Heroic Faith - Hope Amid Global Persecution

I'm Peter Rosenberger, and many years ago when my wife Gracie became a double amputee, she saw the importance of quality prosthetics. She saw the importance of a support team and people that could help her regain her life after losing both legs. And she had this vision of creating an organization that would help others do the very same thing while pointing them to Christ.

And for more than 17 years we've been doing just that. We purchase supplies, we send equipment, and we train and we send teams over to West Africa. We've been working with the country of Ghana, several clinics over there now, and each week more people walk because of Gracie's vision. In 2011 we launched a new program outreach to family caregivers.

Drawing on my now 36 plus years as Gracie's caregiver through a medical nightmare, I offer insights I've learned all of it the hard way to fellow caregivers to help them stay strong and healthy while taking care of someone who is not. If you want to be a part of this, go out to standingwithhope.com slash giving, standingwithhope.com slash giving to help us do more. At Standing with Hope, we're reaching the wounded and those who care for them.

Standingwithhope.com slash giving. Take my hand, lean on me, we will stand. Do you see, do you see all the people sinking down? Don't you care, don't you care? Are you gonna let them drown? How can you be so numb not to care if they come? You close your eyes and pretend the job's done. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver here on American Family Radio.

This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the program for you as a family caregiver. We're glad you're with us. Hopeforthecaregiver.com.

I want to shift gears just a little bit. We've been talking on this program today about the three I's that every caregiver struggles with. The loss of independence, the isolation, and the loss of identity. And I appreciate your indulgence as I review that. There are people that are joining this audience every day who've never heard any type of program that is targeting a family caregiver.

And they don't know these things, and so thank you for allowing me to review. One of the things I also wish to do on this is to draw strength from other people's stories, from other people's journeys, from what's going on around us. And I think it's very important that we see this. We tend to be a little bit closed off here. Sometimes we focus on our own ideas and our own thoughts, and I don't know that that's very healthy for us. There's a big world out there with a lot of things going on, and the Kingdom of God is globally moving forward. And there are people dealing with very difficult realities, particularly when it comes to freedom of religion, which we have enjoyed for centuries here in the United States.

But across the world, it's not quite the same picture. And in our last block of the show today, I wanted to take a few moments to introduce to you someone who is going after the stories of what's happening around the world. People who are being persecuted for their faith, their Christian faith, can we draw strength from others who are facing painful things in their lives and yet standing firm?

And yes, we can. And so I wanted to introduce you to Leila Gilbert. She is an award-winning prolific writer.

I mean, she's written more than 60 books. And in this book, Heroic Faith, Hope Amid Global Persecution, she collaborated with Ariel del Toro, with Lieutenant General William Boykin, and they unpacked so much of what is happening geopolitically and spiritually in Asia and Africa and Middle East and other areas of the world. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to talk about this book, why they wrote it, what they're wanting to communicate. Because I think as Christians, we have got to lift up our eyes and look around to our brothers and sisters around the world and also draw strength from the fact that they are withstanding very difficult things. That same faithfulness of God that is sustaining them can also sustain us. It is available to us.

Are we connected in this? Are we seeing the global church in that capacity? We work with amputees over in West Africa.

We've been doing this since 2005. And some of our patients, we work mostly in the country of Ghana, but some of our patients come as far away as Nigeria. And there is so much persecution going on in Africa, in Asia, in the Middle East, all around. What can we learn from this? What can we learn from our brothers and sisters who are facing these things?

What is God asking of us? And so, Leila, I welcome you to the show. Thank you so much for taking the time. And talk a little bit about why you took this book on and what it meant to you to be able to write this.

Well, thank you for inviting me. Yes, I've done quite a bit of writing over the years on persecution of Christians globally. And this opportunity came up with Family Research Council because we have been doing that as well as being concerned about the United States and issues there. We've been looking over across the borders, across the world, to see what else is happening. And what we've really learned is how very desperate the situation is all around the world. I'm seeing numbers like 360 million Christians are under some level of persecution in the world. And we're talking about intense persecution. We have problems here.

We understand that. But we're talking about life and death situations. And as you're dealing with people that are wounded sometimes for the rest of their lives, we have this same thing happening by intention, by radicals who are attacking Christians. And in Africa, specifically, we're talking about right now, Nigeria is probably the worst case scenario there.

