Preparing For Persecution XI

 Hindsight and context are two powerful tools that we can use to better understand the Word of God. The interconnectedness of Scripture is one of those things even the rational among the godless have a difficult time explaining away because for there to be some sixty-five thousand cross-references throughout sixty-six books written over four thousand years is something only a supercomputer can accomplish, and that with great difficulty.

The fingerprints of God are evident throughout Scripture for anyone willing to look and see. But once you’ve seen, once you’ve looked and honestly assessed that there is something beyond mere chance to the universe, then comes the reckoning, where the individual must determine what they do with this newfound knowledge. It’s because men want to avoid the reckoning that they refuse to look and see.

Given what happened to Peter and John in the book of Acts, it lends greater gravitas to the words Peter wrote in his first epistle. Looking back on his lived experience, we realize he wasn’t speaking out of turn or being hyperbolic to make himself look good but that he’d gone through the testing and had seen the presence and power of God in the midst of it.

While ‘those who can’t do teach’ is an apropos mantra for college professors and dating coaches, there’s no substitute for lived experience. Between someone who can recite the theory of flight and someone who’s actually piloted a plane, I’ll listen to the guy who had his hand on the yoke and felt the excitement of being in a metal tube soaring above the clouds and landing it safely afterward.

Between someone who can tell you what it may be like to take a beating for the sake of Christ and someone who removes their shirt to show the scars of the experience, it’s the man with the scars that I will lend my ear to ten out of ten times.

Not to go off-topic, but I take personal offense when some pampered, coddled, drug-addled cat mom wearing the net worth of the congregation they’re looking down their nose at in jewelry starts to bloviate about how they’re suffering because they haven’t unlocked the storehouse of prosperity. To this day, there are men who bled, suffered, sacrificed, and endured among us, living simple lives of obedience and faithfulness, whose stories will never be told because they didn’t go through the experience so they could get a book deal on the back end, but because it was their duty to remain steadfast and committed to the way of Christ.

Rather than seek such men out, the modern-day church is enamored with stories of pet dinosaurs in heaven and how some clown is claiming that God used a port-a-potty to teleport her to heaven. If this is the peak of spiritual maturity in the West, I dare say the coming persecution will devastate what we’ve come to call the church to a level we dare not imagine. Will there be a remnant who will endure? Yes, most definitely. Will that remnant be smaller than most think? Most assuredly.

1 Peter 3:13-17, “And who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed. And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed. For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.”

Everything Peter wrote was not theoretical. He’d lived it. He’d suffered for doing good, he’d given a defense to those who asked a reason for the hope that was in him, he’d been slandered as an evildoer, and his good conduct had been reviled. None of these things came as a surprise to him because he’d walked with Jesus and had heard His words regarding the way the world would view those who followed Him, as well as how the religious elites of the time would react to seeing those of Christ walking in power and authority.

By the time he wrote his epistle, Peter had already seen all that Jesus foretold regarding suffering for His name’s sake come to pass and, with the benefit of hindsight, concluded that the most important thing one can do to endure faithfully was to sanctify the Lord in one's heart. To sanctify something is to consecrate it, to set it apart, to make it the pinnacle of your focus, attention, desire, and purpose, with everything else in life becoming a distant second. When Jesus is your all in all, you will be able to endure whatever the world throws at you, whether it’s hatred, derision, or outright persecution. If He’s not your everything, then whatever is competing for preeminence in your heart will be used against you when the time comes.

It’s easy for the enemy to whisper in someone’s ear that they can have the next best thing without having to endure pain if the Lord is not sanctified in their heart. If we allow for the possibility that something is approaching equal value with Jesus, then it becomes an issue of tradeoff. If only Jesus would satisfy us, if He alone is our portion, then though the world’s treasure would be laid at our feet, we would still cling to Him, for His presence in our lives would be priceless.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Posted on 16 April 2024 | 11:30 am