On April 18, 2007, three Christians in Turkey were killed for their beliefs. Necati Aydin was one of them. He was a thirty-five-year-old pastor in the city of Malatya.

He nearly didn’t go to his office that morning. He’d been traveling for ten days and his wife, Semse, wanted him to stay home and rest. She fed breakfast to their two children, Elisha and Esther, and took them to school. Upon returning, she walked softly so as not to awaken her husband. Even so, he stirred, squinted, opened his arms, and admitted his weariness. “I don’t want to get up today.”

But he did. There was much work to do. Only 0.2 percent of the mainly Muslim nation follows Jesus. Ironic. The land once knew the sandal prints of the apostle Paul and provided a stage for the first churches. But today? Turkish Christ worshippers number less than 153,000 in a nation of 76 million.¹ People such as Necati live to change that. He pulled his weary body out of bed and got ready for the day.

As Semse remembers and retells the events of that morning, she pauses between sentences. Her round cheeks flush with pink. Dark hair sweeps in a wave across her forehead. Until this point she’s been able to contain the emotion. She described the attack, the cruelty, and the harshness of sudden widowhood without tears. But at this sentence, they press through. “My dear husband walked out the door at eleven. I was waiting for him to get on the elevator. There he smiled at me one last time, but I didn’t know that was the last smile. That’s what I’ll always remember . . .”

She sighs and looks away as if seeing a face only she can see. Then back. “This is a painful thing for me because I miss his smile . . . because the sun doesn’t rise when he doesn’t smile . . .”

Semse looks down and permits a soft sob but only one. “It’s a bitter cup, and we have to drink of it every day.”

By the time Necati reached the office, his two colleagues had already received visitors: five young men who had expressed an interest in the Christian faith. But the inquisitors brought more than questions. They brought guns, bread knives, ropes, and towels.

The attackers brandished their weapons and told Necati to pray the Islamic prayer of conversion: “There is no God except Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.”

When Necati refused, the torture began. For an agonizing hour the assailants bound, interrogated, and cut the Christians. Finally, with the police pounding on the door, they sliced the throats of the victims. The last word heard from the office was the cry of an unswerving Christian: “Messiah! Messiah!”²

Such stories have a way of silencing us. This morning’s traffic jam is no longer worth the mention. While I might see myself—for a microsecond—as a man of faith, I ponder the martyrs of Malatya and wonder, Would I make the sacrifice? Would I cry out, “Messiah! Messiah!”? Would I give up my life? Why, some days I don’t want to give up my parking spot.

The Turkish pastors could have lived. With their simple confession of Allah, knives would have been lowered and lives spared. Semse would have her husband, and Elisha and Esther would have their father. Necati could have gone home to his family. He chose, instead, to speak up for Christ.

What would you have done?

The question is more than academic. Persecution comes. Three-fourths of Christians live in the third world, often in anti-Christian environments. More Chinese take part in Sunday worship than the entirety of western Europeans. Lebanon is 39 percent Christian; Sudan, 5 percent; Egypt, about 10 percent.³ Many of these saints worship at their own risk. You may be one of them. You may be the only Christian in your Iraqi university. You may be an Arab woman who offers prayers in silence or a Messianic Jew who lives in the heart of Jerusalem.

Or perhaps you indwell a society of religious freedom but a community of spiritual oppression. You may not face blades and terrorists but critics and accusers. Family members mock your beliefs. University professors belittle your convictions. Classmates snicker at your choices. Colleagues pressure you to compromise your integrity. Coworkers make it their mission to snag you in a weak moment. Knife to your neck? No. But pressure to abandon your convictions?

I’m thinking of Maria Dutton, my Portuguese teacher when I was a missionary in Brazil. She grew up in an aristocratic and influential family. When she became a Christian, her father disowned her. He didn’t attend her wedding or see her at holidays. For several years he had nothing to do with her or her children.

Heidi is the only believer on the high school cheerleading squad. When the others go wild after games, she goes home. When they party on road trips, she goes to the hotel. She is the piñata for their ridicule.

Persecution happens. Peter and John can tell you. They healed the cripple one minute and faced harassment the next. “Now as they [Peter and John] spoke to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came upon them, being greatly disturbed that they taught the people and preached in Jesus the resurrection from the dead” (Acts 4:1–2).

Thus far the early church had enjoyed smooth sailing. The Pentecost miracle harvested three thousand followers. The church gave birth to acts of kindness, compassion, and fellowship. Their good deeds authenticated their good news. The number of followers grew. The first three chapters of Acts are happy days. But then comes Acts 4. The church is barely out of the maternity ward, and in walk the town bullies: “the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came upon them” (v. 1).

