If you have Christ, no matter how great the persecution, no matter how great the suffering, you have hope and you have a joy that can never end.

You see, sometimes belonging to Christ brings persecution, but always belonging to Christ brings joy.

And the always lasts forever, whereas the persecution is temporary.

It really is helpful to be reminded that Christ makes all the difference. And I need this reminder

daily. I'm Dan Kroover. In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper turns to Acts 8 versus

1 to 8 to encourage us with the power of the gospel to move forward even when life is hard.

This message was originally delivered at Bethlehem Baptist Church on May 5, 1991.

January 9, 1985, there was a pastor in Bulgaria named Pastor Christo Kuliches, a congregational pastor who was arrested and put in jail right away.

His crime was that he was preaching in his own church, just like I am right now.

And the reason that was a crime is because the week before, the committee in the village had appointed a new pastor,

the secular committee who runs the village, put a new pastor in there,

even though this congregation of the church doesn't recognize any pastors, but the ones they elect and they install.

So he went ahead preaching and they clamped him in jail immediately.

And he immediately began to share Christ and to make the truth known while he was in prison.

He had a trial, it was a mockery of justice, and he was then sentenced to eight months,

and he did his eight months, got out temporarily, and he wrote these words.

He said, both prisoners and jailers asked many questions, and it turned out that we had a more

fruitful ministry there than we could have expected in church.

God was better served by our presence in prison than if we had been free, close quote.

Now there are a thousand stories like that in the world today, and there are more than

a thousand over the years, centuries of church history.

The lesson is very, very simple.

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