Go Beyond

   I first heard the song “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus” soon after I became a Christian at the height of the Jesus Movement in 1973. As a young believer, I loved the theme of the song — count the cost of following Jesus and don’t turn back! Honestly though, other than being called names, my friends and I did not experience the kind of pressure that would make us think of turning back from our commitment to follow Jesus. The biggest threat we faced in those years was being called “Jesus Freaks,” a pejorative term we gladly embraced. As one friend put it, “Just worry when they stop calling you a Jesus Freak.”

   On my first trip to India in November 1998 I was surprised to hear believers in a remote Kui village singing “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus.” I was even more surprised to learn that the song had actually originated in India. The Kui are no strangers to persecution or to pressure to renounce their faith. Located in the heart of Orissa, the state with the worst record of persecution of Christians in recent years, the Kui have suffered much at the hands of Hindu persecutors. Soon after I returned home, Hindu extremists in Orissa burned to death Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons, Timothy (age 7) and Phillip (age 10). Graham and his sons paid the ultimate price for following Jesus and did not turn back, even in the face of death.

   Counting the cost is something that people who live in restricted and closed countries must consider before they choose to follow Jesus. They know that the decision to follow Him can be a dangerous thing to do. I was reminded of the risk others face when they follow Jesus in an e-mail I received from a friend who works among Muslims in South Asia. Her account of a baptism service in a remote location illustrates what it means to count the cost of following Jesus.

“Where are we going?” I said to myself in the crowded backseat. We had driven 30 minutes and were heading out into the hills as the sun set pink and purple over the glimmering city. But now it was getting darker, and the paved road soon turned into dirt, and then finally we were weaving our way through indiscernible rocky paths in a riverbed with no river in sight. “There it is,” someone said. The shallow clean water was shining in the moonlight, with just enough light for the eight of us to see each other’s faces.

The quiet intimacy of this moment enraptured me as we huddled together with the church’s pastor and his teenage children. The pastor looked passionately into each of their eyes and asked them once again, “No one is pressuring you to do this? You are taking this step of faith of your own free will? Do you believe Jesus Christ was crucified, dead, and was buried and rose again on the third day and is coming again? Are you choosing to make him the consuming Love of your life?” I was already crying—there was such a holiness that I can’t even describe.  I was hugging the pastor’s daughter tightly to keep her warm, while we watched her brother. But, soon I let go and she waded to her father already standing in the river. With her father and his partner on both of sides of her raising their hands, she prayed out loud in her own language, and I trembled. Then … there she went … under the water … dead to the old and alive to the new forever. She came up shivering and glowing.

The children’s mother was not with us. She had left that same morning for the village after hardening her heart and declaring that she would never accept this new religion.  Two days before she had threatened her daughter by saying, “If you get baptized, I’ll shoot you.”  As we left that night, the stars were shining overhead and there was not a hint of regret on the young girl’s face. She whispered, “When I came up out of the water, I saw the clearest vision of Jesus right before me staring with eyes of love.”

   I am inspired by stories like this. They remind me that I have no reason to be ashamed of my faith or to hide my light under a basket. Choosing to follow Jesus is the most important decision I have ever made. I am determined to follow Him to the end, no matter what.