A brawny soldier presses through the crowd. He wears heavy ringlets of shoulder-length hair. His naked chest bulges, and his massive legs seem to be poured iron. A medallion of authority hangs on his chest, and he carries a whip in his hand. He can, by law, arrest anyone who transgresses the temple courts. He has come to enforce the law.

The priests follow him: Caiaphas and his father-in-law, Annas. They stand on either side of the temple captain and cross their arms and glare this implicit warning: “Don’t forget what we did to your Messiah. Didn’t the three spikes on the Roman cross make it clear?”

Annas, the high priest, arches an eyebrow in the direction of Peter. He has not forgotten what this apostle did to his servant a few weeks ago in the Garden of Gethsemane. When the servant and the soldiers came to arrest Jesus, Peter drew his sword and “struck the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear” (John 18:10). Jesus healed the ear, but the high priest has not forgotten the incident. I’m envisioning Annas tugging his ear and menacing, “I have a score to settle with you, Peter.”

Peter, meanwhile, may be wrestling with a few Thursday night memories of his own. Not just about his slashing sword, but also his dashing feet. He and the other followers scooted out of the garden like scalded puppies, leaving Jesus to face his foes all alone. Later that night Peter mustered up enough loyalty to appear at Jesus’ trial. But when people recognized him, Peter wilted again. He denied his Savior, not once, but three times.

So far the score is Persecution–2, Peter–0. Peter has failed every test of persecution. But he won’t fail this one.

The trio stands firm. If their legs tremble, it’s because the beggar just learned to stand and the apostles are choosing not to run.

Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders of Israel: If we this day are judged for a good deed done to a helpless man, by what means he has been made well, let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole.”
(Acts 4:8–10)

No backdown in those words. I detect a touch of cynicism (“If we this day are judged for a good deed done to a helpless man . . .”) and a large dose of declaration (“let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth . . .”). Just the name Jesus would have sufficed, but Peter unapologetically replies, “Jesus Christ of Nazareth.” And then he states clearly, potently, and firmly, “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (v. 12).

Annas and Caiaphas snarl their lips. The temple captain squeezes his whip. The eyes of the Sadducees narrow into tiny slits. The power brokers of Jerusalem glare at Peter and John.

But they don’t budge an inch. What has happened to them? The last time they saw these soldiers, Peter and John left them in their rearview mirror. But today they go chin to chin with the Supreme Court of Jerusalem. What’s gotten into them?

Luke gives us the answer in verse 13: “Now when [the accusers] saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.”

Peter and John had been with Jesus. The resurrected Jesus. In the Upper Room when he walked through the wall. Standing next to Thomas when the disciple touched the wounds. On the beach when Jesus cooked the fish. Sitting at Jesus’ feet for forty days as he explained the ways of the kingdom.

They had lingered long and delightfully in the presence of the resurrected King. Awakening with him, walking with him. And because they had, silence was no longer an option. “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (v. 20).

Could you use some high-octane boldness? If you want to outlive your life, you could. As long as you are stationary, no one will complain. Dogs don’t bark at parked cars. But as soon as you accelerate—once you step out of drunkenness into sobriety, dishonesty into integrity, or lethargy into compassion—expect the yapping to begin. Expect to be criticized. Expect to be mocked. Expect to be persecuted.

So how can we prepare ourselves? Simple. Imitate the disciples. Linger long and often in the presence of Christ. Meditate on his grace. Ponder his love. Memorize his words. Gaze into his face. Talk to him. Courage comes as we live with Jesus.

Peter said it this way. “Don’t give the opposition a second thought. Through thick and thin, keep your hearts at attention, in adoration before Christ, your Master. Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you’re living the way you are, and always with the utmost courtesy” (1 Peter 3:14–15 MSG).

As we meditate on Christ’s life, we find strength for our own. The example of Xu Yonghai comes to mind. A Christian in Communist China, he worked to see the legalization of house churches. The government responded by locking him in a Beijing prison for twenty-four months. His cell was eight-by-eight feet. There was no bathroom, only a pipe in a corner from which water flowed onto the concrete.

“My cell was the last stop for prisoners sentenced to die,” he said. “At times there were as many as three other prisoners in the tiny, damp room, awaiting their date with the executioner.”

Yonghai survived through prayer, meditation, and writing. On the walls of his cell, he wrote the major points for a book about God, using a bar of soap. Once he finished, he committed the thoughts to memory. Upon his release he turned his prison thoughts into a fifty-thousand-word book entitled God the Creator. Like Peter and John, Yonghai tarried in the presence of Jesus and found strength. Courage comes as we ponder the accomplishments of Christ.⁴

Would you be bold tomorrow? Then be with Jesus today. Be in his Word. Be with his people. Be in his presence. And when persecution comes (and it will), be strong. Who knows? People may realize that you, like the disciples, have been with Christ.