5. Be Prepared To Listen To The Spirit
When Jesus prepared His disciples, a major emphasis in His teaching was to prepare them to die for the faith. He told them:
Misguided religious people in the Dark Ages thought that they did a service to God by killing infidels. Either it was Muslims who killed non-Muslims, or so-called ‘Christians’ slaughtering Muslims. Today, the West faces a resurgence of Muslim ‘fanaticism’, and western society has no effective counter to it. Why? Because its ethos is to conserve or protect its own physical life at all costs. That’s the opposite of Jesus’ teaching. The one thing that Jesus never compromised was the truth. He didn’t mollycoddle people with soft or sentimental teaching. He gave it to them straight! And He told us to expect to die for His truth, and to prepare for such an eventuality. Notice what He said:
This prophecy has been fulfilled countless times down through history. It occurs daily in Muslim nations today. And it awaits its climax in the horrors that begin even now to escalate into the time of Jacob’s trouble (Jer 30:7), when ethnic English nations face downfall. But Jesus says, “Don’t worry for yourself. Don’t be fearful of death, for I am with you.” Each day believers in Jesus are arrested and tortured for His name, or are put to death. We do not hear their names – only a few. These martyrs are in Islamic countries or live under totalitarian regimes. They do not fear to suffer for His name. They suffer, willingly accepting reproach for the name of Christ, as Jesus said we should.
Jesus promised that if we trust Him, we do not need to fear for our time of trial and crisis. If you have fears, that is natural. Don’t worry about that. Set your will to endure what He allows you to face; don’t try and get out of it; be prepared to go through it, and the natural fears will subside as you go through your ordeal.
Notice that, in order to overcome and not be overcome by any trial, you must be prepared to endure it, not try to get out of it if there is no way out. God will see you through it, minute by minute, day by day. We are to fear God, not man:
Persecution is going to erupt like a whirlwind. Things happen suddenly. Paul was caught in a commotion or uproar that the opposition generated (Acts 19:23-41). His life was threatened from then on (Acts 20:3,19). He knew he would die for Christ:
But because he listened to the Spirit, and lived for Truth’s sake, not for himself, he was not perturbed:
He only had one purpose in life. It was not self. It was to finish the Commission God had given him in service to Jesus, to proclaim the truths of God (ibid.).
His total commitment to God’s purpose in his life was what allowed the Spirit to tell Paul what he needed to know, so he could endure what awaited him. Jesus adjures us to have that total commitment:
The key to your survival – spiritual survival, NOT physical survival, unless God has a purpose in that for His kingdom’s sake – the key to your survival depends upon you being receptive to His Spirit:
Jesus’ kingdom is not of this age (Jn 18:36), so what He inspires you to say in your hour of sacrifice is probably not to convert the hearers. God’s main purpose in this age is to bring authorities under His judgement. Your testimony will more likely be a witness against them for defying and rejecting Him. Your duty in hearing Jesus is to be led by Him (Rom 8:14). Listening to Him starts with fundamental spiritual loyalty to Him. The world will be loyal to the civil power, the Beast, and will accept the spiritual marks of mental and physical compliance (Rev 13:16; 14:9). But for us, who do not fear man, we are willing to pay with our lives for loyalty to Jesus instead.
The image of the beast is an authority ‘thing’. It tests and separates those who will obey man rather than God. When man blasphemously stands in the place of Christ and forbids you to worship God in the way He says, that’s when you refuse to comply, regardless of the cost to yourself, even death. God is able to deliver you. Remember how He delivered Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego? (Dan 3:17-25.) That’s how He works today. They declared:
They were given those words to say in that hour; they received them from the Spirit. They thought they were going to die, and thus be delivered from the oppression of that God-defying Babylonian king (3:18). They chose death over life, yet God had a purpose for them to live. When today’s Babylon rises up against God’s Church, as an abomination that causes desolation of God’s people, in Satan’s last ditch effort to annihilate God’s truth, you can likewise declare by the Spirit:
Remember, each of us must:
Then you will be counted in that number; as one of that great cloud of witnesses (Heb 12:1), who:
Jesus listened to the Father’s Spirit and obeyed implicitly, even though it took Him to the dreadful ordeal of the cross. We are called to trust and obey likewise, following in the footsteps of Jesus. Paul died a martyr; the twelve apostles likewise witnessed for Christ through their lives and deaths.
So can you, too. Malcolm B Heap, March 2008
Further Reading: |
Copyright: Midnight Ministries, PO
Box 29, Aylesbury, HP17 8TL, UK
www.midnightministries.org.uk