Welcome to the Hackberry House of Chosun. My name is Bob. I'm reading from a devotional book put out by Voice of the Martyrs. It's called Extreme Devotion. This book catalogs the struggles of God's people over past years. Today, we're visiting old Romania, many years ago, a fellow named Prince Vladimir. Move it, Prince, laughed the guard, grabbing the man's arm. Let's see how you like your new accommodations." The guards shoved Prince Vladimir from the royal house of Gika into the harsh prison cell. In one corner, he could see prisoners taking clothes and blankets from a thin, dead prisoner. In the back, he could hear the screams of a prisoner being tortured. This place was a long way from the life of luxury he had known at home. And yet Prince Vladimir survived the dehumanizing conditions in prison by holding on to his faith in Christ, who comforted him and guided him. A cellmate of Vladimir once said, nowhere have I heard purer prayers and more thoughts of eternal value than in communist prisons. Vladimir's eternal thoughts from this time were published in a powerful book. He wrote, blessed are those who spread joy that arises out of their own suffering. He who denies himself for others clothes himself with Christ. Seek one who pushes you away. May my joys never come through the suffering of others. May my suffering bring some joy to others. Who would dream that such pure prayers and thoughts of eternal value would come from a dethroned prince who survived the dungeons of communist cruelty? Philippians 4, 7, and the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Negative thoughts can affect us profoundly. If we focus our minds on our sufferings, we can grow bitter and resentful as a result. If we choose to think positively in the midst of a crisis, however, then we can lift ourselves above our circumstances. Not only can we save ourselves from discouragement and despair, but we can also help others. Vladimir experienced joy in his sufferings. Are you prone to negativity when you're going through trials? Remember, you cannot control what happens in life, but you can control your attitude. Refuse to be negative. Ask God to give you a positive perspective on your trials, and open your eyes to help others. Amen. If you'd like a copy of Extreme Devotion, just email voiceofthemartyrs at thevoiceatvom.org. They'll tell you how that can happen. I'm also reading from the February 2024 issue of their newsletter magazine, which focuses on India, Kashmir in particular. We have a story today entitled, a rebel for the cause of Christ. This person was jailed twice, once as an insurgent and once as an evangelist, a Kashmiri Christian who's spreading the message of eternal peace. When Rahim was just 14 years old, 1989, he joined the Muslim separatist group, Al-Jihad, in northern India. But the teenager didn't really believe in the cause. His home region, the Kashmir Valley, is 97% Muslim, while the rest of the country is predominantly Hindu. This religious and cultural imbalance has fostered long-standing tensions and sometimes violence, as various Islamic insurgencies have waxed and waned in the region. The separatist groups scattered throughout Kashmir demanded local support, making life hard and even dangerous for families that would not send able-bodied men to fight. Although Rahim's family was politically well-connected and on good terms with the Indian central government, he joined the insurgents to protect his family from the inevitable harassment that came to those who did not support the separatist cause. Rahim felt coerced to join the insurgency, even though he didn't identify strongly with the ideology driving it. I didn't know Allah, Rahim said. Whatever the mullahs, the teachers, would teach us, that's what we would keep doing. There was no inner peace. There was no satisfaction for the soul. In 1993, Rahim was captured by the Indian military and detained for four months. During that time, he was harshly interrogated as they demanded information about the insurgency. When he was released, he still felt only despair and dissatisfaction. He survived by doing odd jobs as a day laborer, but the lack of employment was not his biggest problem. I couldn't find Allah, Rahim said. That was a very important thing because in the Muslim religion, the fear of Allah was always put on your minds. We were never told that Allah is your friend and loves you." Rahim considered suicide to escape the hopelessness, but he soon met a young woman who restored his will to live. While working at a Ramadan event in 2002, Rahim met the woman who would eventually become his wife. The attraction was mutual and immediate, but there was a significant obstacle. Rahim was a Shia Muslim, while his love interest was a Sunni Muslim. The Shia and Sunni sects have long regarded one another as kafirs, or heretics. Rahim knew their families would not approve, but