Jesus’ Brutal Honesty

As I read the beatitudes, I am struck by how brutally honest Jesus was. This was the worst recruiting speech ever! I can almost picture the disciples begging Jesus to stop and talk about more positive things. Instead He talks about how people who are poor, hungry, meek, and persecuted are blessed by God. This must have been incredibly shocking to the people of that time. They were raised to believe that if you were good, God gave you good things. If you were getting bad things out of life, it must mean that you had sin in your life. So how can Jesus say that you are blessed even when bad things are happening?

This is even more shocking when Jesus says that those who are persecuted for righteousness are blessed by God. Israelis of that time had been raised on the teaching that the only reason there were being oppressed and persecuted by the Romans was that there was sin in the nation of Israel. Jesus is basically saying that you can do everything right and still be persecuted. In other words, our outward circumstances are not necessarily indicative of our spiritual state.

I love the fact that Jesus did not try to soften this truth. He does not hem and haw around the facts. He just tells it the way it is. You can be a good person, in right relationship with God, living a holy life and still experience pain in this life. BUT you are still blessed! When times are tough, hold on to the One who was brutally honest with you. He told you it would be tough but He promised to be with you and to bring you through.

Hanging Out In Painful Places

GOD has been bringing me back to a small, seemingly insignificant passage in the book of Acts. In chapter 16, Paul starts out on his second missionary journey: And, wait for it… Goes to Lystra! Wow! Do you see how exciting that is? No? Well, maybe if you realize that Lystra was the last place he visited on his first missionary journey. Now do you see it? How about if I remind you that it was in Lystra that a mob threw large stones at Paul’s head until they were all convinced that he was dead. They were so sure he was dead, they drug him out of the city and threw him in the dump. But God raised him up and he immediately went back into the city. Now, when he is ready to go out on another mission trip, he makes a beeline for the place where they almost succeeded in killing him.

So, why did Paul go back there? I don’t think it was the nice weather. He may have had some friends but he certainly had more enemies there. It wasn’t on the way to anywhere. I think he went back there to face his pain and his fear. It is human nature to avoid painful places and people. Paul was showing us how to confront the painful places in our lives.

Whenever the enemy hurts us, his goal is always to get us to quit. If he can’t get us to quit, he will settle for hurting us so badly that we will not walk in the fullness of God’s plan. He tries to create places in our lives that we are afraid to even think about. Paul refused to live in that kind of bondage. He confronted the very place of his greatest pain. We must be a people who will not back down. We must go forward and deal with the painful places. We might even need to go back and vacation there until the fear is gone.

Oh, another thing stands out about this. It is in Lystra that Paul find Timothy who become his protégé and friend for many years to come. Many times it is in the painful places of our life that we find the greatest blessing. GOD loves to build on our scars. When we confront our pain and let God heal us, HE just loves to use those scars as a foundation for blessing and future ministry. We will miss out on all of that if we run away and avoid our pain.

Flee Forward

As I continue to study the book of Acts slowly, I continue to be struck by certain things. Right now I am studying Paul’s second missionary journey and two things keep happening in every city he visits. First, he is faced with opposition, usually from religious people: And second, Paul flees for his life; but he always flees forward.

I am not so much amazed that Paul faced opposition in every city he visited as I am amazed at how we can read about it and then be shocked when we face opposition. It seems that we are shocked that people would be mean to us when we are trying to serve God. Everyone was mean to Paul, not to mention how they treated Jesus. But we think God doesn’t love us anymore if we have any conflict whatsoever. Who are we following? If the One we are following was killed, should we be surprised that everyone does not just agree with us and behave properly. How can we think we should not be treated badly because we are children of God when the SON OF GOD was crucified?

The kicker is that whenever Paul faced opposition, which usually involved mobs attacking him and sometimes throwing large rocks at his head, he always ran forward. He would flee the city but he would not go home. He always went deeper into the enemy’s territory. When someone is mean to me, I usually shrink back to a place of safety. Paul did not shrink back, he went forward. Trouble in Phillipi, go 100 miles further away from home and safety and start preaching again. Mobs in Thessolonica, go another 60 miles further to Berea. Persecution there, go on to Athens. It is almost as if Paul knows that the enemy’s real purpose is to turn him back, so he goes forward. Whenever the enemy attacks us, it is to make us turn back. If we really want to rub his nose in it, we should press further into the things of God. We need to be the kind of people who flee from opposition. Only let us flee forward into the enemy’s territory. No turning back.