THRIVING Under PERSECUTION – The Essential Mindset Shifts
COMPARING this beatitude with the last, WHAT DO YOU NOTICE?
Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:11-12)
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:10)
I particularly want to dwell on verse 12:
REJOICE: Rejoice, be glad, be joyful … conveys a sense of inner joy and delight, often in response to God’s grace and goodness.
EXULT: To rejoice greatly, exult, be exceedingly glad. … conveys a sense of exuberant joy and gladness, often expressed physically or emotionally. … not merely an emotional response but a profound, spiritual state of being …
The COMMAND to rejoice! “Present Active Imperatives are COMMANDS that are expected to be followed not once, but as an ongoing process.”
Is “persecution” only relevant if we have other people actively attacking us for our faith?
OR should we “expect and prepare to be persecuted”?
OR Should we even go looking for trouble?
I know some Christians all too ready to protest perceived hurts, wearing their persecution on their sleeves – a kind of morbid badge of honour!
But that runs counter to the Lord’s DIRECT COMMAND!
“Rejoice and Exult!” (Matthew 5:12)
“But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face” (Matthew 6:17)
John Stott comments,
How did Jesus expect His disciples to react under persecution? “Rejoice and be glad!” We are not to retaliate like an unbeliever, nor sulk like a child, nor lick our wound in self-pity like a dog, nor just grin a bear it like a Stoic, still less pretend we enjoy it like a masochist. What then? We are to rejoice as a Christian should and even “leap for joy” (Lk. 6:23) (https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/resources/persecution-and-suffering-for-jesus-christ/)
There is an INTERNAL and an EXTERNAL way to read EVERYTHING in the Word … WHICH IS ESSENTIAL?
THE INNER! If Jesus were to come again, THE WHOLE point is that “every knee shall bow” and every heart acknowledge. His coming without that acknowledgement is meaningless. But when every heart follows Him, He doesn’t need to come physically to rule the world. The same is true of persecution. This INNER transformation, transcends whatever happens to be going on in the external world at the time. It MANIFESTS OUTWARDLY in the ability to withstand whatever the external world happens to throw at it. But it is NOT dependent upon the world opposing you.
“So they persecuted the prophets” represents REJECTION OF THE WORD
OF COURSE they are going to reject you if you follow what they already despise.
It is a kind of litmus test of Divine Truth active in one’s life, that you are rejected by those who reject the Word.
We see this in Exodus 1 – Massacre of the innocents, not unlike Matthew 2:16-18
Swedenborg’s summary:
This first chapter deals in the internal sense with the state of the Church which has been established, a state in which good plays the leading part and is made fruitful through the multiplication of the truths of faith. [the multiplication of the Israelites] [… and then Pharoah’s opposition …] Then the molestation of those truths by falsities and evils in the natural is dealt with and the fact that through that molestation good was made even more fruitful by means of truths. The subject through to the end of the chapter is that molestation and the stages it passes through as it increases, as well as the resulting instillation and consolidation of truth from good. (Heavenly Secrets, 6634 & 6635)
PICTURES the rejection of the DIVINE TRUTH of the WORD
But through this testing, what is good and true is made even more fruitful and abundant
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