The centenary of the start of the First World War has just taken place and I alongside many others have been deeply moved by the stories of the sacrifice of so many for the benefit of others. Laying your life down is the ultimate withdrawal of your own desires, wants and needs for the benefit of others. Recognising that your own hopes, dreams, plans and ambitions have to become subservient to a larger, wider requirement of a more important mission
Jesus said it perfectly when he said that 'Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.'(John 15:13) Many of our Christian brothers and sisters in different parts of the world are not so much laying down their lives but having their lives snatched from them in the most grotesque and barbaric way. People that Jesus loves and died for, have somehow come to the point where they think that killing Christians is God's will. I wonder if any of them realise that they are inadvertently copying probably the greatest Christian missionary of all time -the Apostle Paul.
It is not The Islamic State who invented Christian persecution, all they are doing is pathetically copying many others who have gone before. Paul, before his conversion, set the bar very low in his hate-filled opposition to the followers of Jesus. 'Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples.' (Acts 9:1) Fulfilling the words of him whose followers he was seeking to destroy, he failed to see that all he was doing was planting the seeds of his own salvation. The very seeds of persecution would drop into the ground and bear fruit leading to the greatest Christian expansion of all time.
'I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25 The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. (John 12:24) Jesus was of course talking about his own death and the beautiful impact that it would have on the rest of history. The devil, the Jewish religious hierarchy and the might of the Roman Empire thought that killing Jesus would end his subversive activities. In reality, like today, the death of God's people is the very seed that will ensure that the Kingdom of God will keep growing and one day will fill the whole earth, in fact the whole creation
None of this of course means that we should not oppose Christian persecution, that we should not do all we can to stand alongside our brothers and sisters in Christ and pray for their protection. However, what is happening is not a sign that God's plan is being thwarted but rather is an indication that the world is ready for a new proclamation and demonstration of the beauty and wonder of the gospel of Christ.
And how am I going to respond to this changing opportunity, am I going to be quiet and act as if the message of Christ is an out of date, irrelevant, un-scientific load of clap-trap. Or am I going to renew my love for Christ, my love for His word, my love for his people and my belief that Jesus is the hope of all nations including the Islamic State, Syria, Iraq, Israel, Palestine etc.
