Real Life Persecution // Blessings in Strange Places, Part 10

We recently received a prayer request from Julia – a young woman who’s trying to live out her faith – except that her family’s giving her a hard time. Does Jesus have anything to say to help her live out her faith from a position of strength?

Great that we can get together again! You know, it's Friday, another week is gone. Fridays are the days when we look at the pray requests that we receive at ChristianityWorks. If you have a pray request, you can log on to our website at Christianityworks.com and click on "Pray For Me" and a team of people will pray for you.

Here is a pray request that we recently received. Julia, a young woman, said this: "I would like to ask for you to pray for me as I'm having trouble trying to be a Christian growing up in a non-Christian family. It's so hard for me to do Christian things without getting criticised for it."

Yesterday we looked at the statement that Jesus made.

Blessed are you when they persecute you for my sake for great is your reward in Heaven.

It's a gutsy, realistic Jesus. But does Jesus have something more to say to Julia about living her life today, under persecution?

I used to be one of those people who would have been knocking Julia for her faith. I can just hear the words, "Stop dreaming! Get real! There you go again, carrying your Bible around again. Off to Youth Group again!" Pick, pick, pick, pick. I know exactly the words that Julia's family are probably using in her case, because they were the words that I used around Christians before I become a follower of Jesus Christ.

Now, it's a sad thing, but it's true that people do attack people who believe in Jesus Christ, and personal attacks are painful. It's painful to be belittled. It's hurtful to on the one hand give over your life to Jesus Christ. This Jesus who is so real, this Jesus who hung around with lepers and paupers and sinners and prostitutes, not the religious establishment, but with common people like you and me.

That's the Jesus who I have given my life to. That’s the Jesus that Julia has given her life to. But in real life having done that with all the people around her, the people who sadly matter most to her, she's getting this criticism this knocking, and not just criticism and knocking, but swearing - all those things that we kind of leave behind when we become a follower of Jesus Christ. It hurts!

The picture I have of Julia is like a carnation in the palm of someone's hand. I love carnations, I don’t know if you’ve seen carnations but they’re a beautiful flower, yet they are very sensitive to the touch. They bruise very easily. You touch them here, you touch them there, even softly, sometimes and they go brown.

It would be very difficult for Julia because; firstly Julia is young and secondly, she is a young woman. And women have a tenderness, women have a gentleness, a sensitivity that we blokes don't have. So here is this beautiful young woman, who’s given her heart to Jesus and her family is against her. And Jesus comes along and says:

Blessed are you when they persecute you, the way they persecuted me, because great is your reward in Heaven.

That’s fantastic that Jesus said that because it gives us hope for the future.

He recognises the reality; He understands more than anyone what it is like to be persecuted for your faith. There He was the Son of God, nailed to a cross, reviled, rejected, mocked, beaten. Jesus knows what it is to be persecuted. But that's not all that Jesus says about dealing with people who persecute us.

There is a second string to this bow of hope. When we are oppressed it is difficult to deal with that from a position of weakness, but it is outrageously liberating when we deal with it from a position of power. That's exactly what Jesus has in mind.

We read that verse, “Blessed are those who are