David and Shari Ogg Missionaries to the Simbari people of Papua New Guinea 
Last week David met with the church leaders to discuss some persecution that the church has been experiencing.
They told about how they were threatened during an evangelistic outreach and their teaching tent was vandalized by members of another religious group. There have been several other occasions also where the believers have been accused of attending a false, prostitute church. One even claimed that in the last days believers in Jesus would be beheading the people from their group. Culturally they are obligated to confront such accusations so the leaders were asking for wisdom in how to handle the situation. The church leaders met with David after spending some time in independent Bible study on the subject. They met together and after a time of prayer, each shared verses from the Bible that they thought applied to their situation. The result was that they were strengthened and encouraged that the persecution is a good thing. They also decided to not confront the accusations but to just return good to the accusers. They also set out to write some topical Bible lessons to share with the rest of the church the scriptures that had encouraged and guided them during the meeting. Pray for the strength of the believers in the face of the persecution. They face a lot of pressure from family members and the community alike that is hard on them. In the midst of this some are new believers just beginning to walk in their faith who fall down sometimes. Like one couple who just had a bad fight. (There is not much privacy in a village situation so everybody knows when a husband and wife have a fight) Immediately the church came together to pray for the couple. So even when mistakes are made it’s encouraging to see them functioning as a body.
One of the Bible teachers was just asked to be the local representative in a big political gathering and he declined because he felt conviction from the Holy Spirit that it would be wrong to be part of trying to get things from the politicians through false claims. Actually many of the believers don’t even feel comfortable going to the big political gatherings anymore because now that they have their hope in Christ they don’t want people to think that their hope is in things of the earth like the government. For many who don’t know Christ their only hope is in the promises of the politicians. It’s so sad. But the believers have learned that their hope in the promises of God are much more reliable.
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