Free to Suffer
23 After many days had gone by, there was a conspiracy among the Jews to kill him, 24 but Saul learned of their plan. Day and night they kept close watch on the city gates in order to kill him. 25 But his followers took him by night and lowered him in a basket through an opening in the wall.
Acts 9:23–25
Do you ever wonder what you would do if persecution got really hot in Australia? Like, imagine there were people going around knocking on doors and asking if you were Christian. Imagine if people were having meetings about how to get Christians arrested or worse? What would you do?
I think this is where we run into a question Christians have. What are we supposed to do? For instance, should Christians hang in there, trust the Lord and cop the persecution. Or, is it right to flee and get to somewhere safer?
It’s interesting that in Acts you get examples of both. In Chapter 7 we saw Stephen, who sticks around despite the likely threat to his life and loses it for the sake of proclaiming the truth. Here, you get Paul, who is whisked away by the Church to escape the potential for Stephen’s fate.
If you trace this theme throughout Acts, here’s what I reckon you see. There are times to stay and times to go and to be honest, you probably just know when you know. What we need to be careful of, is looking down on believers when they choose to scatter. But we must also see that scattering isn’t done at the smallest sign of persecution.
So, what does it all mean for us? Well, persecution isn’t so bad in Australia that we should be considering changing location because of it. But maybe one day it could go in that direction. If that’s the case, we need to be mindful of these things.
Until then, let’s pray for God’s grace and wisdom to those who are suffering intense persecution. Recognising that some will stay and some will go and God will be glorified in all of it.
Today:
Pray:
Acts 9:23–25
Do you ever wonder what you would do if persecution got really hot in Australia? Like, imagine there were people going around knocking on doors and asking if you were Christian. Imagine if people were having meetings about how to get Christians arrested or worse? What would you do?
I think this is where we run into a question Christians have. What are we supposed to do? For instance, should Christians hang in there, trust the Lord and cop the persecution. Or, is it right to flee and get to somewhere safer?
It’s interesting that in Acts you get examples of both. In Chapter 7 we saw Stephen, who sticks around despite the likely threat to his life and loses it for the sake of proclaiming the truth. Here, you get Paul, who is whisked away by the Church to escape the potential for Stephen’s fate.
If you trace this theme throughout Acts, here’s what I reckon you see. There are times to stay and times to go and to be honest, you probably just know when you know. What we need to be careful of, is looking down on believers when they choose to scatter. But we must also see that scattering isn’t done at the smallest sign of persecution.
So, what does it all mean for us? Well, persecution isn’t so bad in Australia that we should be considering changing location because of it. But maybe one day it could go in that direction. If that’s the case, we need to be mindful of these things.
Until then, let’s pray for God’s grace and wisdom to those who are suffering intense persecution. Recognising that some will stay and some will go and God will be glorified in all of it.
Today:
- Have you ever thought about what you would do if persecution started getting really bad where you are?
- Check out the Open Doors website to see where people in the world are really suffering from persecution.
- Pray for one country from Open Doors.
Pray:
- Praise the Father that he is our loving Father.
- Give thanks for Jesus who delivers us from all evil and death.
- Ask God for His Holy Spirit to be with those who are being persecuted.
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