I've been thinking a lot about how much more we are blessed when we give, than when we receive, and as Christmas is upon us, I wanted to ask you a question - how many of you have ever received a bible as a gift? How many of you have ever given a bible to someone as a gift?

Compass Direct and China Aid are both reporting the good news that Wusiman Yiming has been released after two years in prison. Here's part of the China Aid press release:

Fox News has a very interesting article today on muslim nations that are seeking to ban blasphemy. Click here to read the full article.

The Associated Press is reporting today about some of the recent Christian persecution in Iraq. Here is a part of that article...

Imagine with me for a minute that you, as a Christian, ran for office here in America, and you won fair and square, and then after you won, you are threatened by the Muslim community saying that you had better convert to Islam or you're going to lose your seat. Right now, it's hard to imagine that happening in America, but sadly, it is happening in Indonesia. Read on about this happening and then please pray for Dominikus who is mentioned in the story.

Today is day 104 of Gao Zhisheng's imprisonment and I wanted to just remind you to say a prayer for him and his family today. If you know ANYONE who hasn't signed the petition yet, please direct them to http://www.freegao.com so they can sign it, watch the great video VOM put together and write a letter using Prisoner Alert.

I am always encouraged when I hear about someone who has been touched by the ministry of The Voice of the Martyrs. If someone had told me that I would have had the opportunity to be a small part of such a world wide ministry, I would've told them they were crazy, and yet, the Lord opened the door for me to learn about our persecuted brothers and sisters in the faith by having me write this blog daily. And part of doing that is doing a little research to see what others are saying. Check out this post I found today, very cool...

As of the time of this writing, the Free Gao petition has 58,923 people who have signed the petition to help pressure the Chinese into freeing Gao. There have also been 228,950 emails sent on behalf of Gao.

As many of you know, we have been following very closely the situation with Gao for the last few weeks. And I have to tell you all that I am personally thankful to all of you who have signed the petition already, and who have forwarded the information on to other Twitterers and friends of yours on Facebook, and in your email accounts. This is a particularly sad story, and yet, sadly not that uncommon in some areas of the world.