R Romans chapter 12 verse 2.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is,

his good, pleasing, and perfect will.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. March the 13th,

13th, 2024 was a Wednesday.

I woke up sick as a dog, a little over halfway through chemo. The oncologist did tell me that it was the most

toxic treatment that anyone in the practice would be receiving, but I'm young and my

body could take it and that would give us the best chances of

knocking these tumors out once and for all and so I agreed in principle but now I

was like a marathon runner on the back half of the race all the adrenaline of the start long gone but the finish line nowhere in sight either

And I woke up that morning to a text from David, a video. David Yagnizar, as some of you

will recall, as the director of Elam Ministries, the largest church planting and pastoral training movement in Iran, where the worship of Jesus is

illegal to the tune of the death penalty.

I'd had the staggering privilege of leading a covert conference for those pastors earlier that year at a time

when cancer was surely ravaging my body but I was living in ignorant bliss of that fact.

And among those saints I met men and women who'd been imprisoned for gathering in their

home simply to receive communion around the table.

I'd met those who'd risked their lives to smuggle copies of

the Bible across the border and grieved those who'd lost their lives doing the same.

Those who had lost parents, children, and friends to execution or deportation simply for

...