For Christian prisoners of faith, ‘taking up their cross and following Christ’ is no easy road. Their testimony of enduring faith is both a challenge and an encouragement to their brothers and sisters in Christ here in he UK and Ireland and around the world.
North Korean, Eritrean, Iranian and other Christians who seek to share and live out their faith in theses countries often pay a high personal price- yet it is a price they accept as ‘normal’ Christian discipleship.
Their prison experience is not viewed with surprise outrage: on the contrary, they often regard the prison cell as their mission field, imprisonment as training and the whole experience as part of God’s purpose & plan.
The reality is that today in detention centres and prison camps across the world, God is doing exactly what he promised to do: building His church.
Just as He did with the early church, God is there in those cells watching over His children, pouring out His love into their hearts and reaching out in love to others, prisoners and persecutors alike. Still He calls us to ‘remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison’. (Hebrews13V3