2 Timothy 3:10-11 You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, 11 persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.
Most people want a cushioned life. We don’t want trouble or hardship or labor or storm. We want smooth sailing, high profit margins, low gas prices and long vacations. Or maybe that is just me. You too?!
What I find to be most disturbing about the Western Church is its lack of persecution. Does that mean we have lost our impact on the culture because there are so few salt and light people to make a difference? I struggle with the remnants of a Christian culture, a culture that was little more than lipstick on a pig.
I want to be a Christian that makes a difference because I am salt and light. I think in many respects I am failing. I am too comfortable. I have too few discomforts and not enough encounters with the downtrodden, those at the low end of economics and deprived of God’s love lived out.
Paul lived a rather radical life. He wrote about being a model for the early Christian believers, a model they were supposed to emulate. That model had two very distinct sides to it. I can identify with one side, but the other side is not part of my experience.
I can identify with the first part of our text. I teach, live, express my purpose, faith, patience, love and endurance. I can get on board with these things. I want to have these things increase in my life. I strive in these areas.
But the second part of the list, the persecutions and sufferings, these are foreign to me. I can intellectually grasp them, but I have no experiential knowledge of them. We tend to want to avoid them.
But for Paul, these things, both the positive and the persecutions and sufferings, marked his character in Christ. They were signs that the LORD was in his ministry, that he was right on track in his obedience. Paul’s life was a fairly full picture of what a missionary preacher would look like.
But that isn’t all. Paul then states his definition of rescue, something we so often pray for in our lives and the lives of those around us. But Paul’s definition of rescue would not sit well with most Western Christians.
Look at what Paul writes. “The Lord rescued me from all of them.” What? You went through terrible persecution. You we beaten and left for dead. It sure seems as though the LORD abandoned you rather than rescuing you. It seems as the the LORD moved His hands away and allowed the enemy to do as he wanted.
It seems this way because our definition of rescue includes escaping every part that includes any discomfort or strain. But this is not Paul’s definition. If the suffering and persecution furthers the cause of the Gospel, then it is not something from which to be rescued. It is something to be endured for the sake of the Gospel.
Paul’s rescue is that he survived to preach another day. This is a very different way of thinking about rescue. This would lead to some very different prayers for ourselves and others, if we adopted this definition.
We need to view life from the perspective that any and every thing that leads to the furtherance of the Gospel is to be welcomed and embraced. This means persecution and suffering for the Gospel are to be accepted as a loving gift from our loving Lord.
The Arnold Journey 