Morning Sharing: Returning to Joy in Persecution

This is the essence of my time with God this morning since developing this chart yesterday.         

Matthew 5:11-12	Luke 6:22-23	Prayer
“Blessed are you	“Blessed are you
when others revile you	when people hate you
and persecute you	and when they exclude you
and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely	and revile you
	and spurn your name as evil,
on my account.	on account of the Son of Man!
Rejoice	Rejoice in that day,
and be glad,	and leap for joy,
for your reward is great in heaven,	for behold, your reward is great in heaven;
for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.	for so their fathers did to the prophets.

I am sure I will be here for the week. I am using the “prayer” column to pray through each of the expressions from this Beatitude regarding the blessing of being persecuted. Today I was on the third row regarding persecution and exclusion. There is some comfort in God simply using the words that describe our personal experiences. 

The main conclusion is that God is not telling us to deny our sorrows and just rejoice, and he is not allowing us to baby our wounds as if pain is all there is to life. The third option (plumbline) is that God returns us to joy. 

So, for each of the things Jesus mentions, I face how I am affected in that way, and bring it all to him for whatever healing and helping I need. As an injured soldier gets the help needed to return to health, the grieving servant gets the help he needs to return to joy.

 

© 2023 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

A Beatitudinal Return to Joy

For a long time, I have viewed the Beatitudes of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount[1] like a valley. The first four lead down to rock bottom; the second four lead up to joy that cannot be hindered by anything we go through. It looks something like this:

This morning, being up unusually early set the stage for a new focus in the Beatitudinal Valley. It felt like finding a new viewpoint from which to see how everything in the kingdom operates. And what it showed me was the work the Triune was doing to return me to joy in the very areas of life Jesus described. 

From there, I looked up the Beatitudes as recorded by both Matthew and Luke and focused on the last one recorded in both gospels.[2] I made a chart to see what they looked like side-by-side.         

Matthew 5:11-12	Luke 6:22-23
“Blessed are you	“Blessed are you
when others revile you	when people hate you
and persecute you	and when they exclude you
and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely	and revile you
	and spurn your name as evil,
on my account.	on account of the Son of Man!
Rejoice	Rejoice in that day,
and be glad,	and leap for joy,
for your reward is great in heaven,	for behold, your reward is great in heaven;
for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.	for so their fathers did to the prophets.

Before continuing with today’s lesson, there are a few possible reasons why Matthew and Luke have different wordings. One, that Jesus said a lot more than what was recorded and both men are picking different words and phrases from the whole message. Two, that Jesus taught these things on more than one occasion and the men are using words and phrases that came up at different times. Three, that both are summarizing Jesus’ teaching with different choices of words, or one is giving a verbatim account while the other is summarizing. And, of course, since there is also the dimension of this that the men were writing down the words “breathed-out by God”,[3] they were simply recording things as they were “carried along by the Holy Spirit” to write them considering the different readership on which they were focused.[4] 

I am always reading God’s word with the aim of answering the three questions: What is God saying? What is God doing? How am I to join God in his work? And that led to me realizing that God was speaking directly to things I have been through recently enough that they still hit the feels on a regular basis. He had something to say about his will in the matter; he is doing something about it that is different from what comes naturally to me, and he intends for me to adjust to what he is doing with some distinctive changes to my focus on feelings.

Which led to adjusting the chart to allow room to prayer-journal about everything.         

Matthew 5:11-12	Luke 6:22-23	Prayer Focus
“Blessed are you	“Blessed are you
when others revile you	when people hate you
and persecute you	and when they exclude you
and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely	and revile you
	and spurn your name as evil,
on my account.	on account of the Son of Man!
Rejoice	Rejoice in that day,
and be glad,	and leap for joy,
for your reward is great in heaven,	for behold, your reward is great in heaven;
for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.	for so their fathers did to the prophets.

I will likely be at this viewpoint for a while, so here is just a summary of what it looks like to pray God’s word back to him:    

Matthew 5:11-12	Luke 6:22-23	Prayer Focus
“Blessed are you	“Blessed are you	To process how mistreatment because of Christ is to be seen as an expression of God’s favor that is cause for joy.
when others revile you	when people hate you	To acknowledge to Father how these things have applied in real life scenarios and what it has felt like to experience them.
and persecute you	and when they exclude you	To acknowledge the experiences of persecution and disowning that have taken place and that God is fully aware of them.
and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely	and revile you	To address the distinctive attachment-pain of loved ones speaking to others about us with lies and reviling, and that God’s view of this is still contrary to what is natural.
	and spurn your name as evil,	To face how painful it is to be given a bad name by slanderous spreading of lies and accept that God doesn’t see this the way we do.
on my account.	on account of the Son of Man!	To acknowledge this qualifier that determines why the descriptions of hatred are a blessing and not a condemnation, that the negative way we have been treated is distinctly because of Jesus Christ.
Rejoice	Rejoice in that day,	To receive this command as Jesus’ will for returning us to joy, and then to join him in his work of returning us to joy by responding to his word with rejoicing!
and be glad,	and leap for joy,	To pray through whatever “deepers” are exposed by this “higher” of being so glad in how we are treated that we would leap for joy (at least in our hearts, if not in our actions) in response to things that would normally fill us with sorrow.
for your reward is great in heaven,	for behold, your reward is great in heaven;	To pray through any “deepers” exposing how little we live with this mindset, and to allow ourselves to attach to this “higher” that we are laying up treasure in heaven simply by being mistreated for living for Jesus Christ our Lord.
for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.	for so their fathers did to the prophets.	And finally, to talk with Father about this wondrous reality of his kingdom, that the prophets we admire so much in God’s word were also mistreated by God’s people for speaking God’s word to them. There may be feelings to process, but there still must be an acknowledgement of God’s word and will.

