LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 109

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And if God takes everything away from you what you
can thank Him for? If you are left with totally empty
hands? How do you give thanks to the Lord if all these
things are missing that made up your life until now?
I have experienced this in my life only on a very small
scale. Before I started my mission work in Steglitz, I had
been a pastor in a very active, growing, financially
sound congregation. Everything seemed to be perfect,
and I was convinced that I would stay in this
congregation until my retirement. But then the first
refugees showed up, and after a while more and more
were coming, saying that they wanted to be baptized.
After a couple of months, the board of elders told me
that I should send away the refugees, as they disturbed
our fine congregational life. I told them, “If you want
these refugees to go away from our church, I will go
with them.” Thus, I did. Together with the refugees, I
went to a ramshackle old church building, and people
were slanderously saying that these refugees would
disappear pretty soon, and I would be without a job in
a couple of months. God had other plans for us — but I
will never forget the feeling when I arrived at this
ramshackle church, having given up all safeguards that
I had before. But, of course, my situation was still a
hundred times better than the situation of most of our
members in Berlin-Steglitz now. I have never been
persecuted because of my faith — neither have you. We
should not play the martyr in our countries, just
because some people say nasty things about Christian
faith or cause us some trouble here and there.
I want to introduce two persons from our congregation
to you who will show you what it means to give thanks
to God in all circumstances, with totally empty hands:
First is our brother A. I cannot tell his full name. He had
become a Christian in Iran. He had been arrested
because of his conversion, had been tortured in prison
and finally thrown on a garbage dump, because they
thought he was dead. But he survived and fled from
Iran to Norway. In Norway he was a very active
Christian and began to preach and lead Bible study
groups. But the Norwegian government told him that
he could become a Muslim again and wanted to deport
him to Iran. Thus, he fled to Germany after seven years
in Norway. Germany wanted to deport him to Norway
immediately. Thus, we had to take him into church
asylum in our church, until Germany agreed to take
over his case. Then Germany also decided that it is
acceptable for our brother A to become a Muslim again.
Now, brother A has been waiting for years for his court
trial. But even if he wins, the court can only force the
German government to start our brother’s case again
Convention Essays

— and we know that the German government will
again say that it is OK for a Christian to reconvert to
Islam. In the meantime, our brother A has heard that
the Iranian secret service has come to his family’s house
and told the twelve-year-old daughter that they will
take her soon and dispose of her in marriage to a radical
Muslim as a revenge for her father’s conversion to
Christianity. It has almost been 15 years ago that our
brother A became a Christian. He has lost everything in
his life, but is still teaching the Bible in our church,
leading many Iranians to the Christian faith.
There is our sister B. She is 16 years of age. She had to
flee from Iran together with her mother, because she
and her family had become Christian. The father could
not flee with them. He was arrested in Iran and is still
imprisoned. Every day the prison officers ask him
whether he wants to return to Islam. If he returns to
Islam, he can immediately leave the prison. But he stays
in prison and sticks to his Christian faith. Our sister B is
very active in our church. She has attended our Baptism
class, and I hope to be able to baptize her soon. But I do
not know whether I will still meet her when I return to
Berlin from Tampa. Germany wants to deport her and
her mother to Italy, where she would have to live under
a bridge for the next years — without any prospect for
the future. While you are sleeping in your beds, she and
her mother cannot sleep at all — thinking of her father
and always being afraid of policemen entering their
room in their camp and deporting them to a life under
a bridge.
These are the people that I am working with in our
congregation. Meanwhile, we have hundreds of devout
Christians among our members in our church, full of
fear, because Germany wants to force them to return to
Islam. We experience a more and more aggressive
sentiment against Christian refugees who have
converted from Islam to Christianity in our country —
in the public authorities, in the courts and in the media.
They all insinuate that our members are cheaters and
spread slander about their conversion. A large portion
of the donations from Germans has broken off after all
this slander spread about our church. But these
financial problems are small in comparison to the fear
of death that many of our members experience in their
lives every day.
How should these people, how should the members of
our congregation, give thanks in these circumstances?
A superficial “Praise the Lord”-piety does not help in
these circumstances. Giving thanks does not mean
having good feelings in your life. Giving thanks does
not mean to ignore the circumstances in which you live.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2019 (67TH) LCMS CONVENTION | 109