We at the Summit Church are highly committed to reaching the nations with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And by God’s grace, we are gaining ground in some very difficult places—but not without a very high cost.
Three years ago, one of our teams led a college student in Southeast Asia to Christ. This young man is a product of your labor and sacrificial giving, and he very much needs us to fight for him in prayer as he walks through a very rough season. See his prayer request below:
Dear brothers and sisters,
If you are willing, I have a prayer request that you can help to pray for. It is about the persecution that I have received since coming back home here in Southeast Asia. I have been here a week and because I came home as a different man with a new identity in Christ, my family has not received that very well. I have been forced to abandon my faith in Christ in a very harsh way by my dad. Things almost got physical and dangerous when he started to throw things at me. But by the grace of God it didn’t happen. I was cursed, mocked, threatened, shouted at, and continually ridiculed because of my faith. They found out about my intention to pursue ministry after graduation, which made things even worse.
My house is filled with idol statues, which my dad worships. Many people in my hometown offer sacrifices for their ancestors and countless false gods and it is heartbreaking to see. I wake up to the sound of the Muslim call to prayer. They pray 5 times a day to a false god. Everywhere I see poverty deeply rooted in the society, while the thirst for materialism keeps rising. I am convinced that God has sent me to this dark place to be a light and to know what total dependence on Him really means, but I never thought that being one light in such great darkness could be this hard. The cost of following Christ indeed is high.
So this is my invitation for you to help me. There are dark places in the world and some of you may not know that, but I am in one of those places. I cannot do this alone, but through Christ I can hope. So pray for me, pray for my family, pray for my country. Pray that God would have mercy and I would persevere for the next persecutions that will happen to me. Pray that if God is willing, I can survive and live so that I can proclaim His Gospel to my family, my people, my country and to the end of the world.
With thanksgiving,
Your Brother in Christ