he decided to pursue the relationship anyway. His family eventually relented, but hers was adamant that they should not marry. In the end, they had a civil wedding in court instead of celebrating traditional Islamic rituals. The honeymoon was short-lived. When the family of Rahim's new wife learned her whereabouts, they kidnapped her. It took police and court involvement to reunite husband and wife. And we lived happily ever after, Rahim equipped, recalling that day. We were together. And after that everything was fine. I went back home and my family was happy to have me back. But still there was an emptiness. I was not happy. I was looking for something beyond. Rahim needed a way to support himself and his wife and so a friend taught him to drive and helped him to get a car that he could use as a taxi. The work provided not only a solution to Rahim's financial needs but also an answer to his spiritual questions. in the form of an unusual passenger. One day in 2004, a man got into Rahim's taxi, and as they drove, said that he sensed that Rahim was unhappy. He placed his hand on Rahim's shoulder and said, we should meet. When they next saw one another, the man asked Rahim if he prayed. Are you in touch with God, he asked. Rahim felt all his old skepticism rising up. I thought in my mind, who can really know God, he recalled. But the man, a Christian pastor named Ahmed, continued. He told me that God is always with me, Rahim said, and whatever we have to share, we can share with Him. This thing touched my heart. As their relationship developed, Ahmed taught Rahim now how he could pray and how to draw near to God. Then one day he asked Rahim, have you heard of Christ? From Islamic teaching, Rahim believed Jesus to be a prophet, but Ahmed told him more about the life and teaching of Christ. Rahim's views gradually shifted and he found his heart being drawn to Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Then one night, Rahim picked up a female passenger who was in deep distress, seven months pregnant and bleeding profusely. While driving her to the hospital, he began to pray in Jesus' name for the woman and her unborn baby. By the time they arrived at the hospital, the bleeding had stopped. The woman was fine, the delivery was normal, and the baby was healthy. I was just new moving into the Christian faith when this happened, he said. The Lord heard my voice, and he answered my prayer. My faith really grew that God heard my prayer. It was amazing. By this time, Rahim and his wife were parents, and he began to tell their two children about God and prayer. When others in his family overheard, their suspicions were confirmed that he was involved with Christians. There was a big ruckus, Rahim said. They said I had gone bad, had become evil, that I had better leave the home and go. But what was intended as punishment, Rahim turned to good. He used the opportunity of living away from his family to openly explain the gospel to his wife. Though she was at first resistant and even angry, she eventually placed her faith in Christ as well. As Rahim and his family grew closer to Christ, the pastor, Ahmed, challenged them to take another step of faith. At his urging, they enrolled in a three-month Bible training program in 2009, led by a bold Christian named Muhammad Yusuf Ba'ath. Yusuf had also come to faith in Christ through Ahmed's witness. Yusuf was a very special person, Rahim said. If he wanted to convince somebody, he would just keep his hand on the person's shoulder and the person would listen to him. He used to enter a mosque, stand on the first floor, and pray in the name of Jesus. If there were some people quarreling, he was the first one to intervene and try to stop them from fighting. Yusuf was known for helping the poor and vulnerable, his service a reflection of his deep faith in God. He was also an unflinching witness for Christ, who patiently built relationships with Muslims and gently opened the Gospel to them. Rahim learned much from Yusuf's example. Upon completing the Bible training, Rahim joined Yusuf in outreach efforts to the local community, which was composed largely of Islamic fundamentalists. One day in 2011, as the two men were eating in a classroom where Yusuf taught Bible classes, a group of mullahs burst in and demanded to know what they were doing there. The mullahs searched the room and found Bibles in a cabinet, prompting accusations that Yusuf and Rahim were engaged in illegal religious activities. The mullahs summoned police, who then took them into custody. They were placed in a small dirty cell with criminals and subjected to humiliation. Everybody came to know that we were arrested because we had become Christians, Rahim said. Whenever someone was passing by, they would look at us and spit and say, be cursed, be cursed. They were detained for 13 days in what Rahim called pathetic conditions. But