Well, and we've been seeing that with some of the patients that we treat that come from Nigeria, we've had these conversations with them because they've asked us to come with our prosthetic limb work to Nigeria, and there's just really no way that I can safely take our teams in there at this point. What has surprised you as you delved into all this and you've put your hands on this for a long time, as you put all this together in this book, what surprised you through this journey? Well, it's always surprised me to see these people continuing to gather for worship, continuing to praise God, to sing, to rejoice in Him. They have a kind of energy in the Lord that a lot of us don't have. We get burdened down with our daily lives or whatever we're doing. And in the case of your listeners, with terrible, challenging responsibilities, but these people really take their life in their hands to go to church, to go to worship, and they go. And sometimes they don't live through it, but they go anyway. And I think that that joy in the Lord is something that I admire. I frankly wish I had more of it sometimes, but we can learn from them because they do it in the midst of persecution. You know, I've been watching this too, and you see these villages being invaded and these pastors being singled out and killed and their families and so forth.

And yet the resilience of this is really extraordinary. What are some of the other things that you see if we step back from Africa a little bit? I know that this book features Asia, it features the Middle East, it features Africa and all these things going in.

You also had Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin as a part of this book writing this thing, and he focuses on most of Asia, I believe, in this book. What are some things that you want the readers to glean from this after they've read this book? What is something you want them to just hang onto in their own lives as they read this? I think it's really encouraging to think about the fact that in spite of this persecution, in all those places you've mentioned, there are millions of people becoming Christian believers. They're choosing to follow Christ in spite of the persecution and in the face of it. Because there's hope there. He has promised us so much, not only in this life but in the life to come, but he gives us strength for the day. And so many of the religions that these people are in by birth or by heredity or whatever, don't offer that.

They offer rules and they offer control and this and that, but what we have is really something greater. And I think what I've learned from it is that the word of the Lord is powerful and it can energize us in everything we do, and we can use it to get through difficult days. We can trust him, we can lean on him, but we can also remember that people that are sometimes way worse off than we are, are smiling and singing his praises in the midst of their troubles. This is across the globe and I think it's inspiring and humbling and I'm just grateful to be aware of it because a lot of people in America don't even know this is going on.

I listened to a sermon from Pastor Harry Reader in Briarwood Presbyterian Church down in Birmingham. My son and his family go there and he said something, and I'm going to put you on the spot, I'm going to close with this. I'm going to put you a little bit on the spot, Leila, but he said something, he said, make no mistake, America is an anomaly to what's going on around the world. It is absolutely everywhere outside of this country where you have persecution and you have these things and we've been insulated and we've gotten a little bit distorted in our thinking.

He went on to talk about, but he said it is coming to us. Do you see that as well? Do you concur? Do you see that persecution starting to filter its way into the United States? Yeah, I think it's true. I mean, I think we're already seeing large organizations and even our government frowning on our values and on the things that we take from the Bible and consider our chosen lifestyle. I think that's true, but I also think that we can be inspired that there may be a revival in this country too, just as there is in the rest of the world, but we're going to be tested.

And I think of my grandchildren and I wonder what it's going to be like for them in 20 years. So I think there's a good case to be made for what this pastor has said. The book is called Heroic Faith, Hope Amid Global Persecution. Leila Gilbert is with us today.

I would encourage you to get a copy of this book today. I'm just feeling the intensity of us as Christians being aware of what's going on around us. We kind of yawn when we hear of 300 people being butchered in Nigeria. We say, oh, that's just a shame. And then we go back and watch, you know, all the news we can get on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. And we've been so insulated from this.

We don't realize the horrors that are going around. And I think this book will challenge us to not only pray, but to be aware of what's going on so that we can stand up and model this same faith. That same faith is available to each of us. And so Leila, I want you to know how much I appreciate you taking the time to be with us today. This is an extraordinary book.

It's a very sobering book. And yet Christ himself said, look, this is what's going to happen. They hate me.

They're going to hate you. So be prepared for this. And it's time for us to be prepared. And Leila, thank you for helping prepare us.

Well, thank you for inviting me. And God bless you for what you're doing. I appreciate that very much. Leila Gilbert, heroic faith, hope amid global persecution.

You get it wherever books are sold from Fidelis Publishing. And please get a copy of this and maybe even give it to your pastor, because I think that it's time for our pulpits to be speaking about this on a regular basis. And I think this will arm a lot of pastors to be able to start educating people and preparing people. We've got to be strong. We've got to be tough. And for those of us who are dealing with harsh circumstances in our life as caregivers, understand that that same grit and determination and what Leila talked about, the joy that they're able to sing and pray and come to Christ in the midst of these brutal circumstances, that same spirit that is facilitating all of that, regenerating people's lives through all of that is available to us as well.

In our circumstances right now, today. And thank you so much for this. Heroic faith, hope amid global persecution. Leila Gilbert, get the book today. This is Peter Rosenberg and this is Hope for the Caregiver. Hopeforthecaregiver.com We thank you for being a part of this program today. We'll see you next time.