“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, Because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners’- Isaiah 61:1 (NIV). 

Once I came across a gentleman who had become a Christian in the course of a long and successful career as an investor on the Chicago stock Exchange. Prior though a multimillionaire he was not happy and fulfilled until the day he received Jesus as Lord and personal savior (John 3:16). Excited with his new found life in Christ, he loved nothing like sharing his faith. He regularly gave out Gospel tracts to his staff. Then one day he got a rude shock.

His firm did a lot of business with the government which came out with a ruling forbidding mixing faith and state. The businessman was therefore stopped from sharing the Gospel at his workplace, which he loved more than anything. He was discouraged. Subsequently, he decided to sell out his interests in a successful firm he had founded, and retired.

Today, there are places around the world where sharing of faith in Christ is becoming harder and troublesome. Interestingly, some of these are places where Christianity has its roots, before spreading out to the rest of the globe, as like in many parts of Western Europe. However, through the cunningness of Satan, he has taken over some of these places, imposed laws that make it difficult to preach the Word of God. Like carrying out work with government, where believers must first sign up to embracing practices the Bible forbids, or else lose aid.

In most of Africa, believers still have a choice to share their faith in the market place and work with state governments without being coerced into practices their conscience forbids. We should therefore not lose sight of these freedoms or take them lightly. Here, we have a twofold task. First, is to pray for those places where it is increasingly becoming a taboo to preach the Gospel. And, secondly, thank God for the freedoms we enjoy, to practice and share the Gospel of Christ, which we should not take for granted!

Prayer for today: Lord Father God of Abraham, maker of heaven and earth, today I thank you for being in a nation where I am free to share my faith in you, even at my work place, and may I not take this freedom for granted, but fully use it for your glory, this I pray in Jesus’s name!