We are… presented with a door that leads into a country that is not our own, a foreign land hostile to our message, our mission, and our King. Yet it also longs for the very thing Jesus provides. So we walk out the door and into the world, armed with the gospel of grace and strengthened through fervent prayer to God’s Spirit, who gives us compassion, and through God’s church, which gives us community.
Persecution
Brother Andrew
Persecution is an enemy the Church has met and mastered many times. Indifference could prove to be a far more dangerous foe.
John Piper
Once upon a time, there was a safe, private place to take your controversial stand for Jesus. No more. If you are going to stand, you will be shot at—either figuratively or literally.
Billy Graham
If you take a stand [for God] and mean it, you may suffer persecution. Some of your friends will drift away. They don’t want to be with people like you. You speak to their conscience. They feel uncomfortable in your presence because you live for God.
Anonymous Chinese Pastor
It is not persecution of the church in China that I fear. The church has always been able to weather persecution. My fear is love of money in the church.
R Terry
If your reputation is perfectly intact on every front, if you never irritate anyone, if you never make a stir, you might be doing something wrong – or more likely, you’re not doing something right. “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for in the same way their fathers used to treat the false prophets” (Luke 6:26). The Bible has a crystal clear promise: All who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Tim. 3:12). If we never experience persecution, if we never make a single soul angry (as Christ often did), something is probably wrong.
Margot Starbuck
The one Jesus calls us to love is the one who is other than we are. The reason Jesus’ words are so wildly relevant today, is because He was calling His first-century listeners to love the ones who were really hard to love. In Luke’s record of Jesus’ sermon, Jesus challenges His listeners to love those who hated them (Luke 6:27), those who cursed them (8:28), those who mistreated them (Luke 6:28), those who slapped them (Luke 6:29), those who stole from them (Luke 6:19), and those who asked something of them (Luke 6:30).
Richard Wurmbrand
Even the best of Christians are troubled by the question, “Why does an almighty God send, or at least allow, suffering?” When you are nagged by thoughts like this, say to yourself, “I am still in elementary school. When I graduate from the University of Christian life, I will understand His ways better and doubts will cease.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes.
Katherine Walden
Love
the bully
the gossip
the mean girl….
When everything in you
screams in protest,
“They don’t deserve love!”
Love them even more.
Love always wins.
the bully
the gossip
the mean girl….
When everything in you
screams in protest,
“They don’t deserve love!”
Love them even more.
Love always wins.
