This sermon touches on the topic of suffering in the Christian life, emphasizing the privilege of sharing in Christ's sufferings and the courage required to follow Him. It explores the fear of suffering in missions, the necessity of embracing suffering as part of the Christian journey, and practical strategies for cultivating courage in the face of fear and comfort. The speaker reflects on personal experiences and the importance of speaking up for Christ, even in challenging situations.

two, three, four weeks, and then you've got to navigate life, and life feels totally different, and nobody knows quite what to say to you, and so that anybody would step up and try to say anything by way of empathy, five weeks later, really significant. So those are some thoughts. Dr. Rosevere, another question for you. A lot of people think about missions and feel called to missions, but fear the suffering element. They might read the biographies that you mentioned, or read your own works, and have a genuine fear of suffering, and know that they're doing the Christian life here in America, and doing okay, and remaining faithful, and wondering, if I go overseas, and I undergo tremendous suffering, I don't know what will happen, and I fear that. How would you speak to somebody who's wavering between staying here and going to another country? I know that the evening that I came to know the Lord Jesus as my saviour, seven o'clock in the evening, and I was at a youth house party over the Christmas holidays from college, and I went downstairs to the evening meeting, and somebody said, what's happened to you? And I guess I was so overwhelmed at the wonder that God loved me so much, he sent Jesus to die for me. And I was given a Bible, it was the first Bible I ever owned, and the man who'd been doing the Bible studies at the house party, Dr. Graham Scroggie, wrote in the fly leaf of my Bible, Philippians 3.10, for some of you today, I've been signing books, and you'll find Philippians 3.10 is written in, because that was my verse when it was given to me. And he said to me, he quoted the verse first, that I may know Christ, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings be made conformable unto his death. He said, tonight you've started that verse, that I may know Christ. He said, my prayer for you in the years that lie ahead, is that you'll know more and more of the power of his resurrection. And then he said very quietly, he was a very straight, upright man, very quietly looking straight at me, he said, maybe one day God will give you the privilege to know something of the fellowship of his sufferings. I'd been a Christian half an hour, and I was told that it was a privilege to suffer for Jesus. And that word privilege has stayed with me, I think, possibly more than any other one word in my Christian life ever since, it's privilege. It's a privilege that he saved me. It's a privilege that he's allowed me to have any part in talking to others about him. Everything has been privilege. And the fact that I was told the same night that I came to know Jesus as my saviour, it's a privilege to have fellowship in his sufferings. And I just fear that in today's climate, we, that's any of us who have the privilege of speaking to others, encouraging others to accept Jesus as their saviour. We don't underline straight away that the Christian life will involve suffering. In our country, we're really not persecutionists, we may get jeered at, cold-shouldered, laughed at, but we expect, in Muslim countries, we expect new Christians to accept suffering and we think it's very marvellous of them. We don't think about it for ourselves, but we should all of us know that if we love the Lord Jesus, he himself said, if you're going to follow me, take up your cross and follow me. And where was he going? He was going to Calvary, and we follow him there. The death to the self-life, the death to my ambition, my rights to be who or what or where I wish, the giving of that over to Jesus and letting him really live his life in and through us under any circumstance which will involve suffering. I believe the saviour suffers today for the millions of unreached, untouched people who have never yet even heard his name, and he invites us. And it's such a privilege, such a privilege to be invited to share with him in his sufferings. I've got no panacea to offer you, I've got no way of saying you won't suffer. You will suffer. You should suffer if you're really a Christian, because you're going to be indwelt by Jesus and he suffers. That probably hasn't answered your question, which I've already forgotten what it was. There'll be more tonight, right? Randy, what are some practical strategies you use in your own life or have used or encourage others to use for cultivating courage? For people who fear man, who want to avoid suffering, who are in love with comfort, what are some practical things we can do to be more courageous? I think one thing is when God lays something on your heart, it kind of relates to something I said earlier about the instruments of your body, the members of your body. For instance, you're in a situation, many of us are in these situations where we're around somebody, maybe it's at a bus stop, maybe we're at a restaurant, or maybe we meet somebody somewhere, could be the plane again, whatever it is. We feel this inclination from the Lord, you know, I should say something about Jesus. I should share my faith or at least get the ball rolling here, you know, with something. What I tell people and what I experience in my own life is open your mouth and start talking. The big battle is what precedes that, not what follows that, because once you've committed yourself that you're going to be talking about Jesus, now you can talk about Jesus. But what holds us back, oh Lord, help me to, you know, can I just, but once you just get it going, then it goes somewhere. So I think with courage, it's just often you just simply take the step. My wife is very courageous. She's very courageous because she does not like to fly on airplanes, and many people who don't like to fly on airplanes just don't, but she does. And it takes no courage for me to fly on an airplane because I don't fear it. What takes courage is when you fear something and then do it anyway. And that's exactly what in the Christian life I think so often we lack. It's like, should we speak up? I tell college kids who are in these college classrooms, it's not healthy for our college kids to be in these classrooms and hear professors day after day defame the name of Christ and not speak up. You must speak up and confess Christ before men. And you know, if you do, you will experience growth, reward. You'll have other kids in the class that say, yeah, I feel that way too. They'll be speaking up. And so God rewards courage, but it's that first step, God, help me to do it, and now I'm just going to do it, and now I'm going to trust you to help me. I'm not going to wait until you miraculously open my mouth. I got to do it and go forward. Jerry, you've spent decades now working with college students. I'm sure you've seen many changes over the years. What encourages you the most and what concerns you the most about the current generation? Well, I would say what encourages me most is that on the one hand, I believe there is a genuine hunger, and particularly among Christian young people who have come to know Christ, they do want to grow. And they do want to be involved. In our own organization, we have hundreds of students every summer who are going over short-term mission trips and things like this. Contrary to that, I think the thing that is most concerned is the students that is outside of Christ and many inside of Christ, that is many inside the professing church, simply have no notion of sin. They just go along with the world, and as long as it's not really flagrant outside of the box, so to speak, of the culture in which they're living, anything goes. And there's no shame with immorality and things like that, and that's very distressing. I was asked to speak to a student group in a particular state, and...