In the evening, I was listening to a Francis Chan sermon about persecution. His teachings really got me thinking a lot about how & why persecution happens, how persecution is actually a good thing and a great advantage to have against the enemy.
I was thinking about back home when I played ball hockey at my church usually every week. Most weeks, I am not a huge threat when it comes to scoring against the other team. But on one night, I somehow became this unstoppable force. I was out-running players, stick handling around players, and every time I made a pass or a shot, it would result in a goal. My shots were all just amazingly accurate. Some of my teammates were saying amongst each other, “Man, just give Evan the ball!”. It was not long until my opponents were assigning their most talented players to cover me. Sometimes I had double coverage, but that meant I just played even harder, and I was still scoring. I was just this dominant machine. The more I scored, the more I was facing a strong opposition.
I guess the whole point I am trying to make with this analogy is that when you start scoring for God, you are going to face a strong opposition. If you are not scoring for God, your opponent is not going to focus on stopping you.
It does not make sense for the enemy to attack people who are living a mediocre lukewarm life. So if you have this nice comfortable life filled with entertainment and distractions that steers you away from displaying the love of Christ to the world, that probably means the enemy is not going to take you seriously. He is probably just going to leave you alone and let you continue to conform yourself to the patterns of this world; where many waste their life on earthly desires that have no eternal wealth or value or any kind of inheritance to God’s Kingdom.
The enemy is going to focus on people that are passionately on fire for God. So if you have this life that is passionately displaying Christ to the world, that probably means the enemy is going to take you seriously. The enemy is going to attack you in various ways. If you are making noise on this earth for the Kingdom of God, you got the enemy’s attention, and it means you are actually doing damage to the enemy’s itinerary and plans. If you are becoming a loud voice, the enemy will respect you, and will work overtime to silence you in anyway. You will face persecution.
So this is the great advantage of persecution. It is an opportunity to strengthen your faith, produce perseverance, and to make the message of Jesus even more attractive to the world. So what an honor it is to face persecution. It is the evidence that God is being glorified, and the enemy actually sees you as a threat. So what a glorious opportunity we have to glorify God even more when we endure persecution. Definitely a challenge for myself to live this life that is a long and narrow difficult path that few people take, rather than the life that is a short and wide path that many take out of mediocrity & comfort.
