Persecution
They will seize you and persecute you. They will hand you over to synagogues and put you in prison, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name…you will be betrayed even by parents, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. Everyone will hate you because of me.
Luke 21:12; 16-17 (NASB)
In the American Church, we have a very immature concept of our rights. We have been conditioned to believe that because we have been created equal with all men (which is absolutely true), we have certain rights. We believe that we have the right to peace of mind. To privacy. To freedom. We believe that we have the right to have things our way, to determine our own path and to set a standard for our own living.
Some would tell you that you are absolutely entitled to those things. Others would tell you that entrance into the Kingdom of God means a forfeit of those rights. My stand is much different.
Many people have asked me about this whole concept of the believer’s ‘rights’. Here’s my official response before all of you: I don’t care!
As a man of God who wields the authority of Jesus Christ and has devoted himself as a shepherd in the house of God, yes, I absolutely have the right to be free. However, if being arrested and mistreated leads to the salvation of people who would of otherwise gone to hell, how can I call myself a man of God and stand on my right to be free? As an ambassador of the Kingdom of God, I have the right to never lack. However, if going hungry and cold reveals the heart of God to a lost and dying people, how can I call myself a man of God and stand on my right to provision. As a leader in the house of God, I absolutely have the right to my privacy. However, if equipping my sheep to reach the lost and reveal the Kingdom the world means baring my life before all, how can I call myself a man of God and stand on my right to privacy.
As a man or woman of God, you have absolute rights. God has given you access to the fullness of His authority and because of your high standing in the house of God, you have the right to be free, and to have fullness of life. However, let me point out that so did Jesus when He laid down every single one of those rights in exchange for your life.
Salvation grants you the power to stand upon your rights as an ambassador of the Kingdom…and the courage to lay them down for the sake of love.
The Courage To Love
There are some of you reading this book who don’t really understand how I made the connection I made between our rights and our responsibility to love. If you are one of those people who didn’t really understand why I suggested it is godly to lay down our rights for the sake of love, I would challenge you to sit back and meditate on what everything I have written in this book. Maybe even to re-read the chapters on Godly Community and Evangelism, especially the section that I sub-titled: Love Is Our Center.
We were created to exist and live from a center of love. Love for God, and love for man. True connection to the person of Jesus Christ reveals itself in our love. I am not suggesting that it is ungodly to stand on our rights, I am saying it is ungodly to stand on our rights at the expense of love.
Really think about what I just said. In our generation, God is really waking up the Church to the whole concept of abundance. For years the Church lived without any real sense of fullness in life. The Church was poor and fruitless in many ways. They didn’t know that God had provision, and freedom and joy for them. Well, in my lifetime I have seen the Church reawaken to the abundance that Jesus died to provide for them. Christians have finally begun to embrace, and stand upon, their rights as men and women of God. Unfortunately, they have done so to the point of neglecting their responsibility to love.
Many men and women of God find the thought that God might expect them to lay aside their rights offensive. They argue, “It doesn’t help anyone see Jesus when I am poor or hungry or sick. I have to be whole!”
Here is what I would suggest to you. Do you think Mother Theresa did a fuller job of revealing Jesus to the world than you have? If not, then I am a little humbled that someone of such powerful influence is reading my book!! Thank you for honoring me! If so, however, then I would challenge you to realize that she did it with absolutely no money and with less than perfect health. When Mother Theresa died, her feet were literally deformed because she loved people SO much that every time a new box of shoes came to her ministry, she took the smallest and most ruined pair, so that no one else had to suffer with it. She spent her time with the poor and sick…as someone who was poor and sick. She did not spend her life shouting at the devil and enforcing her heavenly rights. Did she have them? Yes. Did she care? Nope. Did she change the world? You tell me…
You have rights, whether you know it or not. I would suggest the Mother Theresa probably didn’t really understand how much authority she had in the Kingdom of God. She probably didn’t know she had the right to provision and health. However, I am confident that if she had known, she would of employed that authority for the sake of love, and not for the sake of the rights themselves. I am confident that she still would have died, having spent her life with the poor, the hungry and the dying. Why? Because more important than our rights, is our love.
Having said all of this, I want to make a crucial point that I want you to remember for the rest of your life: Those who love will suffer.
This is a really difficult truth for so many people to accept. I cannot tell you how many pastor’s I have heard teach their congregations that if they will learn to live by the Spirit, God will lead them away from trouble. That is so unbiblical. In fact, Jesus said the exact opposite!! He said that those who followed Him would face persecution and that the world would hate them. Friends, there is no escaping it. Those who follow the Lord will suffer.
My task now is not to further convince you that suffering is necessary, but rather, to explain to you why. It is important that we have clear understanding of why we have to face persecution. Otherwise, when its time to face it, it becomes easier to grumble and to grow bitter and angry. So I ask you to continue reading for just a little longer. I have a few simple thoughts I want to give you, in order to help you understand why faith in Jesus would lead you into trouble, rather than peace.#
Why We Must Suffer
…the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
1 Corinthians 1:18 (NKJV)
I have not been ministering the truths of the Kingdom for an extraordinarily long amount of time, but in my personal opinion, this reality is the key to answering the question of why we must suffer. After all, surely it isn’t God’s heart that wills for us to face pain. God loves you desperately and doesn’t desire for you to face pain and persecution. It is not God’s perfect will for you to suffer. It is His permissive will.#
God does not desire suffering, He allows it because He loves humanity so much, that He is willing to go to any length to redeem it. If there was ever a way to prove what I just said, it was the life of Jesus.
