Reviled and Persecuted

'Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and 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'.

how can we rejoice when we are reviled, persecuted, and falsely accused ? We cannot unless we know that the reason and consequences outweigh the suffering. And they do! It is for the sake of the Lord who is saving us from self-love and its endless persecution; and who is giving us instead, great love in heaven now, and for ever.

Self-love is the reviler. It has no room for the Lord: it is utterly opposed to His will and His commandments. It rises up against the kingdom of heaven within us, to revile and persecute: 'Eat, drink and be merry' it says. Tempting us to make our own standards of good and evil.

This self-love has a whole family of evil affections, reasons and thoughts. It brings them all to its aid to overthrow our newborn aspirations and love for Jesus. Every argument and false idea it can find, it ranges against us, as the Egyptians did against the children of Israel, before they let them go.

In all this we can rejoice because it is evidence that we are now loving the Lord and that He is freeing us from bondage.

By the prophets before us who were persecuted, are represented all the warnings and good promptings that came to us along the way. They came before our decision to serve the Lord. We did not want to be bothered: we called them 'kill-joys': they were opposed to our selfish life. But now we can see the Promised Land, and even though temptations come, inwardly we rejoice.

PRAYER

'O Lord attend unto my cry: for I am brought very low: deliver me from my persecutors: for they are stronger than I' (Psalm 142, 6).

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