With every new day, two of the great wonders of God’s world pass right before our noses.

These two marvels become so common that we often miss their glory. They are ordinary, in one sense, but from time to time, we do well to pause and stand in fresh awe of God and his special means for our good.

The first wonder is that God speaks. The God who made the world didn’t have to communicate with us. But he does. And he’s a talker. He’s talkative, we might say, speaking through the heavens and the earth, with all the more clarity through his prophets and apostles, and climactically through his own Son in human flesh, the divine Word incarnate.

It is stunning to have his word in the Book we call Scripture. The one who made us talks to us.

The second great wonder is that such a God listens. Just as he’s a talker, he’s also a listener, stooping and bending his ear to his beloved children, not just willing but eager to hear from them, inviting us into the back-and-forth of a real relationship. He speaks to be heard and listens to hear us. The act we call prayer is a wonder past finding out, in its simplicity and ordinariness and its deep mysteries and real-world effects.

However many unanswered questions we have about prayer, God makes it abundantly clear that he wants us to pray. He doesn’t just stomach our prayers; he delights in them. He invites them. He beckons. He woos. He calls for prayer and reminds us to pray, and works his sovereign angles to elicit our prayers. He wants to hear from his people.

And one of the great expressions of that heart is the many “ask whatever you wish” passages on the lips of his Son.

Ask Anything, Really?

Matthew, Mark, and Luke each capture Jesus’s almost over-the-top appeals to pray:

Whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith. (Matthew 21:22)

Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. (Mark 11:24)

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. (Luke 11:9)

These lavish invitations ring with divine authenticity. What human would dare concoct this and put it in the mouth of Jesus? Only Jesus, only God himself, could think it up and say it. And the appeals grow particularly thick in the Gospel of John, in the upper room, the night before he died:

Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. (John 14:13–14)

Ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. (John 15:7)

I chose you . . . so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. (John 15:16)

Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. (John 16:23–24)

Yes, these sweeping offers prompt questions, but before we run off to qualify them with context and conditions, let’s not miss the magnanimous divine heart behind and in them all: God wants you to pray. He’s not just willing to endure your voice. Your talking to him in prayer is his idea, his design, his desire. Oh, how he wants you to pray!

Fresh Air for Your Prayers

Now, I acknowledge that some theologians have conditioned this offer so much that in the end we end up praying less, and less hopefully, than we might have otherwise. That’s tragic. And that is to miss the point of why Jesus makes such unblushing promises. When he says, “Ask whatever you wish,” he’s emphatically not trying to shut down your prayers; he’s blowing fresh oxygen on whatever flame you have.

Jesus says, “Ask whatever you wish,” over and over because he really means for you to pray. And amid the various honest ways we might qualify the invitation, let’s focus here on the one main banner and the one boldness-instilling backstop to help us pray more freely, not less.

Banner: In the Son

The main compass Jesus adds in John 14–16 is his own name: “Whatever you ask [of the Father] in my name . . .” (John 14:13; 15:16; 16:23). “Ask me anything in my name . . .” (John 14:14).

To pray “in his name” does not mean that we add Jesus as a magic word or some sort of incantation. “Prayers in his name,” comments D.A. Carson, “are prayers that are offered in thorough accord with all that his name stands for” (John, 497). His name represents him — his whole person and work — and all of him rightly received and enjoyed in the person praying.

To pray in Jesus’s name is to pray as one who is up-to-date with the full revelation of the true God. Unlike Abraham, Moses, and David, we pray in Jesus’s name, knowing that God himself has come and dwelt among us in the person of his Son, that he has died our sacrificial death, and that he has risen to reign over all, right now, in order to build his church.

To pray “in his name” isn’t simply to wield a formula (“in Jesus’s name we pray”); it is to know him as history’s climax and hero and to gladly receive him as my own Redeemer and perfect righteousness. To pray in Jesus’s name is to recognize that God made the world and governs history and reconciles sinners in order to make much of his Son. To pray in Jesus’s name is to be awake to his majesty and to desire his glory and look forward to its increasing and expanding in time and space.

Which brings us again to this profound relationship between God’s word and our prayers. Jesus shares a remarkable insight about prayer, and answered prayer, in the condition that leads into the ask-whatever of John 15:7:

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

How do we abide (or stay) in Jesus? Here he points to his words — and not that we abide in them but that his words abide in us. What do Jesus’s words reveal? His own heart and will, and the heart and will of his Father. So, a person who has Jesus’s own words (and will) lodged into his heart and mind “proves effective in prayer, since all he or she asks for conforms to the will of God” (John, 518).

Mystery remains, but I find it both illumining and inspiring to know that getting God’s words lodged into my spirit not only feeds and warms and forms my inner man but also makes me far more effective in prayer — because my very soul has been shaped to ask for the very things God himself loves.

Backstop: By the Spirit

One more piece to add is the precious “backstop” we have in prayer, if we can call the Holy Spirit that. One of the great wonders of the new covenant is that the risen Christ gives his Spirit to dwell in believers. His Spirit is not only with us but in us (John 14:17; cf. 7:38–39). And the Spirit in us both prompts us to pray and intercedes for us as we pray — to make our prayers effective even when we don’t know what to pray for:

The Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us [in our] groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Romans 8:26–27)

So, yes, pray in Jesus’s name, and pray knowing full well that in Christ you have the Holy Spirit at work in you, prompting you to pray and bending your prayers according to God’s will, for your ultimate good and fullness of joy.

Unleashed to Ask

The Spirit in you is another expression of how much your Father wants you to pray. He doesn’t want you to be hesitant to talk to him. Not knowing what to pray should be no deterrent. Our Father doesn’t want his sheep to be sheepish when it comes to asking of him. He wants us to know he is generous, he wants to give us our holy desires, and he wants to shape us into the kind of sons that want what he wants, by wanting him most of all.

God wants to hear from us who live on the food of his word, lodge his will in our souls through his words, and then, in full view of Jesus, speak back to him with the boldness of a beloved child. A holy heart is unleashed to ask, and ask, and ask — and know that even as we don’t know how to pray, we have the Spirit in us interceding for us.

Sometimes we can hear a name so often that we forget what it was originally meant to communicate. What does Paul mean by “Christ”?

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Jesus claimed that Moses wrote about him long before he ever walked the earth as man. If that’s true, how could anyone miss Jesus in the words of Moses?

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Is my suffering a punishment? That’s often our first question when suffering lands unexpectedly on our doorstep. We wonder what we did wrong. We assume that if we check all the boxes, attend church regularly, and read the Bible, we’ll be protected from tragedy. And when that doesn’t happen, we’re filled with questions — about ourselves, about God.

We want suffering to make sense; that way, we can control it and keep it from happening to us. At the core of this thinking is an overly simplistic view of life: Bad things happen to bad people, and good things happen to good people.

When unexpected trials hit others, we may secretly wonder what they did to deserve them. Surely there is an underlying cause because suffering must be someone’s fault. We see this logic voiced by people throughout Scripture who assumed that suffering had to be connected to sin and punishment.

Bad Assumptions

The disciples wondered who was to blame for a man’s blindness, so they asked Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). To them, disability must be linked to some specific sin. Jesus exposed this same assumption in others when they questioned him about Pilate’s shocking treatment of some Galileans: “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way?” (Luke 13:2). Extraordinary suffering must mean extraordinary sin.

That was exactly what Job’s friends assumed when he lost his children and possessions and then was covered with boils. His friends couldn’t imagine any other explanation for these devastating losses besides punishment for hidden and horrific sin (Job 4:7–8; 8:4–6). They hadn’t witnessed what they accused him of, but their view of God and of life didn’t have room for any other explanation. Their theology was simple: The righteous prosper and the wicked suffer.

That theology may sound familiar. Modern prosperity-gospel proponents claim that suffering is a punishment you can avoid if you live righteously enough. They promise a life with every earthly blessing and no affliction, if only you have enough faith in Jesus. Most of us don’t claim to believe that false gospel, but we may still assume that faithful obedience should keep disaster far from our door.

Sifted by Suffering

I once had that assumption also. After coming to Christ, I was certain that God had nothing in store for me but good health, material success, and a thriving family. And for years I had everything I set my heart on. So, when my infant son died unexpectedly, I was bewildered. Wasn’t God supposed to protect his children who served him? I wondered what I’d done wrong to lose my son to a doctor’s mistake.

I remember feeling unsettled by these words in Psalm 119: “Before I was afflicted I went astray,” and “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes” (verses 67, 71). Those verses seemed to bolster the assumption that my affliction was a punishment for sin. My stomach tightened. Was God punishing me?

