3.1.13

Mark 5:9-31 "Yes," Jesus relpled, "and I assure you that everyone who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or property, for my sake and for the Good News will receive now in return a hundred times as many houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and property -- along with persecution.  And in the world to come that person will have eternal life.  But many who are the greatest now will be least important then, and those who seem least important now will be greatest then."

 

My Thoughts

We have been blessed in America to be able to love God.  We are blessed in America to be able to talk of our wonderful God.  But as we become more and more politically correct and less and less Bucolically correct the more those blessings are slipping from our hands. 

 

We have to be so grounded in God that we are able, if necessary in our lifetime, to give up anything that would stand in our way of being what God would have us to be.  We must be prepared, we must be strong enough to withstand persecution... we must be prepared to give up anything to say we love and serve the Almighty God.  We must be prepared to become the least if that is what it takes, so that we may have eternal life in Heaven with God. 

 

God's word will make us strong!!  But we have to know it! It has to be planted in our hearts enough that we can call on the words of God to keep us strong.  We have to make sure that our hearts are fertile soil that grow the Word of God where the roots are so deep we don't even waver in what we might be ask to do!!   In what we might be asked to give up!!  

 

It is easy to read the good part of these verses... if I am strong I will have a hundred times more now.  We can miss the part that we will also have persecution. We can't miss the fact that there is not one of our family members we would want to give up..even if we could have a hundred times more.  Yet we must be prepared to do just that if we are the ones that end up living in the last days.  People in other countries have been taken from their families for believing in God.  They have had property taken away, they have been persecuted.  We, we have been blessed.  To stay blessed we have to stay strong in God. To be strong if we have to be...we have to get as rooted as possible.  If we can't stand up to political correctness... will we be able to stand up to persecution?