Hi there! Since I am on this site everyday, updating the page, trying to make it look snazzy and putting up the guest blog's, I thought that I might write a little something. Last night my husband and I went to a meeting at our church, where we heard more about the persecuted church. I have to be honest, just a few years ago I was the one in the audience when speakers came to speak about the persecuted church that was thinking, "That is really sad, I'll pray for those people." I never thought that I would ever be in a place where I could really be persecuted and suffer. Now that we have found ourselves at SEBTS and in the 2+2 program with the IMB my mind is being blown daily with the reality of the suffering of Christians around the world. You could definitely say that my heart has changed, and with that my prayers have changed for the churches around the world that are persecuted.
One of the main points that the speaker said that really hit me last night was that we don't necessarily need to pray that the suffering will go away for the persecuted churches in hostile areas, but we need to pray for
perseverance for the Christians to continue to plant seeds. At first thought, I hear this and I think, NO!, that doesn't make sense. I need to pray for their suffering to go away. However, the more I really think about what my prayer should be my mind goes to scripture. In scripture we see over and over again that the Gospel spread through suffering. Even throughout history the Gospel spread rampantly through the suffering of missionaries, their families and the natives of the land.
It is my hope that our prayers would be prayers of perseverance for the laborers to continue to plant seeds.
"...we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." Romans 5:3-5
Laura works in the Women's Life Office at SEBTS. Laura is married to Lee and they are expecting their first child in September. Laura and Lee are from south Alabama, and are in the 2+2 program at SEBTS. She is a member of the Summit Church and attends the North Raleigh Campus.
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