At the time of writing down these thoughts I have not finished my own prayer-journaling through this Beatitudinal viewpoint. However, I hear how God is speaking to me about his Beatitudinal work to return me to joy; I see a variety of things he is doing to make this real in my life, and praying through these things is just the first step in joining God in his work. The other steps will follow as I face the feelings of grief that accompany the mistreatment of this past while, surrender them to the healing of Christ and the helping of the Holy Spirit, and join God in each particular assignment where these same things come up again, or I see the people who have done the harm, or I need to relate to others I meet out of joy instead of sorrow. 

And all I know right now is that God will not fail to work this for good beyond what I can ask or imagine!

 

© 2023 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

 

 

 

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[1] Matthew 5:1-12

[2] Matthew 5:11-12; Luke 6:22-23

[3] II Timothy 3:16-17

[4] II Peter 1:21 (Matthew was showing a predominantly Jewish readership how Jesus fulfilled the law and the prophets; Luke was focused on a detailed historical record for Theophilus and others with the same need to see how certain we are that Jesus lived, died, rose, ascended, and established his church to proclaim the gospel throughout the world)

Morning Sharing: Eyes-Wide-Open-Alive in Knowledge

My time with God continued my exploration of Paul’s reference to “the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and the left”[1] in relation to Peter’s teaching on supplementing our faith with expressions of righteousness.[2] Peter began with, “make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue,” and then, “and (make every effort to supplement your) virtue with knowledge”. 

I have summarized the definition of virtue as, “the moral excellence of being like Jesus”, and of knowledge as, “to know what is true by experience or endowment.” Now the question is, how do we supplement our Christlike virtue with the knowledge that is distinct to being born again? 

I looked up a whole collection of scriptures that revolved around the connection between knowledge and truth. I will just share the first one where Paul told Timothy about “…God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”[3] 

This shows us God’s heart. He is God. He is the Savior who saves people “out of darkness” and brings them “into his marvelous light.”[4] His heart is for people “to be saved” in this salvation he has provided. And a distinctive component of salvation is that we would “come to the knowledge of the truth.” 

I am always mindful of how personal knowledge is to God. This comes across very clearly in Jesus’ description of “eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”[5] To be alive in Christ is about knowing God. Knowledge of the truth is to know God the way a child has knowledge of his or her parents. It isn’t how much they know about their parents, but that they are alive to know them. In a loving home, this knowing of one another can keep growing in healthy and maturing ways. 

I was reminded that the reason there is such a sharp contrast between what God’s children know and what worldlings know is because we are alive and they are dead. We also have our eyes wide-open to see while worldlings’ eyes are blind to God. Paul expressed the contrast like this, “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God”,[6] and, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”[7] 

This reminded me of a phrase that I had to look up for context: “He answered, ‘Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.’”[8] It struck me that a man who was blind but now could see had a knowledge through sight that he simply didn’t have when he was blind. It wasn’t about how much he suddenly knew, but that he suddenly knew! He could immediately know what was going on around him by seeing in a way that was not possible in his blindness. 

When I read the context of this miracle, it all began with such a simple description of Jesus: “As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth.”[9] What stood out was the wonder of Jesus seeing someone. It reminded me of lil’ ol’ Zacchaeus climbing the Sycamore tree to see Jesus and discovering that Jesus saw him and had already planned to have dinner at his house![10] There is something amazing about having our eyes opened and discovering Jesus seeing us that is nothing like the pompous arrogance of the blind who are leading the blind and cannot see the Savior even when they are staring him in the face! 

My take-away right now is to begin with the knowledge of God about me bringing me into the knowledge from God about him. And because eternal life is “to know God”, supplementing our faith with virtue, and supplementing our virtue with knowledge, means that our faith keeps growing us to be more like Jesus while we continually get to know God better than we have ever known him before. 

And, when I understand it like this, or “know” it as true and real, I am encouraged in my oldish age that supplementing a Christlike faith with knowledge is what will keep me growing and improving for the rest of my life because my eyes are now wide-open-alive to knowing God my Father through faith in Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior.

 

© 2023 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

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[1] II Corinthians 6:7

[2] II Peter 1:1-11

[3] I Timothy 2:3-4

[4] I Peter 2:9

[5] John 17:3

[6] II Corinthians 4:4

[7] II Corinthians 4:6

[8] John 9:25

[9] John 9:1       

[10] Luke 19:1-10