My son’s death broke my trust and destroyed the way I thought the Christian life worked. I pulled away in anger and confusion, wondering what was real about my faith. None of what happened seemed consistent with what I understood about God. Was God even good?

I had genuinely wanted to serve God, but that desire hadn’t paid off the way I anticipated. I was sure that obedience would bring blessing and that God would keep me from pain. In many ways, my obedience was simply a way to get what I wanted from God. Obedience seemed like the best way to avoid suffering, since all suffering seemed like a punishment for disobedience.

But when I saw that Jesus “learned obedience through what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8), I began to understand suffering differently. It was not necessarily punishment. It could be a means of learning obedience.

Faithfulness in the Fire

How did Christ learn obedience through suffering? Commenting on Hebrews 5:8, Charles Spurgeon says that obedience must be learned by doing and “is never fully learned until, in suffering, our graces are put into the fire, and tested.” Christ did not move from disobedience to obedience; he moved from untested obedience to proven faithfulness. And if that is how Christ’s obedience was proved, we should not be surprised when ours is formed the same way.

Recognizing that suffering wasn’t necessarily a punishment for sin helped me process my own pain. Christ’s suffering taught him to rely on his Father and shaped his lived-out obedience, and I began to see that mine could be formed the same way. Hardship could strengthen my faith, testing it through fire. God intended affliction for my good. Perhaps God wasn’t punishing me for some hidden sin but deepening my faith through suffering, revealing more of himself.

That’s when my world shifted. God felt nearer than I thought possible, and I sensed his love and presence in ways I never had before. Scripture came alive; instead of reading out of obligation, I began to devour it with desire.

Psalm 119:67 and 71 once felt harsh to me, but now those verses made sense. Affliction brought me nearer to God and made me love his word. Suffering showed me treasures I had once skimmed over. The Psalms became a lifeline, putting words to emotions I had buried. The Gospels revealed Christ’s tenderness and the way he meets us in our pain. And in 1 Peter and 2 Corinthians, I began to see that suffering was refining my faith and preparing an eternal weight of glory. After discovering the riches of Scripture, I wanted to go nowhere else. Between those once-troubling verses, I also noticed verse 68: “You are good and do good.” That became another key to understanding my afflictions. Now I could trust God’s character and recognize his goodness in everything, including suffering.

When we grasp God’s greater purposes in suffering, we view affliction differently. Jesus told the disciples that neither the blind man nor his parents sinned, but his condition was given to display the works of God (John 9:3). God purposed it for his glory, not the man’s punishment. Moreover, in Luke 13, he explained that the Galileans were not worse sinners than others, even though they suffered an ignominious fate. And Job, a righteous man, grew even closer to God after his affliction. His suffering became the place where God revealed himself most clearly. Job had heard of God before, but through affliction he saw him (Job 42:5).

The Gift of Affliction

So, is our suffering punishment? If by punishment we mean God’s wrath or retribution against us, then no, never. For those of us in Christ, “there is . . . no condemnation” (Romans 8:1). If you belong to him, all your punishment has already been borne by Christ. God is not pouring out his wrath on you in your suffering.

Our own choices can bring painful consequences, but even then, God is not a condemning judge but rather a loving Father, using even our failures to bring us back. This fatherly work is called discipline: God “disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” (Hebrews 12:6). At times, that discipline includes correction for our sin, as Jesus says: “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline” (Revelation 3:19). Yet even then it is not condemnation. Its purpose is “that we may share his holiness” and bear “the peaceful fruit of righteousness” (Hebrews 12:10–11). God disciplines not in wrath but in love, not for punishment but for training.

Rather than retribution for sin, affliction is a gift in the hands of a good God, who uses it to give us what we most need: an encounter with himself. Suffering has drawn me to God in ways nothing else has, revealing the treasures of his word I once passed over. Truly, it was good for me that I was afflicted, because there I learned to love him.

Wives, be subject to your own husbands. (1 Peter 3:1)

When you imagine a submissive wife, what kind of woman comes to mind? Many of our neighbors, and even some Christians, would naturally picture a timid, compliant, drab woman, one who shuffles through life in the background, her voice unheard and her work unseen. Submissive, to them, is a synonym for weak, passive, unthinking, repressed. The picture is hardly compelling.

