Someone Hands You a Name: What the Church Owes Its Prisoners

This week brought a rare piece of good news from the long war against the people of God. Mariam Ibrahim, the young Christian mother a Khartoum court sentenced in 2014 to 100 lashes and death by hanging, stood face to face in Falls Church, Va., with a Baptist leader who refused to be silent when her name reached him. Former Congressman Frank Wolf, speaking that evening, put the matter in one line: “Someone hands you a name. What do you do with it?”

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That question is older than any of us. The Lord Jesus answered it when He described the day the King will divide the nations:

“Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”

Matthew 25:36, KJV

The same week handed the church other names, and some without names at all. Three young women were killed when Myanmar's military bombed and then struck a Bible school in Karen State with armed drones. Milad Malak, a 20-year-old Coptic deacon, was killed in Libya after his family paid the ransom his kidnappers demanded, his family says. In China, leaders of Zion Church wait for a verdict under a new law that tightens the state's grip on congregations. In West Bengal, India, a mob stormed the opening of a new church.

The apostle did not leave remembering the persecuted to a few specialists. He laid it on the whole church:

“Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body.”

Hebrews 13:3, KJV

“As bound with them” means more than a passing thought. It means praying as if the chain were on our own wrist. It means learning names and saying them aloud in prayer meeting. It means writing letters, giving to ministries that reach prisoners and widows, and asking those who hold power to do right. Mariam Ibrahim's release did not come because one man was clever. It came after many people in many places refused to let her name be forgotten, and the Lord in His mercy opened a prison door.

We should also be honest about what Scripture tells us to expect. The Lord never promised His church an escape from suffering before His coming. He told the church at Smyrna, “Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer,” and promised a crown of life to those faithful unto death (Revelation 2:10). Believers in Karen State, Libya and China are not living outside the plan of God; they are living the part of the church's story that comfortable Christians sometimes forget. We do not set dates, and we do not guess at the calendar of the end. We simply watch, pray and stand with our brethren until He comes.

So take the names. Write them in the flyleaf of your Bible. Carry them to the altar on Sunday night. Teach your children to pray for the girls who will not go home from that Bible school, for the family of a young deacon in Egypt, for pastors in Chinese cells. Someone has handed us these names. By God's grace, let us not hand them back unused.