I was so thankful to see that the story of Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani of Iran was headlining on CNN. People around the world have been speaking out against this great injustice and now it is getting international attention! Leaders in the US, UK, Germany and other countries are speaking out against this legal, religious and human rights violation.

While it is wonderful that this case is receiving international attention, it is vital that we continue to pray for this dear brother in Christ. He still faces execution at any time. He has a wife and two sons (ages 7 & 9).

2 Corinthians 12:26 tells us “If one part suffers, every part suffers.” My heart aches for this man and his family. I could not imagine being put in this situation. He had the opportunity to deny Christ four times and he refused each time. He has stood strong through persecution.

Please continue to pray for this dear brother in Christ! Pray that he would continue to stand strong. Please also pray for his wife and two young sons- that they would continue to trust the Lord and remain strong despite this horrible situation. Thank you so much for joining us in prayer!

Photo: The Evangelical Outpost

We have ….Yet

We have the latest of
technology
our MRI’s, lasers
and aromatherapy

We have our churches
with their orchestras
chandeliers and
coffeeshops

Our houses
With their swimming
pools, microwaves
and poolside decks

Yet our brothers and our sisters
sit in prisons dark and bleak
Suffering such atrocities
of which they can hardly speak

Can you hear them calling?
friend, please pray for me
See me in this corner
of darkness and despair

The cross is very heavy
that I am called to bear
I need your faithful, fervent prayers
to lift my heart in here

Sometimes I feel so weak
but when I know you pray
I feel my Savior’s touch
beside me here today

Pray that I’ll be given grace
to not deny my Lord
To walk by faith, no matter what the cost
or what the future brings

For Christ went before and bore the shame
and said so long ago
“As they have persecuted me
so they’ll persecute you too”

I’ll pray for you too
you who are so free
So you’ll not falter or give up
to plead for me in prayer

And if that day comes to you, my friend
of persecution for our Lord
I’ll pray that you too will be given grace
To bring glory to His Name

Carol Dykstra

As the hikers recounted their whole ordeal, one quote especially stood out to me:

“There are people in Iran who have been imprisoned for years for simply attending a protest, for writing a pro-democracy blog or for worshiping an unpopular faith.”

Christianity is one of the most unpopular faiths in Iran. Many Christians in this country have faced this kind of persecution. I think of Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani who is on death row for refusing to deny Christ.
Pastor Nadarkhani was sentenced to death for apostasy because he converted to Christianity. According to an article in the National Review, he had been tried and found guilty a year ago, even though the court also found that he had never been a practicing Muslim as an adult.

Iran’s Supreme Court stated that the pastor would have four chances to recant his faith and convert to Islam. He has been given this chance twice already, and will have two more opportunities to do so tomorrow and Wednesday.

Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani was arrested in 2009 when he attempted to legally register his church with authorities. His defense lawyer was sentenced to a nine year prison sentence for “actions and propaganda against the Islamic regime.”

Iran is a country that desperately needs our prayers. Please pray that the Lord would intervene in a miraculous way. Pray that Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani and other Christians in prison for their faith would be set free and that more would come to know the saving power that is found in Christ alone!

This is a picture of the headquarters of the Muttawa in Saudi Arabia. The Muttawa are the religious police recognized by the government. They ensure that all Saudis adhere to Islamic law and are often the greatest persecutors of Christians. Please pray for the safety of Christians in Saudi Arabia. Pray also for their persecutors; that they would come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Just a few weeks ago, a Christian was sentenced to 105 days in prison for his faith. Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani was sentenced to death for preaching the gospel. These Christians face the worst kinds of human rights abuses and need our prayers!

Iran is ranked #2 on the Open Doors World Watch List (second only to North Korea). Many of the approximately 350,000 believers from a Muslim background live in fear of harassment by the government.
While Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in New York this week, will you pray for this persecutor of Christians? Will you pray that he has a ‘Saul to Paul’ conversion, ending his reign of persecution? Thank you so much for your prayers!

This is Mehdi. Mehdi is a Muslim Background Believer. This picture really stands out to me because the joy of the Lord is evident in his life, despite the persecution he faces. Will you pray that Mehdi would continue to know this joy?

Tomorrow, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will release the 2010 mid-year Report on International Religious Freedom at 10 am in the Press Briefing Room at the U.S. Department of State. If you have a chance, I would encourage you to tune into this. It is very significant to have the government recognize human rights violations. It is vital that we listen to this, so we can know what they know and advocate what they do not know.

Please pray that this will be a time where people across the United States will be informed about the atrocities of persecution and will be moved to do something about it. Pray that God would be able to use the church in a mighty way.

A male colleague, who she considered a close friend, began acting strangely. “One day when I was least expecting it, he told me that he had started liking me and that I should convert to Islam and marry him, she said. “I told him that I had always considered him just a friend, and that although I held him in great regard, marrying him was not possible since we belonged to different faiths.”

Weeks later, the man, along with an accomplice grabbed her and forced her in a car. They took her to a separate location and he raped her, while the accomplice filmed the entire incident.

After the assault, he told her that if she told anyone, the footage would show up on a social networking site. He told her again to recant her faith and convert to Islam, but she refused.

One evening he showed up to her house with the film and showed it to her family. “He then told my shocked family that they had no other option but to hand me over to him,” she said. “He told them that he ‘owned’ me now.” Pakistanis tend to shame the victims rather than the perpetrators of rape, so he attempted to feed off this idea so that her family would force her to marry him.

“We had a very tough decision to make,” she said. ‘We could have either conceded to his demand or be ready to face the shame and dishonor by reporting his crime, but we chose the latter.”

While reading this, I could not believe that she actually had to choose between those options. My heart broke for my sister in Christ. Would you join me in praying for her during this horrific time?

This is a picture of a Bengali Christian weeping as she shares her testimony. A group of women from the West traveled to Bangladesh to meet with their Bengali sisters in Christ who are suffering from heinous forms of persecution.

Last night, Pastor Zhang was released from prison. This was an amazing answer to prayer, as Pastor Zhang had been incarcerated nearly for seven years.

Pastor Zhang, of the China for Christ church, was arrested without charge in December 2004, in Zhengzhou, Henan province. The house church leader had been detained five times before and had already spent a total of 12 years in prison. His first imprisonment began in 1974, and he spent seven years in the Xi Hua labor camp after being sentenced under the crime of “counter-revolution under the guise of religion.”

He was moved to the prison in Kaifeng after he was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years’ imprisonment in June 2006 for “illegally crossing the national border and fraudulently obtaining a passport.” His wife, Chen Hongxian was only allowed to visit her husband in the prison once a month, traveling two or three hours to get there. She was the only official visitor that had been permitted to see Pastor Zhang for several years.

Pastor Zhang suffers from several chronic diseases, such as diabetes and high blood pressure. He suffered a stroke in July 2007 which paralyzed half his body, but his condition has improved since then.

Over the past several years in prison, Pastor Zhang has continued to witness to many prisoners and introduced many to Christ. He said, “There are former high-ranking officers (at the governor’s level) that are prisoners in my cell. I would never have thought I would be able to talk to these people for hours, even days at a time, about the Gospel and the house church movement. Their hearts were hard, but now they have softened and they received Jesus as their personal savior. That is the reason I was placed in prison!”

After the cellmates of Pastor Zhang were released from prison, they called his wife, to express gratitude for their new life in Christ.

Thank you Lord for setting your wonderful servant free!