February 7 - Persecution from Within

 Read today’s texts first: Leviticus 4-6; Acts 14

MAXIMize YOUR DAY 

Our enemy’s favourite tactic is using persecution
from within to divide and conquer. 

It would be expected that when the apostles began bringing the gospel to the Gentiles they would face persecution.  After all, it was the Romans who tried Jesus and nailed Him to the cross. Naturally they would be suspicious of a message heralding a new King and a new kingdom.  Any attempt to undermine Rome’s autocratic political system would be dealt with swiftly and harshly.  However, much of the persecution to the Jewish apostles came from the Jews themselves (14:3,19).  They seemed to follow them around from town to town, trying to stir up the locals to wreak havoc.  At Lystra, they pelted Paul with rocks and left him for dead.  Fortunately, Paul bounced back and carried on undaunted.

It’s hard for us to imagine this kind of opposition.  Perhaps if we were to experience it, we might also know the passion that kept them going and the miraculous intervention of the Holy Spirit riding shotgun.  The church in China today can relate.  When I was reading the Bible League pamphlet on the persecuted church, they report that the Chinese Christians are praying for more Bibles, but they’re not asking God to end the communists’ threats on their lives.  They know that persecution from the outside propels the church forward.

What we in North America can relate to is “persecution” from within.  While we suffer from occasional public image problems stirred up by left-leaning media, the biggest challenge our western churches face is internal.  Like the Jews and the early church, sometimes the people within our churches today forget that the gospel is for everyone.  Some congregations have become exclusive clubs, or holy huddles, whose greatest mission is to isolate, or at least insulate, their sacred sanctuaries from a sinful world.  Any attempts to contextualize the gospel and to reach outside of their comfort zones are met with an undercurrent of gossip, political leveraging, factions, and church splits.  As a former worship leader, I’ve often heard the complaints of congregants who think church is for them.  After all, they pay for the Sunday morning show with their tithes and offerings.  Why would we want to play music that would attract the heathen into our comfortable pews?

Persecution from outside brings the church together with a kind of unstoppable life-and-death resolve.  Persecution from within does the opposite.  It allows the enemy to gain access, like a Trojan Horse, into our command centres to divide and conquer.  No wonder our churches here, especially in Canada, are often weak and ineffective.  “Lord, I ask for the kind of resolve evident in the first church to be in me, my colleagues, and the future leaders we train.  Like Paul, we may take a few well-aimed rocks, some from our own congregants. But help us to quickly get back on our feet and keep moving forward with the message worth dying for.”