When we come to Scripture, however, how does the submissive wife appear? At a superficial glance, she may seem to resemble the dull portrait above. The apostle Peter, for example, refers to her “respectful and pure conduct” and her “gentle and quiet spirit” (1 Peter 3:2, 4). The submissive wife does not match the feminist vision of an assertive woman.

But look closer, and this wife begins to break the world’s categories. The submissive Christian wife, Peter says, is not only meek but mighty, not only quiet but courageous, not only faithful but free, not only simple but resplendent. Though disregarded by the world, she holds the attention of heaven.

“Wives, be subject to your husbands” is not an embarrassing command. It’s not an unfortunate lot. It’s not a word to say with a whisper. A Christian wife’s submission is imperishably beautiful, more precious than jewels (1 Peter 3:4).

Meek but Mighty

What does Peter mean when he calls wives to “be subject”? Does he want women to deny their strengths, bury their talents, and adopt the posture of a servile housemaid? Far from it.

John Piper and Wayne Grudem describe a wife’s submission as her “divine calling to honor and affirm her husband’s leadership and to help carry it through according to her gifts” (50 Crucial Questions About Manhood and Womanhood, 22). Submission calls for the active, thoughtful involvement of the whole woman: In her heart she honors, with her words she affirms, and by her deeds she supports her husband’s leadership as far as she is able.

We find each of these qualities in 1 Peter 3:1–6. The submissive wife, Peter says, relates to her husband with “respectful and pure conduct” (verse 2), with the word pure implying that her honor is heart-deep. She also imitates Sarah in speaking words that affirm her husband — not necessarily by “calling him lord” (verse 6), which would sound strange in our day, but by expressing a similarly respectful spirit in her speech. And in this couple’s day-in, day-out life together, she loves to leverage her specific abilities to support his leadership (verse 6).

Such a woman has “a gentle . . . spirit” (verse 4), a meek spirit. Unlike some women, she does not push her way past her husband and take charge. Nor does she quietly critique and resist him. Helper is not a harsh but a happy word for her (Genesis 2:18). She counts it an honor to partner with her husband and bring beauty into being in ways that only she can. Let the Jezebels of the age elbow their way into the world’s spotlight; she will fear her God and help her husband.

But note well: In Peter’s mind, a submissive wife’s meekness is far from weakness. “Be subject to your own husbands,” he writes, “so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives” (1 Peter 3:1). A meek wife who loves Christ is a force, capable of winning the soul of an unbelieving man. His heart may be as hard as Jericho’s walls, but her life is a steady march, and her meekness holds a trumpet.

Meekness is not the opposite of strength; it’s the opposite of conceit, self-assertion, and self-dependence. Neither is meekness mindless; it’s the choice portion of those who know and treasure God’s promises. So, when Peter calls wives to “be subject,” he does not expect them to have no influence on their home or husband. Instead, he clarifies how a woman influences her home and husband: by prayer, not passive aggression; by respectful words, not resentful jabs; by a beautiful life, not a belligerent will. And if a submissive wife can influence even an unbelieving man so mightily, then how much more a husband who has the Spirit of God!

Quiet but Courageous

When Peter tells wives to adorn their souls with meekness, he also calls them to embrace quietness: “Let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit” (1 Peter 3:4). What does a “quiet spirit” sound like, feel like?

We might naturally equate a quiet spirit with a quiet tongue — and the two are indeed related. For example, Peter speaks of a wife winning her husband “without a word” (1 Peter 3:1). Her conduct alone is a conqueror. But Peter’s reference to a woman’s “spirit” makes quietness mainly an internal quality, a matter of the heart more than the mouth.

David, Solomon, and Isaiah describe quietness as a posture of calm contentment and patient trust in the God who works for his people (Psalm 131:2; Ecclesiastes 4:6; Isaiah 30:15). The apostle Paul also commends quietness as a way to show God-honoring peace and good order in the eyes of an unbelieving world (1 Timothy 2:1–2; 1 Thessalonians 4:11–12). A quiet spirit is a composed spirit, a believing spirit, a spirit that hopes in God and rests securely in his care (1 Peter 3:5).

A quiet spirit does not keep a wife from speaking. Like the Proverbs 31 woman, she knows how to open “her mouth with wisdom” (Proverbs 31:26). Or like a good friend in the passenger’s seat, she knows how to alert her husband to danger or offer thoughts on the best route. (And a good husband will welcome, not despise, such counsel.) But she also knows how to trust God and encourage her husband to lead, even into the risky unknown.