Yusuf repeatedly encouraged him to keep his eyes fixed on God. Yusuf was saying, whatever happens, just keep praying and praying and praying, Rahim recalled. Local mullahs called in reinforcements, Islamic scholars and leaders from as far away as Delhi, to gather outside the jail and protest Christian evangelism. Rahim said Yusuf was taken outside to answer their charges and demands. How dare you say you speak to God, the protesters shouted. Of course I speak to God," Yusuf replied, reminding them that prayer is also part of their Muslim faith. He gave the right answers to that, whatever they asked, Rahim said. Eventually, police released the two Christians into custody of the mullahs, who kept them locked in an Islamic school for five days. During that time, Rahim said, we were told that our thinking was wrong. They were trying to convince us that our faith was false. After days of pressuring the men to convert back to Islam, the mullahs changed tactics. They sent them home, periodically bringing them gifts of food and looking for any sign that they had resumed their Christian work. Pressure and ongoing scrutiny from the mullahs, though unwanted, didn't discourage Rahim. But a sense of indifference from other Christians after his return home did have an effect. Nobody ever made a call to me to see about my well-being, he said. That hurt me a lot. A frontline worker said that many Kashmiri Christians are distrustful of those that they don't know personally, even fellow believers. They experience so much insecurity in their daily lives that they are hesitant to reach out to others. Rahim's sense of abandonment by local believers was soon compounded by the loss of his livelihood. His taxi burned beyond repair and only Yusuf provided help. So gradually I began to drift away from God, Rahim said. And then on a wintry day in 2013, Rahim began to cough up blood. He was in and out of the hospital for a week as doctors sought a diagnosis. After finding that Rahim's lungs had ruptured, The doctors gave him little hope. Though he had drifted away from God, he recalled a song of prayer that he used to sing. God, remember me, the words went. Remember me, O Lord. In his weakened condition, he began to sing. Recalling the scene, a decade later, Rahim's eyes fill with tears. Suddenly I felt a whiff of breeze just pass through me, he said. The doctors came and examined me. They put a camera inside and looked. They discussed and said, there are no issues with you. You are discharged. You are fine. Rahim was reawakened to the love and calling of Christ by what he considered a miracle. God is not going to desert us even when we go away from Him, Rahim said. We may distance ourselves from Him, but He will always be by our side. Now my life is constantly in the presence of God. Any issue, any problem, I call upon the Lord. Rahim's life has not been free of problems and grief since his renewal of faith on July 1, 2015. Masked gunmen kidnapped his dear friend Yusuf and shot him to death. When I saw the news, Rahim recalled, I was very heartbroken because I had never seen anybody like him in Kashmir, the kind of faith he carried. His mentor's martyrdom has served to strengthen his own faith, and today Rahim tries to emulate Yusuf's commitment to prayer, evangelism, and care for the vulnerable. He takes a special joy in walking through the hospital wards and praying in Jesus' name for the sick and suffering there. Now, Rahim said he preaches the gospel to whomever it is possible. And in doing so, he is following Yusuf's example of getting to know people, learning their stories, and then speaking gospel truth to them in the context of those relationships. By getting to know them, Rahim said, I know what I should speak to each person. He also sees that equipping a new generation of believers is a key part of being a gospel minister. And so he makes sure that he's raising his own children to be faithful. I'm trying to walk the path that the Lord has laid for us, Rahim said. I want my family to be very strong and firm in the faith. They need to be strong to carry forth the legacy. Amen. End of story, end of magazine. We'll be looking for the March edition real soon. You may have recognized, if you've been following this every week that I read, you may have recognized Yusuf and Ahmed. These are men who brought others to the Lord and brought Rahim to the Lord. They were in our other stories. That's how they were brought to the Lord. That's how it works. If you have been brought to the Lord, what do you do? You bring others. Well, if you'd like to be put on the mailing list of Voice of the Martyrs, they will even give you back issues, I do believe. and you'll get free your own copy of the VOM newsletter magazine, free every month. Just contact them at vom.org. And this is the Hackberry House of Chosun. Lord willing, we get to talk again real soon. Bye-bye.