Struggling to live for what so many die for

I finished reading "Hearts of Fire: Eight Women in the Underground Church and Their Stories of Costly Faith" and am working on "Defying ISIS," and it's making me realize that church persecution is alive and well in the world today.

With the current political climate, we talk about how Christians are under attack in the United States, and I don't think many of us realize what Christians are going through in other parts of the world. In "Defying ISIS," the author talks to Christian refugees who wonder why Americans aren't standing up for them, why we aren't fighting for them when we know what's going on. Yet, I didn't comprehend what was going on.

Yes, I knew that ISIS was bad, but what they were doing to Christians? The fact that almost 90 percent of Christians in the Middle East have been annihilated or forced to convert? The fact that ISIS fighters are buying and selling Christian women and girls and using them for tortuous lustful acts?

I'm trying to process this information and how we can actually make a difference in that world. What can we do?

But another question popped up. "It has always been a mystery to me why so many Christians in the West struggle to live for what so many Christians in persecuted counties are willing to die for," Johnnie Moore wrote in "Defying ISIS."

I so often think that the goal of being a Christian is to be a role model and to get people to like you, because if they like you, they will want to be like you. If they want to be like you, then maybe they too will want to become a Christian.

In the persecuted world, it's not about living for other people. It's about living, and dying, for Christ. It's all about Jesus. Through persecution, in troublesome times, they will get to talk to people about God. They're not worried whether those people like them. They are worried about what they are doing for God.

Through persecution, the gospel often grows, it said in the book. That seems counterintuitive in the West. It seems if Christians are being persecuted, who would want to become one? But I think it's the example that if people are willing to give up their lives for something, that something is important.

God can work through any situation. I think we need to stop wanting people to like us and wanting to live comfortable lives, thinking that if we're happy and content then that means God is shining down on us.

Almost all of the Apostles were martyred. People hated them. People didn't like them. It was God working through them that brought people to himself, not the fact that people liked the Apostles.

I struggle to read the Bible and to pray, because there are cushier things to do. I want life to be comfortable. Those who know life is not about comfort and who have nothing but faith truly are blessed.

I keep thinking the goal is to get to heaven and to hear "Well done, good and faithful servant." But who am I compared to those who are every day suffering and risking their lives for God? They will surely hear the phrase. I think we have to work ever so much harder to truly become good and faithful servants.

It is easier for a camel to go through an eye of a needle than for a rich man to reach heaven. Because us rich men don't have any idea what it is truly like to "live for Christ" and to be willing to die at any moment for him. We struggle to live for what so many are daily giving their lives for.

I think it's time I remember that.