Such quietness takes real courage. I imagine Sarah listening to Abraham in Haran as he told her, “I believe God is calling us to Canaan.” “To Canaan?” she asks. “Why Canaan? Why now?” He answers; she listens and speaks some more. They pray. She imagines all the hardships they might meet along the way. But when she considers God’s promise to bless them (Genesis 12:2–3), she “[does] not fear anything that is frightening” (1 Peter 3:6). She hopes in her God. Then she fearlessly follows her husband.

Sometimes, to be sure, a man wants to lead in a direction that seems not just risky but reckless, or not just uncertain but unrighteous. In such cases, a wife may need to respectfully yet courageously confront her husband — and even involve pastors or other godly men if the situation is dire. But in most cases, after patient conversation and prayer, a wife of quiet courage will walk into new family rhythms, new ministry ventures, and new unknowns without fear, her heart held fast by God.

Faithful but Free

Meek but mighty, quiet but courageous, the wife of 1 Peter 3 is also faithful. Her husband may “not obey the word” (1 Peter 3:1). Or he may obey the word but still sometimes act like a fool. Either way, she stays faithful to him in heart and word and deed. She remains steady, ever “respectful and pure” (verse 2).

Where does faithfulness like that come from? The word Peter uses for respectful gives us a clue. The same word appears in verb form a few verses earlier when he writes, “Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor” (1 Peter 2:17). So, Peter refers to a wife’s fear of God and her respect for her husband using different forms of the same word.

What does that link suggest? It suggests, first, that a wife’s respect for her husband flows from her reverence for God. Just as a husband’s love for his wife rests not on her loveliness but on Christ (Ephesians 5:25), so a wife’s respect for her husband rests not on his respectability but on Christ. A godly wife has already submitted her whole self to the Lord Jesus. Therefore, she submits to her husband “for the Lord’s sake” (1 Peter 2:13).

Second, because a wife’s respect is rooted in her fear of God, her loyalty to her husband has limits. She submits to him, but she belongs first and last and always to Christ (1 Peter 2:16). Therefore, she is free to not follow her husband if he asks her to disobey Jesus.

In fact, the early-church wife Peter envisions has already exercised that very freedom. When the gospel came to this couple, he refused to believe; she did not. She heard Christ call her name through the gospel message, and his call came with an authority infinitely higher than her husband’s. So, with all due respect to the man God gave her, she diverged from his unbelief.

Peter calls wives to offer their husbands “unconditional respect,” as Kevin DeYoung puts it. But unconditional respect does not mean unconditional allegiance or “unconditionally enduring mistreatment” (Men and Women in the Church, 67). Her fear of God frees her to respect her husband always yet also to refuse to follow anywhere Christ forbids her to go.

Simple but Resplendent

Finally, Peter addresses the appearance of the submissive wife: “Do not let your adorning be external — the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear” (1 Peter 3:3). Peter’s command does not prohibit any and all attention to the way a woman looks; some of the most submissive women in Scripture were “beautiful in appearance” (Genesis 12:11; 1 Samuel 25:3). But Peter does encourage a godly simplicity that does not find its worth in outward beauty.

More than that, he encourages the single-minded pursuit of a far deeper splendor: “Let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious” (1 Peter 3:4). If a woman would labor over her clothing, let it be the clothing of godliness. If she would study herself in the mirror, let it be the mirror of Scripture.

When Peter speaks of a woman’s “imperishable beauty,” he uses a word that refers elsewhere to our heavenly inheritance and the gospel by which we were saved (1 Peter 1:4, 23). “All flesh is like grass,” Peter writes (quoting Isaiah). “The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever” (1 Peter 1:24–25). So too with outward beauty: Let summer turn to fall, let youth give way to age, and a woman will wrinkle and gray. But “the hidden person of the heart” remains forever (1 Peter 3:4).

A woman’s “gentle and quiet spirit” holds something of heaven. It takes its beauty from eternity and heralds the kingdom to come. The world can’t see it, and even some Christians strain to catch a glimpse. But one day, when the hidden things are revealed, she will shine resplendent. Her worth “in God’s sight” will appear plainly to all (1 Peter 3:4).

