“Advancing The Gospel Through Chains: A Gain That Is Worth The Pain!”

“Advancing The Gospel Through Chains: A Gain That Is Worth The Pain!”(Phi.1:12-14).
Some years back, I shared a bed with a young pastor. We were guests in the manse of Bonaberi congregation. The young pastor told me he had been transferred to go and begin a Presbyterian congregation in a francophone village. The pastor told me that for his first month there, he was living in the house of a good Catholic Christian.
Some of our now sought-after congregations started as prayer cells, begun by Christians who went to such places as civil servants. At first, they considered their transfers to be punitive, but over time, it dawned on them that it was God who had sent them there to spread the gospel.
The missionary enterprise was a perilous task to those missionaries who left the comforts of their countries to bring the gospel to us. The graves of some of them are littered here and there across the continent. May their souls continue to rest in peace.
The first advance and spread of the gospel was not intentional evangelisation. There was no time for an evangelistic strategy. It just happened. The apostles were not even part of it. Luke recounts: “On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria”(Act 8:1). In the process, the dispersion helped to advance the gospel.
The ivory tower ministry we clamour for these days does not help to advance the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ; it advances the “food gospel!”
Ministers of the gospel who have not experienced one kind of chain or the other for the sake of the gospel do not know what actually advances the gospel.
We serve to advance the gospel when we face persecution in defence of that same gospel. The gain is worth the pain!
May Paul’s testimony of the gains of his imprisonment be an encouragement to us when we are in such dire straits for the sake of the gospel. Paul recounts: “Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.”
My friend, may we be ready to suffer for the sake of the gospel, so that “most of the brothers and sisters” should “become confident in the LORD and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.”
Weekend prayer: Holy Spirit, encourage us daily to be ready to be in chains for the sake of the gospel. Amen!
Have a blessed weekend! Peace be with you!
Rev Babila Fochang.
26/09/2025.