"Join with me in suffering for the gospel." - 2 Timothy 1:8 The Heavenly Man, pages 213-214: "There are thousands of testimonies of Christians in China who have paid a great price for the faith. I'd like to share just one here. "Sister Yuen Meng'en came from one of the wealthiest families in Shanghai. She was a widow with two young children; a son aged eleven and a daughter, nine, when she was imprisoned in 1967. After a year in prison the PSB thought they would have 'compassion' on her. The chief warden said, 'This past year you've shown excellent conduct, so now we plan to reward you. All you have to do is write a confession of your crimes and you'll be free to go home and take care of your children. Surely your God would want you to take care of your own flesh and blood?' "The authorities arranged for her children to visit the prison. As soon as Sister Yuen saw them her heart was torn and tears of love welled up in her eyes. "The authorities asked her, 'What do you want, your Jesus or your children? If you want Jesus you'll stay in this prison. If you want your children, you can go home.' They gave her a pencil and a piece of paper and asked her to write down her choice. "When they read what she had written, they were amazed to find she had stated in large words, 'Jesus cannot be replaced. Even my own children cannot replace Jesus.' Sister Yuen chose to stay in prison. The warden shouted, 'Listen, you kids! Your mother has rejected you! She doesn't love you!' "Sister Yuen was sentenced to a further 23 years in prison. "When she was released in 1981 her son was 34 years old, and worked in a government job in Tibet. Sister Yuen hadn't seen either of her children even once in all of those intervening years. Her son had been taken by the state and raised in atheistic schools, and had been told his own mother had disowned him. Many Christians had visited and shared the gospel with him, but he always responded by saying, 'Your Jesus took my mother away from me, why should I believe in him?' "Sister Yuen traveled to Tibet to find her son. He rejected her, screamed that he had no mother, and pushed her from his home. "She has never seen her son again. "The path of following the Lord Jesus Christ is not an easy one. Along the way lies suffering and hardship, but nothing we experience will ever compare to the suffering Jesus endured for us on the cross." In an environment like this, what is amazing is that the church did not shrink, but rather grew. I confess I fall into the temptation to avoid suffering in the quest to find comfort by placing my identity in my reputation, and finding security in earthly treasures. The believers in China (and other nations with oppressive governments) have, I believe, a deeper understanding of faith in Christ Jesus alone because for them, confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior is a matter of life and death, or in this case, it can be a loss of family. For these believers, Christianity is stripped down to its bare bones and churches are united on the basis that they believe the gospel. Eschatology, pneumatology, the order of the decrees, and other -ologies become trivial matters. There is no time to squander about whether or not Jesus' death on the cross provided limited or unlimited atonement. What matters is that Jesus Christ did die, and as a result, man can be reconciled with God and have a relationship with him, adopted as a co-heir with Christ. So let's stop avoiding suffering for the sake of the gospel, and understand that when we choose God as our master, we cannot serve anything else. | 
