Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Living for God
Series
Luke 6:22 “Blessed are you when men
hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil
because of the Son of
Your Badge of
Honor
Last week one of the members of our staff received a
horrendous anonymous letter. In this letter the mean-spirited writer
said hurtful words to a person who does their best to serve the Lord.
Ever since the time of Christ, it has been predicted that His followers
would face persecution. If we are going to be a people of God, that
is inevitable. Christ would say, “That is your badge of
honor.”
Jesus was a perfect person and it seemed at every place
people condemned him. The Pharisees were constantly trying to trap
Him for doing good things. In the end, of course, they crucified
Him. My experience as a pastor has been that people, many times, are
looking for your mistakes. Whether you are a pastor or a Christian
leader, there will always be people who will challenge you.
If we stand up for our faith we will face
challenges. In what way do we master the challenges that we will
face? We make sure that we live a life consistent with the
teachings of God. We stay in strong relationship with our Lord
through worship, in our church, and private devotional time. We pray
and take time to hear God as well as speak our concerns to Him. We study
the Bible so that we are secure in our actions.
We decide what limits God wants on us so that if we face
difficulties we are prepared to make the right choices. When I was a
college student one of my fraternity brothers and I were going to a hardware
store. He stuffed some items in his coat pocket and said, “Let’s
go. Chip, would you put these in your coat?” I already knew I would
not steal something that did not belong to me. I said, “No
way!” When we got back to the fraternity house he ridiculed me
but I knew my integrity was intact. It is important to know the
boundaries God has for us.
We trust God even if things seem to go
wrong. After a lifetime of listening to people deal with
difficulties I have seen that if you simply believe in God, in His own time
everything will work out. It does not mean it won’t hurt but God can
work out any difficulty.
If we hold tightly to our faith, even in the face of
persecutions, our faith will grow stronger. Job says, in essence,“ I
knew you then only by report. But now I see you with my own eyes,
therefore, I yield.” In other words, through his suffering he came to
submit his life to God no matter what.
The truth is, we will all suffer for our faith,
hopefully to a much less extent than our Lord. But when we do suffer
because we are Christians we understand it was always an expectation that His
followers would do so. If we are going to be a person of influence,
we will always face these difficulties.
Prayer:
Dear God, help me to face the problems of faith.
Amen.