CAFE: Forsaking all “for my sake and for the gospel”

For many people around the world, becoming a Christian is not merely praying a prayer or affirming some doctrines, but a guarantee of immediate personal loss and persecution. Missionaries working in Colombia have shared the gospel with a young lady named C who faces strong pressure from her family to conform with her cultural religious practices.

Jesus had some words to say about someone in this situation, both a promise and a warning:

Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.”

(Mark 10:29-30) 

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

(Matt. 10:37-38)

Pray that C would be willing to leave everything for Christ’s sake and for the gospel.

CAFE (ColombiA’s Forgotten Ethnos) Peoples (cah-FAY) - "C enters the door of the student center and heads to the kitchen to greet each staff person with a hug and kiss of greeting. She is warm, and most of the time, her vibrant personality fills the room as she enters. Some days, however, the spiritual and personal struggles that she is living with show in her countenance and on her face. C has been exposed to the Gospel but struggles with the demands of her father to maintain her cultural religious rites. She recently shared with us, 'I want to align myself with Him who is more powerful than the spirit world, but my father has forbidden me to follow the ways of the Christians, and so I continue to follow the spiritual rites of my people.' Pray for C, asking that she will have the strength and courage to follow 'Him who is more powerful.'"