When Finnish parliamentarian Päivi Maria Räsänen tweeted a verse from Romans back in 2019, she had no idea that it would ignite a firestorm not only in her home country, but around the world. For today’s episode of Fearless, I’m bringing you into the room for this year’s BGEA European Congress on Evangelism, where I had the chance to talk with Päivi onstage all about her courageous stand for biblical truth in the face of ongoing cultural and legal pressure to take back her words.

During our time together, Päivi walks me through how growing up next to a prison in eastern Finland shaped her early understanding of sin, grace, and redemption—and how those convictions would later sustain her through hours of police interrogation and years of public scrutiny. Despite enduring multiple trials—including one currently awaiting a verdict in Finland’s Supreme Court—Päivi has refused to recant. She talks about the surreal experience of being questioned by police and prosecutors about Scripture, the pressure to deny her faith, and the global impact of her story. Through it all, Päivi has stood firm, refusing to apologize for God’s Word.

Päivi’s testimony is a call to courage for believers everywhere: to speak truth in love, to resist self-censorship, and to trust that God’s purposes are greater than any opposition. I pray this episode would be a wakeup call for believers everywhere, that our freedom to speak biblical truth is under attack, even in the West. Now is the time to hold to our Christ-given convictions and refuse to back down.

During my recent trip to Germany in conjunction with the BGEA European Congress on Evangelism, I had the immense privilege of traveling to Wittenberg, Germany and walking with one of my favorite pastors—Skip Heitzig—through the very same square where Martin Luther famously nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the church door. As we walked, we reflected on how what was intended as a discussion-starter by a monk frustrated with the problems he was seeing in the Catholic Church ultimately became a revolution that would change Christianity as we know it today.

Together, Skip and I discussed why the Reformation Luther started over 500 years ago should still matter to the Church today, and how we as the Church can uphold what Luther so boldly gave his life for.

Luther pointed the Church back to the free gift of grace—emphasizing the Bible, not the Church, as the ultimate authority for believers. In a time when churches all over the world seem to be leaning more towards performance versus scriptural truth, Luther’s message is more relevant than ever before. Church, it’s time to fearlessly stand for our faith just as Luther did all those centuries ago.

What if you could be arrested for your prayers? Sadly, that’s no longer just a theoretical question. In countries across Europe, citizens are being prosecuted for their silent prayers, and this could all too easily become our reality in the U.S. if we refuse to stand boldly against censorship.

Today on Fearless, Alliance Defending Freedom’s Kristen Waggoner joins me to discuss these increasing attacks against religious liberty and free speech, what Europe’s crackdown on “thought crimes” could mean for us here in America, and what we as Christians can—and should—do to protect our God-given rights.

But despite the political and cultural tide seeming to turn against believers sharing our faith, Kristen also shares some encouraging news—including court cases that have upheld our right to free speech, and how censorship is being exposed more and more for what it is. We hope this conversation will serve as the wake-up call many of us need—challenging us as Christians not just to uphold free speech because that’s our right as individuals created in God’s image, but also because it’s one of the primary ways to move the Gospel forward.

You can learn more about Alliance Defending Freedom on their website: https://adflegal.org/.