Beautiful, Not Embarrassing

When our eyes rest on the surface, when we see only a wife’s meekness, quietness, faithfulness, and simplicity, we may feel embarrassed about submission. But when we see the might, courage, freedom, and resplendence that live and thrive within her, then embarrassment dies before beauty.

Why is global witness at the heart of the Spirit’s work? John Piper opens Acts 1:4–8 to show how the Spirit brings the nations to Christ and empowers his people to go.

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In 1980, at the beginning of China’s economic reform era, a Party leader described the emerging Chinese economy as a “birdcage.” He said the bird (the nascent free market) could be allowed to fly only within the confines of a state-planned economy (the birdcage). In other words, Chinese capitalism must be controlled by the Communist Party.

That metaphor describes China today — and not just the economy but all of society, including religious life. The government claims that citizens have “freedom of religious belief.” What it means is that people can believe what they want, but the government decides how those beliefs can be practiced. Religious beliefs must take a back seat to Party ideology.

In the late 1990s and 2000s, the size of the birdcage expanded, resulting in more space for religious life. The urban house-church movement flourished. Christians became involved in meeting social needs. Christian content proliferated online. However, the birdcage began to shrink after 2012, when the Party began issuing new regulations that increasingly restricted civil society and religious life. These restrictions ranged from limits on the size of church crosses to stricter clergy qualifications to prohibitions on using the internet to conduct religious services. This has led to a new wave of persecution, particularly against some of the more prominent house churches.

For Christians, what does life in a shrinking birdcage look like?

Life Inside the Birdcage

In registered churches, which are overseen by the Party-led religious-affairs bureaucracy, years of being encouraged to eschew politics have given way to expectations that the churches must serve the interests of the Party-state through the so-called Sinicization campaign. This campaign calls on all religious leaders to align their work and teaching with “socialist values,” as defined by the Communist Party. Laws prohibiting the teaching of religion to anyone under the age of eighteen are now being strictly enforced. This means that children are not allowed to attend church.

Unregistered churches (often called house churches), which have no legal status and are perceived by the Party-state as a threat, are experiencing more overt persecution and pressure. Churches that cross government “red lines” (getting too big, engaging in political advocacy, cultivating ties with foreign groups, organizing online) may be shut down and the pastors arrested. In the past decade, some of the higher-profile house churches have been in the headlines for experiencing this level of persecution. Pastor Wang of Early Rain Church is currently nearing the end of a nine-year prison sentence for “inciting subversion of state power.” Pastor Jin of Zion Church is currently being held for “illegal use of information networks.”

The stories that make the biggest headlines do not necessarily represent the experience of all churches in China. Many, while not on the receiving end of harsh crackdowns, experience what some have labeled trouble or pressure, with local officials simply making life difficult. Pastors may be invited by security officials to “drink tea,” a common euphemism for police questioning. Landlords are pressured not to rent to religious groups, making it difficult for churches to find space to meet, forcing them to gather in different locations each week. Sometimes, local officials encourage congregations to move to other neighborhoods or districts so they will no longer be responsible for them.

And China is a land of contradictions, where little is as it seems and multiple things can be true. There are churches all over the country that remain small and quiet and are not experiencing harsh crackdowns. At the same time, some churches have been shut down and pastors detained, but they don’t make the headlines in the West. Furthermore, being “shut down” doesn’t necessarily mean a church ceases to exist. Churches adapt by dividing into smaller fellowships, thereby actually multiplying.

Finally, experiences vary by city, province, and region, often depending on the local political environment. In general, circumstances are more open in larger cities and coastal provinces, and tighter in the inland regions.

Challenges Beyond Persecution

Government persecution and pressure are real, but for many Chinese Christians, these are not the most immediate challenges they face. Beyond political persecution and pressure, our Chinese brothers and sisters face a myriad of other challenges that are often more pressing, ones that almost all people in China face.

The social effects of the forty-year one-child policy are beginning to batter Chinese families. Young couples struggle to care for two sets of aging parents. Many young adults are choosing not to marry or have children, leaving their parents without the prospect of grandchildren or having someone to take care of them in their later years.

The intensely competitive education system places immense strain on children. Thousands of young people are so worn down by the pressure and disillusioned about their future that they refuse to get out of bed each day. They stay at home doing nothing. This social phenomenon even has a name: tangping, “lying flat.” In a society that values education and hard work, the effects are devastating to individuals, families, and society at large.

