WHEN YOU ARE PERSECUTED
By: Lizmat
“You however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings – what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch and Lystra, The Persecutions I Endured. YET THE LORD RESCUED ME FROM ALL OF THEM. In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and imposters will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it.” (NIV) 2 Timothy 3:10-14
Persecution, according to the Oxford Word Power Dictionary, 3rd edition, is the act of treating somebody in a cruel and unfair way especially because of race, religion, or political beliefs. It is also the act of deliberately annoying somebody and makes their life unpleasant.
Today the issue of modernization has brought so much confusion into Christendom as well as so much suffering due to its strange beliefs. It has therefore become necessary that as Christians we hold on to the teachings that we believed in, for which reasons we gave ourselves for baptism.
The teaching of the world today about who God is and how He can be worshiped is not anything to write home about. The world has engulfed us to the extent that we have practically become Sunday worshippers of God, Lovers of money instead of Givers of it and Lovers of the pleasures of this world.
How do we stand firm as we are admonished in Ephesians? If we allow the little sufferings and persecutions of this world to drive us back to the comforts of darkness, then we are actually despising the great work of God done on the cross through Jesus Christ. We must come to an understanding that God will surely deliver us from ALL PERSECUTIONS EVEN THOUGH ALL WHO WANT TO LIVE GODLY LIVES IN JESUS WILL BE PERSECUTED.
God’s word in Psalm 34:19 is an assurance that we as Christians have in the Lord. ‘Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivers him out of them all’.
HYMNS: Farther Long
Tempted and tried, we’re oft made to wonder
Why it should be thus all the day long;
While there are others living about us,
Never molested, though in the wrong.
Refrain: Farther along we’ll know more about it,
Farther along we’ll understand why;
Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine,
We’ll understand it all by and by.
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