You, & dying to self, while claiming to be "not called" to take Your Gospel to the hard places when we are already either defiant to You or perhaps have never sincerely asked Your will on the matter.
Lord, may we be able to identify with Your Word soon - make our lives relevant to Your Word: Matthew 5:10-12, John 15:18-20, Acts 14:21-22, Romans 8:35-39, 2 Corinthians 4:8-11, 2 Corinthians 12:10, 2 Timothy 3:12, 1 Peter 4:12-16, 1 Thessalonians 1:6, Romans 5:3-4, Isaiah 53, Job, Psalm 119:50
May we be able to say with Esther, "If I perish, I perish," because we have already counted the cost and already died His death.