In the face of these pressures, many are choosing to leave the country. The motivations vary. Some leave in search of better economic opportunities. Others want to free their children from the harshly competitive educational system. Homeschooling is illegal, so Christian parents who want to shield their children from the atheism taught in schools are looking for educational options outside of China. Some of those departing are pastors moving to other countries to plant churches. This is leading to a growth of Chinese diaspora churches, while also leaving behind congregations without leadership.

More Than a Persecution Story

While we tend to focus on the size of the birdcage, Chinese Christians focus on adapting and being faithful within it. When large-group meetings are no longer possible, they quietly become smaller fellowships that gather in homes or rotating locations. In the process of this unintended “multiplication,” believers learn simpler, more relational forms of church life — praying, studying Scripture, sharing meals, and caring for one another in smaller settings.

Believers continue to live faithfully in their families, workplaces, and neighborhoods. They care for aging parents, visit the sick, help neighbors, do honest work, and bear witness without drawing unnecessary attention.

Finally, the gospel continues to spread — in small groups and churches, in social and work relationships. More recently, Chinese missionaries are taking the gospel to the nations.

To faithfully serve and pray for churches in China, we must be willing to look beyond the headlines. If persecution is the only lens through which we view the church in China, we risk seeing Chinese Christians primarily as victims rather than fellow disciples. This can obscure the work that God is doing through them and prevent us from adopting a posture of learning.

The story of the church in China, then, is more than a story of persecution or a shrinking birdcage. It is a story of faithful living in a hostile environment. The birdcage may be shrinking, but the life of faith inside it is still real, active, and full of witness. God remains faithful! As one of my colleagues at ChinaSource, Andrea Lee, has written, “Christian hope does not rest on the recovery of space or the relaxation of regulation. It rests on the faithfulness of Christ.”

To redeem relationships, we need humility — but how do we get that kind of sacrificial heart? Looking to Christ and his cross strips away entitlement.

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When I used to travel extensively, I always packed my Bible reading plan. That way, even if I were thousands of miles from home, my husband, Ken, and I would be in sync on our daily readings. More than twenty years later, I can no longer travel, but Ken and I still make our annual journey from Genesis to Revelation.

Reading through the Bible multiple times expands and exalts our view of God. We have always seen him as sovereign and majestic, but nowadays, we step away from our Bibles, marveling at the dazzling glory of Almighty God.

He does what he decrees — he forms thoughts in the minds of monarchs, splits open the earth to swallow rebels, aims stray arrows to fulfill his battle plan, and overrules a witch by calling forth a dead prophet to confront a king. It’s the same in the New Testament: God aborts devilish schemes to turn the world’s worst murder into the world’s only salvation. When you meditate on these things — as Ken and I often do — you walk away with a skyscraping view of the sovereignty of God.

That, to me, is comforting. Yet here I am, afflicted with sores and scars, increasing pain, quadriplegia, and the constant threat of deadly pneumonia. How is it, then, that I am consoled by the doctrine of God’s absolute dominion over every moment of my pain and paralysis? Why would I even encourage Christians to view God’s providence as the ultimate source of great comfort?

The answers are found in the doctrines of grace, those treasured canons of our faith that extol God’s sovereignty in our salvation past, present, and future.

1. Total Depravity

I cleave to Romans 5:6: “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” When I was a teenager and a new believer, however, I considered myself slightly weak and only a little ungodly. I thought I had done Jesus a big favor by accepting him as my Savior.

Then I broke my neck. With a jolt, I learned how spiritually enfeebled I was. God could no longer fit into the back pocket of my jeans. So, for two years, I lay helpless at the bottom of a mortar until God had mercifully crushed my pride with his pestle.

Nearly six decades later, suffering still exposes my sin and lowers my estimation of myself. Afflictions humble me under God’s firm but loving hand, revealing how utterly weak my weakness is. Just as I cannot physically do a thing for myself, I could never contribute even a micrometer of moral worthiness to my salvation.

That teenager? She was blind to her pride and depravity. God nevertheless granted her saving faith and a spirit of repentance. She still doesn’t understand why a holy God would shine his kindness on her, but that is the beauty of finding Christ in your total depravity — it makes God’s glory all the more glorious.

