Would you die for Christ?

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SOGFPP,

I subscribed to that site, and the newsletter like a week ago.

As to the question posed by the title, It would be the greatest honor I could recieve.

God bless you brother..... next time let the rest of us know!

Post it here!

Peace in Christ,
Scott

Romans 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship.

Dying is easy, it's the living that's hard. We are called to die to ourselves, but the problem with living sacrifices is that we keep crawling off of the alter.

I often wonder how I would really act. My bravado knows no bounds. But like Peter, the cock crowing might find me doing something completely different.

Thanks for the website.

God bless you brother..... next time let the rest of us know!

Post it here!

Click to expand...

I was actually going to, along witht he book I got the site from. It slipped my mind

Jesus Freaks compiled by dc Talk and the Voice of the Martyrs, Albury Publishing is a 368 page book with ~100 stories of Martyrs in it.

Edit: It was very inspirational to me.

Would I die for Him?

A question which should not be too quickly answered.

The Spirit of the Lord asked this of me--or so I allege, 'bout 14 years ago now. I realized I was without an answer, if I were to be truthful. And I learned much on the subject since then.

Being both a Christian and living under persecution, does not make someone a martyr in God's eyes.

Take, for example, the country of Sudan. Millions of Christians are there, many who were murdered. Does that make all of them martyrs? Were they murdered because they took a stance for Christ, or simply because they lived in a country where the prejudices and hatred of some inevitably left these Christians the only available subjects for murderous outbreaks?

I have come to know that true martyrdom is by RSVP. It's when the Christian has been carried along the regenerative process by God's Spirit, to the point in their life when they must decide to stop sitting on the fence, to either be a true disciple of Christ at whatever cost, or not. Those who accept this invitation--this hopefully eventual leading to an all-encompassing love of Truth, the whole counsel of Truth--have accepted martyrdom. These have come to realize the Christian life is but a series of successive "deaths," one really no different than another. They have been brought by Grace and Grace alone, to accept the subsequent reality that they are already--past tense--dead and buried with Christ indeed. What difference would it make if the fleshly tent were per chance one day destroyed at the hands of another, prior to a natural end? None.

Sure, those who suffer hardship will find it hard to accept the possibility that I, as I sit here in a warm, comfortable home here in the West, my belly full from lunch, without fear of any current physical attack, with my armchair assertions that I or someone like me could be considered by God a martyr in every bit the same vein as some who have physically died in some oppressive nation of the East or Middle East; but nevertheless--.

"Those who [attempt to] live godly in Christ Jesus WILL SUFFER persecution." This is a timeless statement, indicative of any and all locales. If you are not presently hated and despised, if you are not presently beong attacked now and then and either verbally or physically abused, then you have not committed to the deaths required for eternal Life, and you are not a martyr, regardless of how your physical body may transpire.

brother jim

(The above notwithstanding, the newsletter ref. in the thread starter is excellent.)

I would die for my son...I don't know Christ well enough to make a sacrifice to him.

Cfer...

Without a humble and honest evaluation of where we really are, we cannot progress. This is but the first step. You don't need to feel uneasy about being honest.

I don't show my wife I love her by waiting to die while pushing her out of an oncoming train. No, I show her every day by thinking about her, and demonstrating that love in thousands of different ways. I also show her by not taking extreme risks while diving, etc. It's the myriad subtle sacrifices I do for her every day that demonstrate my love for her.

God is no different.

I dont believe anyone can truly say YEs i would or no i wouldnt unless they faced that situation personally.

With the love of God in my heart? Yes I could.
Without the love of God in my heart ? No I couldnt.

God tells us that he will provide what we need for our trials and that he will never give us more than we can handle. With that in mind, then yes, I think I would be able to die for Christ.

My life has already changed phenomenally since I accepted Him and I believe that if He asks for that sacrifice from me, then it is because He knows my faith has progressed to the point where, with faith, I can.


Melody

I would hope that if I was in that situation God would fill me with conviction and allow me to die for him, and by dying allowing others to see Christ in me.

That being said, It would be extremely hard to die for Christ without that conviction, just as Jesus pleaded with the father in the Garden before his arrest.

Thanks for the link .

As for the title's question, I have every belief that I would be willing to die. I would consider it an honor. However, I must also admit that while I've been in some squirrley positions before, I've never been in danger of death. I like to think I would respond that way, but until I am in the situation, I can never know...

Well, I'm likely the most guilty, but we have drifted away from the premise of the thread's starter.

When I search my New Testament to see how the early church handled their finances, I do not find that they established international non-profit organizations of disaster relief, feeding programs, etc., but rather that the monies of the local church went: 1) to meet the needs of the local church and its people, of course; 2) to meet the needs of the Apostles of the central church (either the formal one at Jerusalem or the informally located one of Paul's), and; 3) the "abundance left over" (by impl.) was sent "overseas" to those congregations and their people who lived in less prosperous areas. In regards to the latter, i.e. the church left it up to individual churches who were financial recipients, as to how the donated funds should be disbursed, it first, again by implication of the Word, being used to meet the needs of the impoverished Christian as an individual. The church orgamization and its hierarchy, and therefore the order God has established and ordained, was not circumvented via independant non-profit goodwill organizations which operate outside that order.

To this, my hat's off to the group mentioned in the thread's starter. At least they are channeling the excesses of financially blessed Christians to those whom God would seemingly, first and foremost will for it to be channelled: needy CHRISTIANS, not--.

brother jim