This past weekend, my wife and I had the chance to spend time with Andrew and Norine Brunson. We spoke at the same conference alongside other groups that work with underground and persecuted churches in the Middle East. It was an incredible opportunity — not only to hear his messages from the stage but also to spend time with them all weekend. Those shared meals, conversations and moments left a deep impact on me and were huge motivations for me to keep plowing ahead with Stand Firm. I heard Pastor Brunson speak once before at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in 2020, but he didn’t go deep into his personal experience then. This weekend, he didn’t hold back. His honesty and candor about the pain, the fear and the suffering floored me.
If you don’t know his story, Andrew and Norine were missionaries in Turkey for over two decades, planting churches and evangelizing in a place where following Jesus comes at a cost. But in 2016, after an attempted coup in Turkey, the government cracked down, arresting thousands — including Andrew and Norine. She was released after two weeks, but Andrew was falsely accused of espionage and aiding terrorist groups. He spent two years in a Turkish prison, locked away in a nightmare he never saw coming.
When I first started Stand Firm Ministries, persecution was one of the biggest warnings I saw in Scripture. The verse that drives our mission — Matt. 24:10 — makes it clear that standing firm isn’t just about holding onto faith in comfort; it’s about holding onto faith when everything is against you. Back in 2014, I watched ISIS mark the homes of Christians in Iraq with the Arabic letter “nun” for Nazarene, issuing them an ultimatum — convert, pay a tax, flee or be killed. I watched as they beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians on camera. At the same time, in the U.S., Christians were beginning to face lawsuits and job losses for refusing to compromise their beliefs. And then there was the Brunson case — an American missionary couple thrown in prison simply for serving Christ in a Muslim country. It was a wake-up call that persecution wasn’t some distant, abstract concept. It was real. It was happening. And it was coming for all of us.
But even with that knowledge, nothing prepared me to hear Andrew Brunson describe what he went through. We tend to romanticize stories of persecution — thinking of Paul and Silas singing in prison, of martyrs standing boldly in the face of death. But that’s not how Andrew tells it. From the stage, he admitted that, on paper, he and Norine seemed like people who would stand strong — faithful missionaries, deeply committed to Christ. But when persecution actually came, it was nothing like he expected.
“I had been willing to lay down my life for Jesus,” he wrote in his book, God’s Hostage, “or so I thought. But in prison, I came face to face with my own weakness.”
He wrote, “We always knew there was a cost to following Jesus in Turkey, but we assumed that meant being watched, occasionally threatened — not being torn from everything and thrown into a cell.” He expected difficulty in Turkey, but he never imagined sitting alone in a cell, cut off from the world, labeled a criminal by the country he had spent decades trying to reach.
Hearing him talk about how close he came to losing his faith shocked me. We assume that those who suffer for Jesus somehow get a special dose of supernatural peace. That’s not what happened to Andrew. He admitted that he barely made it out with his faith intact. “I had no supernatural feelings of peace. No overwhelming sense of God’s presence. I had to choose every day to trust Him, even when I felt nothing.”
The way he described his suffering was brutal. He was crushed, spiritually and emotionally. “I went into prison thinking I was a man of endurance,” he wrote. “But I quickly discovered I was weak, vulnerable and filled with fear.” He wrestled with his captors, but more than that, he wrestled with God. “I thought I had prepared my heart for persecution, but the loneliness, the sense of being forgotten — it crushed me.”
That sentence crushed me and stuck with me. We always think of persecution as a chance to prove our faith. Andrew said it broke his. He had to rebuild it, brick by brick, with nothing but the raw decision to trust in God, even when He felt a million miles away.
Since returning to the U.S., Andrew has made it his mission to warn the church. And he isn’t pulling any punches. He said too many Christians in America have a romanticized view of suffering for Christ, but the reality is much harsher than we realize. “I was blindsided by my suffering,” he wrote, “but I fear many in the West will be even more unprepared when their time comes.”
He’s urgent and unapologetic — persecution is coming, and most believers are not ready. “We have built our faith on blessings and prosperity, but what happens when those things are taken away?” He warns that cultural Christianity — built on convenience — won’t survive. “The days of casual faith are ending. We will have to decide — are we truly willing to suffer for Christ?”
That question isn’t hypothetical. If Andrew’s imprisonment taught him anything, it’s that we can’t wait until persecution comes to prepare for it. “I learned the hard way that faith isn’t a feeling — it’s a decision. If we wait until persecution comes to prepare, it will be too late.”
I spent a weekend with a man who lost everything for Jesus. And it made me realize just how unprepared most of us are. Andrew barely made it. He had spent decades in ministry and had devoted his life to Christ, and when suffering came, it nearly destroyed him. What will happen to the American church when real persecution arrives?
We can’t afford to ignore his warning. It’s time to prepare our hearts now.