2. Unconditional Election

Ephesians 1:4–5 is a feather-soft comfort: “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.” God had his eye on me long before the universe was created — in love, he called me before my suffering even began. Even if my afflictions get worse, nothing can take away my eternal deliverance.

When I blow a fuse because of my limitations, God does not rethink his choice to save me. Nothing I do can undo his decision to include me in his flock. And although there are times when I am anything but a good ambassador for Christ in my wheelchair, my loving God sends his Spirit to correct and strengthen me.

I can rejoice in my suffering because my salvation rests on God’s eternal love, not on my ability to keep a clean slate. To paraphrase Romans 8:38–39, “I am sure that neither death nor life” — nor pneumonia nor intractable pain nor total paralysis nor cancer — “nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate [me] from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I may live in a wheelchair, but I live to the praise of his glorious grace!

3. Definite Atonement

When Ken and I open our Bibles to the daily reading for July 20, a certain verse makes me tremble. Hosea 1:9 says, “The Lord said, ‘Call his name Not My People, for you are not my people, and I am not your God.’” The idea of God saying, “You are not mine, Joni,” strikes terror in my heart.

Thankfully, Jesus did not die to offer me the possibility of salvation. He died to save me specifically — with all my dog-nasty, specific sins paid for at the cross. It is comforting to know that Jesus was thinking of me that day at Golgotha.

Even in the beginning, when quadriplegia made me think twice about the Christian faith, Christ had already secured my salvation. So, come hell or high water, I have comfort that Jesus purchased my salvation completely.

I may squirm under the weight of various afflictions, but I need not worry if I’ll make it to heaven. Christ’s atonement was definite, not uncertain. My passage to heaven is completely paid for, just as Hebrews 9:12 promises: “He entered once for all into the holy places . . . by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.”

If you suffer, learn to love the word redemption. Christ’s secure atonement will redeem our broken bodies riddled with sin and pain. And we shall ascribe him glory forever and ever.

4. Irresistible Grace

Ken Tada is an amazing caregiver, but my disability can overwhelm him. He can feel trapped by my never-ending physical needs — wiping my nose, nebulizing my lungs, maintaining my wheelchair, doing toileting routines, taking inventory of meds, and on and on. No wonder he occasionally feels trapped, depressed, and just plain tired.

When that happens, Ken occasionally gives me the silent treatment. But his cold shoulder is my cue to pray for him. I ask God to bear his burdens (Psalm 68:19), open his heart (Ephesians 1:18), draw him to Jesus (John 6:44), and give him the grace he needs to endure in the way of James 1:12: “Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.”

When I pray this way, using Scripture, my husband always responds to the grace God gives. Before the day is out, Ken will lay aside the weight of my needs, take a deep breath, and keep “[running] with endurance the race that is set before [him]” (Hebrews 12:1).

By his grace, God not only saved his people in the past but goes on saving them day after day. Irresistible grace is a true comfort for any weary caregiver.

5. Perseverance of the Saints

My friend Kara lives with terrible pain. Together, we have cried, “O God, our afflictions are hard. We are slipping. Please help us, give grace, and make effective our prayers for each other!”

We know that Jesus also prays for us. As he said to his weak and faltering disciple, “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail” (Luke 22:32). Like Peter, our faith may be shaken to the core by great affliction, but it will not be extinguished. The truly saved will be preserved.

To help Kara and me endure, we have memorized Jude 24–25: “Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.”

Jude’s doxology is God’s promise to keep us to the end. He will preserve our souls and enable us to run the race set before us. We will persevere all the way through our sanctification until God calls us home to our glorification. We will say with the aging apostle Paul, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7).

The Hand of Providence

When Ken and I read through the Bible every year, we can easily trace the hand of God’s providence in nearly every chapter. God keeps opening our eyes to the beautiful doctrines of grace in our hardships. He uses our suffering to refine our faith (Hebrews 2:10), stretch our hope (Job 13:14–15), purge sin from our hearts (Psalm 107:17), build our character (Romans 5:2–5), and increase our eternal reward (2 Timothy 2:12).

The doctrines of grace show themselves most precious in seasons of suffering, weakness, or failure. When life strips away human confidence, these doctrines assure us that salvation past, present, and future rests entirely on our wise and loving God.

Why do some hear Scripture and dismiss it as nonsense? John Piper shows from 1 Corinthians 2:14–16 that the natural heart cannot discern the worth of spiritual truth.

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