23 Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. 24 Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea,
Today I want to talk about a most sobering subject, the ongoing persecution of Christians around the world. Here is a website (www.persecution.org) that you can go to and read current accounts of people being killed and tortured simply because the name Jesus as their Master. Some who read this will insist that these things are not happening in the world today, but they are. Even with all our wealth, education, political-correctness-gone-wild, people are still being killed. By some estimates, this is the worst period of persecution ever in the history of mankind. More have been killed because they are Jesus-followers than at any other period in history. We can land on the moon and use a cell phone while driving, but we can’t stop murderous ideologies from spreading and wreaking their inevitable death and destruction. That is because we can’t cure the human hearts of others. We can only receive the cure individually. There are no mass inoculation campaigns that cure the human heart. Each dose of Jesus must be accepted individually. The great revivals of the 1800s took place in large groups, but individuals responded to the message. Slavery ended in England and then here in the States. Whore-houses and bars simply went out of business for lack of customers. It was not some government mandate that cleaned up society, but individuals responding to the call of the love of God demonstrated in the Person of Jesus. This has been the answer in the past, and it is the answer in the present. The world’s ills are not governmental or political, although these systems can get pretty infiltrated with sinful human beings. The problem is the sinful human beings, people just like you and me. When the human heart is given free reign, what a mess! Paul’s journey of faith had many extreme difficulties. The list above is just the beginning. But Paul was able to overcome, to not bend under the pressure, to come out on the other side of these trials with his head held high. He did not compromise so as to lose what God had given him. We are reminded, like the Corinthian believers of Paul’s day, that although difficulties are bound to come into the Jesus-follower’s life, we are never alone, God is with us in the difficulty. Let’s pray for those who are facing persecution today. Pray that grace would be evident through their lives to those who are doing the persecuting.
The Arnold Journey 