Holy Harassment

“’I tell you the truth,’ Jesus replied, ‘no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields-and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.” Mark 11:29-30

Have you ever visited an old friend’s home, one that you had been to countless times before, and made a comment about how precious a vase, picture or major piece of furniture was? In your enthusiasm you blurt out; “Is that new?” The response, a confused look followed by the words “I have had that for 15 years”.

That is the kind of thing that happened to me the other day while meandering through the verses of this familiar passage of scripture. I stumbled over one particular word as if I had never known it was there. Can you identify which one caused the fatal fall? If you picked persecution then you are tracking with me. I don’t know why I missed it before. Perhaps the answer lies with my human nature tending towards only wanting to hear the good news and not the bad.

There are many promises found in scripture. I think it is our natural tendency to perceive promises as blessings with positive outcomes not wrapped in hardship. If we are to embrace the scripture above and all the positive outcomes found in it, then, unfortunately, we will also have to acknowledge the negative as well.

Living in America, I doubt that we could say that we experience any level of persecution compared to what our brothers and sisters face around the world. As I thought about this verse, my curiosity was stirred. Could persecution mean something other than what I thought it meant. Could this word found embedded within this promise actually apply to me.

Since the New Testament was written in Greek, I thought I would look up the Greek definition for the word “persecution”. This is part of what I found. “To pursue, persecute, to systematically oppress and harass a person or group.” I wonder if anyone reading this is feeling systematically oppressed or harassed. Think about this for a moment, while Satan can’t destroy us do you think one of his strategies might be just plain old harassment. This harassment can come in all manner of strategies. Here are a few I thought of;

- to many bills and not enough money in the checkbook

- working full time while raising your children alone

- neighbors that irritate

- a boss that you can’t please

- kids that pick on your kids

- losing your job

- an unexpected positive diagnosis from the doctor

- payroll cuts

- appliances breaking

- cars needing repairs

- (you fill in this one)

Are you feeling harassed? While these examples might not be full blown persecution, I do believe that they reflect what the substance of the scripture promises. We would be despondent if we didn’t know Christ words. “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) We can take heart because if we are in Christ we are overcomers as well.

Read Paul’s words. “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of even our own life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.” (2 Cor 1:8-9)

Whatever the enemy is harassing you with, according to this verse God wants to do two very powerful things through it. The first is to teach us how to rely on Him and not on ourselves. We can be so self-reliant can we? Secondly God wants to take and pour His life into that situation, did you notice that His life raises things from the dead.

God’s objective is to make Himself recognizable in spite of the difficulty. There might be people who God intends to reach through your struggle. I encourage you today to take whatever harassment that you are wrestling with and offer it as set apart or holy unto the Lord. Ask Him to fill that situation with His power and His presence that He might be shown glorious in it. Who knows, the person He might want to show His glory to, could be you.

“Jesus did not come to explain away suffering or remove it. He came to fill it with his presence”
                                                                  Paul Claudel