Daily Devotional for Monday June 11, 2018

North Korea

(Matthew 28:19) ***DAILY PERSONAL PRAYER FOR YOU: Dear Lord, I ask you today to open my heart and my Spirit to receive what you have for me today. Let me hear Your voice clearly and obediently follow You. Use me oh Lord, for your glory and to advance Your Kingdom! In the name of Jesus...AMEN!!! God’s hand and favor is on the meeting of President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un!!! Kim Jung Un is clearly one of the most evil men living today. He has isolated his country and people from the rest of the world, ruled by brainwashing the North Koreans into proclaiming him to be like God, forced into prison or killed anyone who defied him, and has been responsible for literally millions of his people dying from starvation. Kim Jung Un is not only evil personified, but one of the ways he tries to control his people is by keeping God and the Bible out of the country. Those who simply proclaim Christ in North Korea end up in hard labor camps for decades or are tortured and executed. To send a message to others, the families of those who preach Christ are often put into prison or killed. Being a Christian in North Korea means you will end up in prison or killed by the government. When you get saved in North Korea, you understand that it means you will most likely be killed for your new faith. I wonder how many would be at the altar in our churches here if people knew accepting Christ would probably cost them their very life? It is pretty sad that as long as Kim, his father and grandfather before him, was starving the North Korean people to death, killing those who stood up to him politically, and worst of all, imprisoning and killing those who proclaimed Christ, nobody really cared or paid much attention to him. Now that he has nuclear capabilities and testing missiles that could carry a nuclear war head to our country, this sick dictator has people's attention. Pray for those brave men and women of God who risk their lives each day to smuggle Bibles and Christian materials into countries like North Korea so people can hear about Jesus. There are many incredible men and women of God who put their life on the line each day to serve God in places like North Korea. Men and women whose names the world will never know, but I guarantee you God does. Again, how ashamed we should be when we have the incredible freedoms and opportunities to bring Christ to the lost and hurting and choose not to. Pray for these heroes of the faith in counties like North Korea who are literally giving their very lives for the Gospel. Let me share some good news with you in this part of the world. For the past year now, we have been very successfully blasting salvation emails to hundreds of thousands of email accounts in North Korea. It has not been the Daily Devotional since the government monitors Internet traffic very closely and would never allow our type of daily, personal ministry to exist very long. However, we can do email blasts and have been sending a message a month for a about a year now. I love you and care about you so much. It breaks my heart knowing so many people are not only living in such horrible conditions in North Korea, but most of all that they have little or no access to the Truth of God's Word. They are living without even knowing how much Jesus loves them. I believe that through the great technology of our day, the Internet and satellite television, we will find a way to get the message of Christ's love to the North Korean people. I pray today that this will encourage you and challenge you. Here in the United States we have such incredible freedoms and opportunities to do almost anything, we are only limited by our own imaginations. I pray that we will not take those freedoms and opportunities for granted. As I have shared in the past, there will come a day when we won't have the freedoms and opportunities we enjoy today. We have to beg people to go to church, yet I tell you a day is coming when we won't be able to gather as a church in public. If people are timid to share their faith today, how timid will they be when a death penalty will be the price for sharing your faith? God has given us this season in human history to make a huge impact for His Kingdom. There is NOTHING that we can't do for Christ. We have the freedom, the resources, and the ability to literally reach the world, even those in places like North Korea and China, with the Gospel. God will hold us accountable one day for our service. All who know Christ as their Savior have been called to serve Him. I pray today that the Holy Spirit will move on your heart about how you can do more to reach the lost and hurting in your life, in this nation, and around the world. Now is the time, this is the moment, God is calling His people forth to boldly declare His name to the world we live in. It is time to care about the people in North Korea, the people in China, the people in Africa, the people in the Middle East, the people in Europe, the people in South America, the people here in the United States...ALL the people in this world who are living their lives without Christ. The world may not care, but we as the followers of Christ MUST CARE! In His love and service, Your friend, brother, and co-laborer in His work, Bill Keller