Do you ever think about how easy life is in the United States? We find ourselves on the wrong side of a political decision and say we are being persecuted. Yet we know nothing of real persecution. Or we wallow in a bad mood (I’m in a funk today!), never realizing how mild an American mood swing is, compared to growing up under an oppressive fear of evil spirits.
Today I read two stories in The Voice of the Martyrs magazine[1]. The first story detailed the struggles of a woman in Ethiopia named Damitu. After Damitu became a Christian, she and her husband shared the gospel in their village and began pastoring a small church. Some of their fellow villagers threatened them with violence and eventually broke into the home, killed Damitu’s husband in front of Damitu and her children, and set the house on fire. Damitu has faced violence and persecution few Americans can even imagine. But she knows God is with her.
“Times have changed. I am free. God has made free.”
Then I read about Khoi, a 95-year-old woman from a village in Vietnam. Khoi and her husband grew up practicing a blend of animism and ancestor worship. People in their village made costly sacrifices to keep the spirits happy and lived in three-room houses built on stilts with animal horns mounted around the house to keep evil spirits away. Khoi lived her young life in “bondage to capricious spirits.”
This fear of angry spirits motivates attacks on believers around the world every day. When locals begin to believe a Christian’s “betrayal” of traditional religion is making the spirits angry, then they blame the Christians for everything that follows: failed crops, illnesses, unexpected accidents, natural disasters, deaths.
Much of the third world is terrified of hostile spirits; if anyone they know stops making sacrifices and begins preaching salvation through Jesus, persecution will often follow.
On top of that, tyrannical governments continue to actively persecute Christians around the world. Khoi’s husband went to town one day in 1975 and never returned. Fifty years later, the government has still given her no information about his disappearance. Not only that, after her husband disappeared, the Vietnamese government took Khoi’s home and property, leaving her destitute with eight people depending on her. The years that followed were miserable, but she never lost faith.
“God is my shepherd. He takes care of me and he protects me.”
The Bible covers many genres: books about history, law and ethics, creation, the life of Christ, letters about church doctrine and practice, and more. But Psalms, the poetry book and hymnal of the Bible, is unique:
Psalms is a book about the heart.
Psalms shows us how to worship, how to pray, and how to praise God. But Psalms is also a book filled with encouragement. It is filled with reasons to feel courage, reasons to feel confidence, reasons to feel peace. When your mind has questions about the life of Adam or Abraham, you go to Genesis. But when your heart needs the courage to face fears, you go to Psalms.
Imagine the lives of believers like Damitu and Khoi, women robbed of their husbands and homes. Read these verses through their eyes and you will see that Psalms is a book that encourages the fearful heart:
“I will lift up my eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help. My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth … behold, the keeper of Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep” Psalm 121:1-2,4. “Unto thee I lift up mine eyes, O thou that dwells in the heavens. Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of their mistress, so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God, until he has mercy on us” Psalm 123:1-2.
If you had grown up in “bondage to capricious spirits,” imagine how encouraged you would be to now serve a forgiving God:
“If thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee” Psalm 130:3-4.
If you turned to Christ, but your neighbors wanted you to return to idol worship, you would be encouraged by Psalm 135:
“The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they speak not, they have eyes, but see not. They have ears, but they hear not, neither is there any breath in their mouths. They that make them shall be like them. So is everyone who trusts in them” Psalm 135:15-18.
Do you ever feel alone in your faith, as if the whole village were against you? Read Psalm 148 and remember the “great cloud of witnesses surrounding us”[2]:
“Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and ice, stormy winds fulfilling his word. Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars. Beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying fowl. Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all judges of the earth. Both young men and maidens, old men and children. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name is excellent and his glory is above the earth and heaven” Psalm 148:7-13.
Finally, serving Jesus means serving a God who loves you. He does not simply forgive you, then remain aloof, like a child struggling to get over it. He adores you! He enjoys being with you. You bring God joy, do you realize that?
“For the Lord takes pleasure in his people. He will beautify the meek with salvation” Psalm 149:4.
God loves you. His word is filled with proof. Christianity is not a faith for rule-followers. It is not a legal system or a system of governance. This faith–this relationship with Jesus–is a life-changing deliverance from rules, sacrifices to earn forgiveness, and the life-long terror of never being good enough. Faith in Christ redeems your broken life and delivers a life of joy and hope and purpose. God gave us sixty-six books to teach these lessons. The Book of Psalms—a book about the heart—is filled with God’s treasure.
“I rejoice at thy word as one that findeth great treasure” Psalm 119:162.
AΩ
[1] See The Voice of the Martyrs, April, 2025 (Vol.59, No.4).
[2] Hebrews 12:1.
Household Words: 