This year’s annual VOM conference is called Wear the Crown, and Todd over at the Persecution Blog has been blogging the testimonies of many of the speakers – amazing testimonies of people who’ve lost loved ones and continued to minister in closed countries like Iraq and Iran. It makes you realize how little most of us have given for the gospel, and how little we’ve suffered.
As she lay in a hospital bed, dealing with her own injuries and also the pain of finding out that her husband had not survived his injuries, God reminded her, "This world is not your home."
"That is why we are compelled to go running into that darkness. That is why we take the love God has placed in our heart and run to the nations."
- Carrie McDonnall is the author of Facing Terror, and served in Iraq planting the seeds of the gospel through relief and development work. "Our God is not going to wait for the church in North America to rise up and go into the darkness. He’s going to use anybody and everybody. But we need to rise up and be faithful."
- An Islamic scholar said recently on Al Jazeera that 627 Muslims come to Christ in the world EVERY HOUR!
- Gary Witherall, whose wife Bonnie was martyred in Lebanon, chose as his text a passage from the gospel of John, the passage where the woman breaks the expensive perfume bottle over Jesus’ feet. "The Lord spoke to Bonnie and said, ‘I’ve not called you to a place. I’ve called you to Myself.’"
- "One Vietnamese pastor told us, "I’ve found a great way to get over the fear of going to jail. Go to jail. Vietnamese Christians are able to say to the police with great honesty when they are interrogated, ‘We pray for you.’"
- "That was a great time in our lives." –Iraqi Christians talking about their time in jail because of their Christian witness.