Bible Smuggling and a Special Challenge for You

Do you enjoy being able to pick up your Bible and read it anytime you want? That's a reality that many of us enjoy, but not every Christian has that reality. In fact, millions of Christians around the world do not have that experience, and on this episode, I'm going to talk to you about how you can help these Christians have that same experience that you do, and I'm going to give you a challenge to get more meaning from your Bible every day.

This is Cutting Edge Faith the show that brings you the truth behind the headlines and equips you to live out your faith. In the cultural chaos of today, god is on the move right now through people just like you, you were created for influence and impact. Let's take your faith to the next level. Learn more at RyanSHowardcom. And now here's your host, dr Ryan S Howard.

Well, as I mentioned, there are many Christians around the world who simply do not even have a Bible. In fact, they're in hostile areas where it's illegal to have a Bible. And fortunately we have ministries like Voice of the Martyrs who are working to get Bibles into these hostile countries, into these hostile areas where it is not only illegal but people can go to prison and even give up their life just to have a Bible, or even to smuggle these Bibles into these countries. And Voice of the Martyrs is doing it over land, sea and air. They're doing it many different ways, everything they can to get Bibles into these countries. And I want to read a little testimony here for you, and it's from a guy that was arrested in China. So I'm just going to read it from Voice of the Martyrs here. It's not very long, just a couple minutes. It starts out with a quote. It says even though I was not sure how God would use me in the future, I believed he would save me from this prison and set me free. The call came on Friday afternoon. China's police force had raided a local print shop and seized factory records. They knew that Leo, a Christian businessman, had commissioned the printing of several thousand unofficial Bibles unregistered with the Chinese government, and he knew he was in trouble. Within 24 hours, leo had been arrested and imprisoned. He was held for months without contact with any family or a lawyer. The situation in the prison was far worse than I could have imagined, leo said later. 50 to 60 people were crammed in a space of about 500 square feet. We slept on boards and on the cement floor. In the winter we had quilts so dirty you couldn't even tell what color they were. They smelled so foul and moldy that sometimes I had to plug my nose just to sleep. And with so many people in the cell, including drug traffickers, swindlers, thieves, smugglers and rapists, conflict was inevitable. Some people were injured or even killed, but, praise the Lord, no one bothered me. Legal proceedings were suspended during COVID-19 and Leo's case didn't go before the court for eight months. During that time there was no interaction with the outside world. No visits or letters were allowed from his family. Despite it all, leo found solace and peace in Jesus Christ. That year in the detention center was a period of physical, mental and spiritual training for me, leo said. But I always had peace. I knew that God, whom I depended on, would save me Now, when I recall those things, I think of it as life training, and I know that God will not let this training be in vain. Leo has been released from prison, but he is still monitored closely by authorities. He may never be able to return to Bible distribution. Still, he knows that his faith increased as he experienced God's care for him in a Chinese prison. And you believe that there is so much to unpack there. The fact that it's even illegal to print certain versions of the Bible or to print anything like that is just it's insanity. But that's the reality, because the Chinese government knows that the Bible does not approve of that sort of regime. In fact, the Chinese government puts itself above God. In fact, they are a communist regime and they put themselves as God. I should say Now vomorg slash Bible challenge. That's where you can go to help partner with Voice of the Martyrs. It's $10 a Bible. They're trying to raise $2 million coming into 2024. And so just $10 you can get a Bible. And imagine someone literally will hold a Bible in their hand and it will be because of $10 that you gave. Isn't that incredible? I just think that's so fascinating. And we sit here and we got these Bibles and many of us go days without reading it. I can't, I mean, it's just, I don't do that anymore, maybe in the past, but not anymore. It's too precious and we need it, we need to discern it, we need to meet with the Lord. And so that brings me to my challenge for you. Years ago, a pastor challenged me and said, hey, try to see one verse every day that you can share with your wife. And I thought, well, that's simple enough. And so I would just out of my daily Bible reading time, I would find one verse and I would share it, and sometimes it would. You know it was meaningful to me, I had, it was some insight, it was maybe something we'd been talking about, and sometimes I would just share that in a quick word about it, and other times we would go into hours of conversation about it. So I want to challenge you to do the same. Can you get into the Word every day and have a meaningful interaction between you and the Lord? Whether it's chapters or books of the Bible that you're getting through, or whether it's one verse, whatever it is, the important part is the encounter, your relationship with the Word. The consistency in this is much more important than the length of time that you're spending. You want to have that meaningful encounter with the Lord, so can you do that? Can you find at least one verse every day that impacts you? Bonus thing that you can do is to share that with someone else. Can you share it with a family member, or maybe a friend or a coworker, whatever it is, maybe someone that needs some encouragement. If you've decided to partner with Voice of the Martyrs and get these Bibles to these believers in these hostile areas, in these difficult situations, would you let me know? If you're watching this on YouTube or Rumble, just leave a comment below, and if not, if you're just listening to the audio, you can email me at ryanshowercom, and you'll find a link to that in the show notes as well. I hope you'll join me in taking our Bibles seriously and not taking them for granted, at a minimum committed to getting in the Bible every day and getting a meaningful interaction with the Lord, even if it's just a single verse, make sure you like and subscribe if you're on YouTube. Thanks for joining, god bless and we'll see you in the next episode.

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