“…and when they had called the apostles, and beaten them, they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. And they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.” {Acts 5:40-41}
Isn’t that just incredible? The apostles rejoiced that they were counted “worthy” enough to suffer shame because of the Lord’s name? I’m having a hard time trying to understand that. Wow. I get it but I don’t. We’re so used to our comforts here in America that if we suffer some persecution at all for the name of Christ we get really upset about it. I don’t remember ever being happy for getting persecuted for His name’s sake and I’ve only had a few little persecutions come my way – but I often flinch and get upset and even at times wished the Lord would punish my persecutors. I mean, is it just me that has felt this way? Do I need to actually be proud to be persecuted for the Lord’s sake because He is that great and awesome? If truth be told there were couple of times where I thought the Lord owed me and should bless me for standing up for what I believed in. But really, the Lord owed me nothing. I should count it a privilege for suffering for His name’s sake because He’s a great God and an awesome King. I mean who is greater? Jesus, or my persecutors? It’s not even a match. And yet I get so afraid of people speaking up against the Lord and don’t even like to say anything even though inside I might be getting upset at what they’re saying about Him. I guess it would be like standing up for the Queen of England when someone says something mean or false about her and you happen to know her personally. You’d feel proud don’t you that you’d definitely say something back to correct her critics and speak up in defense of her? How much more then speaking up for the Lord who is the King of all kings? We might not see how significant our standing up for the Lord is right now. I mean, we definitely want to do this in a nice way; we don’t want to be nasty about it. But I feel like when push comes to shove we should not be ashamed, we should be very proud of Him. Sure, we might even feel foolish because no one really knows about Him or can see Him. In our minds He’s not visible like the Queen of England who seems like everybody has seen (at least in television) and knows about. Nevertheless He is real enough and one of these days it’s all going to come out in the open – we know it is just a matter of time. The Lord is going to become truly visible to everyone and the world is going to see Him and then I bet we’re going to wish we spoke up about Him more and glorified His name more. All our persecutors are all going to be ashamed of themselves and are going to wish they believed in Him like we did. I know this is not easy and I feel that we definitely need to talk to the Lord about it. We need to fall in love truly with Him to feel so strongly about speaking up for Him that when our persecutors come to torment us and question us, we can respond the way the apostles did speaking up saying, “No way we’re going to listen to you people and stop talking about the Lord. We’re going to continue to preach His name whether you like it or not.”
My prayer is that, the Lord would give us His boldness, and most importantly make His love so strong in our hearts for Him (the way the apostles loved Him so passionately and knew Him for themselves) so that we will find ourselves not ashamed of Him. When people ask of us how we feel about the Lord we can easily say to them, “I love Him!”
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” {Romans 1:16}
