Blessed persecution

Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. – Matthew 5.10-12

Part of the problem we face is that no matter what we try to do living in this present world the world is not going to like us. The more different we are the more looked down on we will be. Some will respond to our meekness and poverty of spirit and our purity of live and our peace-making and our mercy. Sadly though most will not. Most won’t like of message because they didn’t like Christ in the first place. Most would rather have their sin than admit their depravity and weakness.

Those who live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution – that’s clear. The question is how we are going to deal with it. But here is the way of the blessed – when you are reviled and evil spoken of and persecuted for Jesus sake – we rejoice. It has happened before and we can rest in the fact that we can rely on a greater reward in heaven.

When attacked we don’t respond in kind – we love our attackers. We love our enemies. We love those who persecute us. We count it as a blessing. We make a difference by the way we deal with opposition.

If we focus on us during our troubles we will fail – lets focus on His blessings instead.