Can I pray for you in any way?
Send
any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.
In Christ, Mark
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
** Follow The Christian Walk on Twitter @ThChristianWalk
** Like posts and send friend requests to the author of The Christian Walk, Mark Cummings on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mark.cummings.733?ref=tn_tnmn
** Become a Follower of The Christian Walk at http://the-christian-walk.blogspot.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered.
James 5:10-11a
This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
The choice as to whether to believe in Jesus as Savior or not is the most important decision any person will make in life, bar none. Put simply, it’s a matter of eternal future in one of only two destinations.
Anyone who chooses to believe in Jesus will find their sins washed away by His shed blood, made white as snow through the justification that only comes through Him. He, Jesus, is the only way to access Heaven to live with God forever.
Conversely, those who choose to reject Jesus are declining an invitation to the Kingdom of God (aka Heaven) and instead opting for the everlasting damnation, torment, and suffering found in Hell.
To any reasonable person, this would seem to be a no brainer. For only a fool would willingly pass on the opportunity of living eternally in glory and peace and love, trading it in for perpetuity in pain and despair and condemnation.
One had better choose wisely because when this worldly life ends, and none of us know when that will happen, you will gain the reward or penalty deserved at that time based on what you decided to do.
Now, in saying all this, anyone who chooses to believe in Jesus needs full disclosure regarding what they are signing up for. Because just because you have gained the assurance of salvation and eternal life at the end of this life doesn’t mean you are being spared from suffering before that happens. In fact, the scriptures make it very clear that before we share in Jesus’ glory, we will first share in His suffering (Romans 8:17), the suffering He took on Himself as He bore our sins on the cross so to spare us from it. Indeed, it was by His wounds that we are healed (Isaiah 53:4-5).
This suffering might come as a result of physical ailment or mental health injuries. It could come from the pain of grief or heartache from broken relationships. It could also come from persecution as we are mistreated, ridiculed, and even threatened with harm simply because of our belief in Jesus.
It was this latter form of hardship Christians can face, the hardship of persecution, that we find at the heart of our scripture passage as James continues to right to his brother and sister Hebrew Christians. Look again at his words here:
Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. James 5:10-11a
A couple of things we need to keep in mind here.
First, Christianity was a fledgling religion in the first century A.D., the new kid on the block and competing with more established belief systems. One of this was Judaism, the very religion the Hebrew Christians had converted over from.
Try to put yourself in the place of one of these new Jesus followers. You were trying to establish the Christian church in the midst of entrenched synagogues who had a reputation of raging against those who followed “The Way” (code for Christianity then), even as far as killing Christians if necessary just as they had Jesus Himself (or at least they erroneously thought they had killed Him). And as you walked about, it’s not as if you were unknown. After all, you had worshiped within the very synagogues that now are attacking you. The persecution had to carry with it an incredible amount of mental anguish and fear.
It was a tough place to be but this leads to the second point James made to encourage his Hebrew brothers and sisters in Christ to stand firm against the resistance with patience and in faith. For his readers knew Old Testament scripture and history well and so they would understand that persecution was not just a present-day phenomenon they were dealing with. Throughout the history of God’s people, there were times of persecution and maltreatment with the prophets, those “who spoke in the name of the Lord, serving as one example.
Moses, the one God chose to lead His people out of their oppression in Egypt, was under the constant threat of death from Pharaoh. And even after the Lord saw to it that the deliverance was a success, His chosen leader and spokesperson, constantly faced the grumbling and consternation of the people He was leading.
Later, the prophet Jeremiah faced beatings, imprisonment, and was even cast into a cistern and left for dead. The persecution he experienced was so acute that he even started wishing that he had never been born (Jeremiah 15:10).
In the 19th chapter of 1 Kings, the prophet Elijah had to run for his life after executing the prophets of Baal after Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab, put out an assassination order on him. While sitting near a broom bush, the scriptures tell us that Elijah prayed and asked the Lord to take his life (1 Kings 19:1-8) only to discover the Lord had other plans for him.
And then we have the very well known story of Daniel who refused to violate his faithfulness to God and was put into a den of lions as punishment, only setting the stage for God to perform an amazing miracle and show His protection over anyone who remains loyal (Daniel 6).
There are a lot more examples but the point is made. Persecution has been an associated part of a person’s willingness to surrender their will to carry out the will of the Lord as long as mankind has existed and it will continue to persist until that day when Jesus returns to judge the world and everyone on it, whether dead or alive.
Like the prophets of old, the Hebrew Christians of the first century as well as all Christians today, are being called to be patient in the midst of persecution for when we do experience it, we are counted among the blessed. Jesus, the very Son of God and brother of James, put it this way:
“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in Heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Matthew 5:11-12
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment