Persecution

 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. -Jesus Christ, Matthew 5:10-12 

Persecution: Defined as hostility and ill-treatment you experience for what you did, or who you are. 

 The year was 1569, it was late in the winter in Asperen, Netherlands. I was standing guard by a residential home the authorities had turned into a prison. I had sworn to uphold my duties faithfully as a guard. As I looked over the landscape I noticed the pond was covered in ice, it looked passable, but too thin to trust with a man's weight. Suddenly, the window of the estate was pushed open and a shabby, starved looking man lowered himself on a rope he had fashioned from knotted rags! There was a moat around the home for security but it was frozen, the man jumped off the moat and made a run for it! I chased him, he ran across the pond, I followed, and broke through, the cold water closed over my head, I fought to the surface, and tried to get out, but the ice was too thin, I couldn't get out! So, this was it, I thought, my time to die had come....

Then I heard a voice, and a hand grabbed me, I was dragged onto the ice again, by this same escapee! He had come back, I looked at him, he looked harmless, and he had saved my life. Why was I chasing him? Why was he in prison? Well, I certainly wasn't going to arrest him now, I thanked him for saving my life and was about to let him go when I heard a voice saying, "You have to grab him! Remember your oath!" It was the burgomaster, I saw he was standing on the bank; if I turned this one loose, he had me dead to rights, and it would be over with me. So, very reluctantly, I seized the prisoner and took him back to his cell... -Dirk Willems' pursuer as imagined by yours truly. 

 Later Dirk Willems was burned alive, and executed, either by the flames or by someone else who wanted to end his suffering. His crime? Rebaptism. He had rejected his infant baptism as recognized by the official politically correct churches of the day and got a believer's baptism and was marked as an Anabaptist. This was a crime in the kingdom of that day. Yet, it was absolutely vitally important to Dirk in the Kingdom he was aligned with. 

 So, that's not the only form of persecution. I have here the story of one who was persecuted for being a Nazi. Then there is the story of the Bataan Death March. In that situation many American men suffered tremendously at the hands of the Japanese. That was persecution on a terrible scale. Why? Because they were Americans. They were persecuted for being Americans. Yet, to put a finer point on all these situations, all these men were persecuted for the same basic reason. They were persecuted because they were seen as the enemy and did things that put them in the category in the minds of the people. 

 Now back to the original text at the top. Are you willing to be counted as an enemy in this world for the cause of Christ and His Kingdom? It is not that you are desiring to be an enemy, It's just that the cause of Christ is what matters to you. This book is about surrender. So, we are looking for a complete surrender to Christ. A surrender that goes so far as to die for a Kingdom that cannot be seen physically so much of the time. Thankfully, persecution in the free west is so rare and mild that it barely counts as persecution. However, I am advocating for a willingness to surrender so completely to Christ, that we are willing to accept persecution and even count it as a blessing when it comes. Great is our reward in Heaven Jesus said. This paints the idea of living in eternity. So, part of this whole surrender thing is to just switch gears and live the relational life with Christ now. Live in eternity with Christ now. Realize that the unseen reality is more real than the seen one! It is! Realize this in the heart. This is why Paul was able to say things like, "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory" 

In the next chapter, I want to switch gears, take a break from the sermon on the mount and talk about God's Kingdom. Because we have now made it through the beatitudes. We have surrendered a lot of things, we have been down here giving things up because surrender is victory when you're giving it to God. So, let's look up and out just briefly, to try to grasp the big picture of God's Kingdom in some small level that we can understand. Then we will return to the sermon on the mount. 

This has been chapter 13 of Surrender!? To Who?