Daily Devotional. 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. Matthew 5:11-12. Ok, I understand that we’ll be Blessed, that we ARE Blessed, just to be alive in Christ and able to see for another day. But to be Exceedingly Glad in the midst of Persecution? That’s a hard one. Persecution is when you’re under great pressure to deny Christ, for example. BUT THAT’S WHAT IT SAYS, WE WILL BE EXCEEDINGLY GLAD. That will have to be an absolute work of the Lord. And it will be. You see, CHRIST IS OUR REWARD. With Him in sight, nothing else matters. Believers will KNOW that Christ has it ALL worked out, no matter how it all works out. This is the attitude of, when you Love Someone more than ANYTHING else in all the world, you will see nothing else during Persecution BUT Christ, and the Joy He gives, when in all good sense, you really shouldn’t have any joy. That’s the Power of Christ. The Things of this world will grow exceedingly dim, in the Light of His Glory and Grace. And it’s ONLY in and through Christ that it will be possible to be Joyful. So, in the world, this concept makes no sense. But in Christ, it makes Perfect Sense. That’s the Joy of Christ, nothing else will compare, no matter what the world wants to do to you. Yes, things will get much harder for us Believers here in America, but that’s just the Lord bringing us up to the same place in Christ the rest of the world has come to understand. So Rejoice and Be glad, for your Redeemed draweth nigh, and you will, Be Blessed.
