So, I've been putting off starting the blog for awhile so I have a few everyday sermons today.  I went to a youth event where the accommodations were dorm rooms without A/C.  To some this qualified as "roughing it" which inspired this diatribe.

In the United States Christianity is too easy for our own good.  The worst many in the USA suffer as Christians is a little teasing from their non-Christian friends.  I have been to Nigeria and Haiti, two places where God can be hard to see through natural disasters, poverty and violence.  In my time in those countries I have noticed that personal adversity and faith in God are inversely proportionate meaning the stronger the adversity the more people rely on God.  In the United States when disasters happen, we often wonder why God would do these things.  In third world countries the reaction is "Thank you God for carrying me through".  

We can see this kind of faith in the disciples and Paul after the ascension of Jesus.  Although Peter and Paul were jailed and persecuted they continued to persist, thanking God for their relative safety.  I would also like to set up Peter and Paul as examples of doing the things that God calls us to do. In the case of those two it was traveling the known world, starting churches, converting non-believers and generally encouraging all Christians.  Today, God still calls us to go to places that are uncomfortable, to do things that we are unfamiliar with, but just like the disciples, we must place our faith in God and know that God is with us and knows what is best.

There are modern day examples of this kind of faith and of God pulling those people through.  Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr spent nights in prison, but they led their respective countries and people to a nonviolent solution to the problem.  We can use these men as our examples.  Although they went through hardships, God worked with them and through them to lead them to the mountaintop.

Just as the disciples roughed it out, just as Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela did, so shall we do.  We as Christians in North America need to get down and dirty, spreading the word of the gospel through our words and our actions.  If this results in persecution or hardships take heart in knowing that there is trail of Christians who were treated the same way going back 2000 years and that Jesus tells us that when we are persecuted for his names sake we are the inheritors of the kingdom of heaven.  

So this then is my encouragement, know that just as God helped the disciples, so shall he help us and just as the disciples did the dirty work, so should we.