Daily devotion – persecution
2Ti 3:12 Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.
When you read through the Bible, there are times we just miss the message. I am not talking about the message of the Cross. I am talking about something else entirely.
From Abel, Noah…David…Jeremiah….Shadrach Meshach and Abednego…Daniel…all the Apostles…our Lord…what happened to each and every one of them?
They were persecuted for their faith in the one true God, the God of Israel and His Son Jesus Christ.
Persecuted – hostility, ill treatment.
As Christians, being persecuted is what the Christian life entails. In fact if you face no persecution it may well be that your supposed faith is so well hidden, that even God does not know about it.
1 Peter 4: 1 So then, since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had, and be ready to suffer, too. For if you have suffered physically for Christ, you have finished with sin. 2 You won’t spend the rest of your lives chasing your own desires, but you will be anxious to do the will of God. 3 You have had enough in the past of the evil things that godless people enjoy—their immorality and lust, their feasting and drunkenness and wild parties, and their terrible worship of idols.
4 Of course, your former friends are surprised when you no longer plunge into the flood of wild and destructive things they do. So they slander you.
12 Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you. 13 Instead, be very glad—for these trials make you partners with Christ in his suffering, so that you will have the wonderful joy of seeing his glory when it is revealed to all the world.
14 So be happy when you are insulted for being a Christian, for then the glorious Spirit of God rests upon you.
This is why Christian fellowship is so important when we go through a time of persecution. Brothers and sisters in Christ understand how you feel for they too face the same each day in their lives.
Persecution is not something we have to seek after, it will find us when we are living godly lives as was Daniel, in Daniel 6, in an ungodly world. The world remember is against Christ and it is against us.
But we need to remember and rest that whilst the world may be against us, God is for us!
Persecution builds our faith, strengthens our trust, fuels our prayer time and gives us an insatiable hunger for God’s presence and His Word.
If you are not already being persecuted, it will come, but when it comes, be like Daniel and just continue to worship, pray and seek God like every other day.
He will take care of the storm you are in and deliverance will come!