ANGEL LIGHT - Fire and Ice Ministries River of Life Fellowship

A Word to Parents 223
this honor. Sometimes it is harder to live for Jesus, dying to self everyday,
than to lay your life down and go to heaven.
A Martyr’s Heart
A person who lays down his/her life for the gospel has already done so
in his/her heart. Let me tell you how the first apostles of Christ died.
Those that have laid down their lives for the gospel inspire me! God is
looking for those that want to glorify his son in the earth. The true message
of the gospel will be accompanied by great power. The Lord confirms
his word with signs (Mark 16:20). The Lord will raise up those
that preach the cross and make room for the miraculous in their ministry.
A martyr is first a martyr in his heart before he dies in the body. What
will it be like for you, if one day you are in heaven and there is a young
man is sitting next to you who is named Titus? You ask him to tell you
his story and he says, “Sure, I had a difficult life. I grew up in Rome.
My family all served Jesus. We heard of him through a man that was
going door to door telling people about Jesus. One of my neighbors
was healed of tuberculosis as this man prayed for him. It was a few
years later that my mother was captured by the Roman guards. They
poured oil on her and I watched her be burned alive on a wooden stake
because Jesus was her God. When my father came back home from
business, he heard the news and wept bitterly. The guards came and
took him away as well. I was forced to watch him be put in a coliseum,
and I watched as lions ate my dad. The guards then took me and beat
me trying to get me to renounce Jesus, but I couldn’t do that! He was
everything to me. I was then placed in that same coliseum the next
day. I saw doors being opened on every side. Lions came out of every
door. I was never so afraid in all my life. I died that day and was carried
by angels to be with Jesus here. Now that I have told you my
story, what is yours?” Oh friend, we need to have a story. Not all of us
have the honor of dying for the gospel in the body as a martyr, but we
must have a story of totally selling out to Jesus. Sometimes it is harder
to live for Jesus than to die for him. What the Lord is looking for is
obedience and death to self. We must be fully committed to him in
obedience to the call even if it costs us our lives. I heard a Middle
Eastern woman that is a pastor’s wife say, she was not afraid of the
terrorists because they could only kill her once. I love that.
160,000 people where martyred in 1996 for the cause of Christ. Persecution
is rising with each year. How ready are the American Christians
to this kind of persecution? I would have to say many would abandon
the faith if it came down to their life. The eleven disciples all gave their