Persecution Or Popularity?
We ourselves glory in you in the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure.
2 Thessalonians 1:4
Popularity and adulation can be far more dangerous for the Christian than persecution. It is, unfortunately, easy when all goes well to lose our sense of balance and our perspective. We must learn like Paul “how to abound” and “how to be abased.” We must learn in “whatsoever state” we are “therewith to be content” (Philippians 4:11).
As we have said elsewhere in this book, the important thing is to walk with Christ, to live for Christ, and to have one consuming passion: to please Him. Then, whatever happens, we know that He has permitted it to teach us some priceless lesson and to perfect us for His service. He will enrich our circumstances, be they pleasant or disagreeable, by the fact of His presence with us. The tomorrows fill us with dread. John 10:4 says, “He putteth forth his own sheep.” Whatever awaits us is encountered first by Him—like the Oriental shepherd, who always went ahead of his sheep—therefore any attack on sheep has to deal first with the shepherd—all the tomorrows of our lives have to pass Him before they get to us!
Three Hebrew children were cast into the burning fiery furnace, but the king said, “Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God” (Daniel 3:25). Our God is with us in the midst of persecution.
An apocryphal story tells of the first convert of a certain missionary who was tortured to death for his faith. Years later, the missionary died. In heaven he met that first convert and asked him how it felt to be tortured to death for his faith. “You know,” the man replied with a shrug and looking a bit bewildered, “I can’t even remember.”
Our Father and our God, You are the Good Shepherd and Guide for my life. Teach me how to find balance in my spiritual life. Increase my passion, Lord, to serve only You both night and day. Set Your Spirit on fire within me that I may lead others to You. In Christ. Amen.
Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).