Don’t see the audio player? Click here.
In some countries, sharing your faith can land you in prison. One man who shared the Gospel was jailed and tortured. Another was sentenced to three years for showing a Gospel film. Yet these Christians don’t pray that things will change; they pray for strength to remain faithful to the Lord. What these Christians experience is not unlike the persecution Jeremiah faced years ago. God promised to protect him as he served as God’s spokesperson to ancient Judah. Yet after he delivered some scathing messages about the people’s sins and urged them to repent so they could escape exile, his enemies conspired to shut him up. They put him into a deep cistern. But down there in the bottom of the cistern, he prayed. God then moved Ebed-melech, a Cushite eunuch, to rescue Jeremiah. Ebed-melech was a foreigner working in the palace of King Zedekiah. But he was concerned about Jeremiah so he persuaded King Zedekiah to let him rescue the prophet. Later, Jeremiah recalled how God delivered him. We read in Lamentations 3:52 how Jeremiah said, “My enemies, whom I have never harmed, hunted me down like a bird. They threw me into a pit and dropped stones on me. The water rose over my head, and I cried out, ‘This is the end!’ But I called on your name, LORD, from deep within the pit. You heard me when I cried… Yes, you came when I called.” Jeremiah teaches us that when we as God’s people are overwhelmed by circumstances, we can call on our Heavenly Father. He can give us peace in the midst of our storm.