Tell me, do you think that God wanted His only (and let me stress only. Before the Cross, Jesus was the only child of God. All of humanity had lost its standing with God and were no longer His) Son to suffer and die for crimes He was innocent of? And even worse, do you think He wanted to administer His own considerable justice and wrath upon His Son, whom He knew to be perfect and holy in every way? Do you think it pleased Him to punish Jesus on the Cross? Of course not!
God took no pleasure in the suffering of His Son, but He allowed it anyway, because even though the world hated the message of the cross (which began with the teachings Jesus gave on the Kingdom), it was their only hope for redemption. Jesus brought the earth a message that challenged the very nature of their existence and called them into a freedom their nature compelled them to resist.
He came to the earth and lived a holy and perfect life, and by doing so, He revealed the sinfulness and imperfection of the people around Him. Even God’s own people were made aware of their sin and their distance from God. His message was meant to bring freedom and to offer the world access to perfection and the love of God; but the world approached the message with offense, choosing only to hear “we’re not good enough”.
All they cared about was the fact that Jesus had come into their lives and dared to suggest that what they had wasn’t good enough. Rather than embracing the better way He was freely offering them, they rejected Him and did their very best to hinder His efforts in every way. When He tried to teach, they would disrupt His teachings with stupid questions. When He did miracles, they accused Him of being demonic. They accused Him of being a drunkard, a glutton, demon possessed and even a false prophet. In every way possible, they stood against Jesus.
I can even think of several accounts in the gospel’s where they tried to stone Him or kill Him in some way.
Jesus brought a message of reconciliation, and the world hated Him for it. They falsely accused Him, they tried to confuse Him and get the people to hate Him by spreading rumors and lies. They even went so far as to arrest Him, beat Him and…yes, even murder Him.
Jesus suffered because of the message of the Kingdom. Jesus died because of the message of the Kingdom; and at the end of the day, He left us with the responsibility of continuing His message in the earth.
Jesus came to save humanity. At the Cross, He purchased our freedom, and gave us right to be children of God. However, He left us the job of convincing humanity of their free access to the person of God, and to speak freely of the message of the Cross. The very message that Jesus suffered and died for has become the very message He has instructed us to live by.
Are you beginning to see we must suffer? Are you beginning to understand why Jesus prophesied that we would be arrested and betrayed on account of His name? Because the message we live by, and freely preach, is hated and misunderstood by the world. In the face of God’s holiness, sinners see their guilt and resent it. Though many are saved because of our message, there are also many who refuse to see the truth, and end up detesting us because of their blind understanding. They hear us, but they don’t comprehend. They see the truth, but can’t take it in. Instead of seeing a chance for freedom, they accuse us of judging them and being condemning.
Here is the point I am trying to make to all of you: If Jesus had to suffer for the truth of the Kingdom, so will you.
Persecution is not the mark of being outside of the will of God. All persecution means is that you are doing something the world doesn’t like!! And friend, being like God certainly qualifies!!!!
In the Church of Jesus Christ, persecution is a mark of intimacy, reflecting our approach to Christ as we share in His suffering.#
Guys, I don’t want you to make stupid choices for the sake of suffering. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I simply want you to understand that as we draw near the wonderful person of Jesus, His purpose and message begin to take precedence in our lives. As we have spent this book talking about, we will naturally begin to think and act and live like Jesus; and the world around us will oppose us just as it opposed Him.
Its not that God desires for us to suffer, but that He desires us to be like Him, and the world hates who He is.
Salvation leads you into a life of becoming like Jesus, but the cost is heavy. Becoming like Jesus means you can no longer be like the world. Suddenly you find yourself becoming more and more holy, and those around you who are living in sin will often hate you for it. They will accuse you of thinking your better of them, even if you don’t really think that. They will feel judged by you, even if your not judging you, and they will resent you for it. They will accuse you of being full of yourself, and even of being fake. They’ll watch your life, and call you a hypocrite the second they see you make a mistake. In some cases, they will even arrest you and kill you.
I do not know what you will have to face as you draw near to God. Maybe it will be false accusations. Maybe your past will get thrown into your face. Maybe they will discredit you. Maybe they will arrest you. Maybe they will kill you. I don’t know what will happen, only that the life of faith always offends the world, and incites their hatred. When you fall in love with Jesus, and begin to become like Him, the world will hate you. And they will show you that they hate you.
So the question I want to ask you is: Has the world even noticed that your different?
I don’t want to suggest that if you’ve never been to jail your not a Christian. That’s not true. In different parts of the world, sinners show us their hatred in different ways. For me, I’ve never been thrown in prison or been questioned by a king. However, I have been attacked by people as I told them about the message of the cross. I have been called names; I have been falsely accused of being judgmental and condemning. I’ve had people call me a false prophet and have had my past decisions thrown up in my face. I’ve even had several seasons of my life where specific people made it their goal to argue with everything I said about God, and go behind my back to tell people not to listen to me.
My point? The world has noticed that I am different. Have they noticed you?
Father, Help me to rightly discern my life. Have I become more like You? Has my life interrupted the way of sin in the world? Has the message of the Cross taken priority in my life? Has the world noticed me? Father, it is so easy to see what I have always seen, but I want to know the truth…whatever it is. In Jesus’ name.
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