Spiritual Rest Part 2: Persecution

Persecution

Persecution is one of the ways in which a Christian often looses spiritual rest. This should come as no surprise to us, as the trials and troubles that come on us are often designed in the very pit of hell. But many times when we encounter a fellow believer in great distress, we are surprise to see them down and depressed. And often when great troubles come on us, we feel the need to keep the pretence of a cheerful, joyful face, forgetting the scripture that reminds us to rejoice with those that rejoice, and weep with those that weep. I would like to look at persecution from a Christian point of view for a while, and see what the Bible says about it in the context of Spiritual Rest.

What is persecution? Well, here is a Dictionary definition:

Persecution
PERSECU'TION, n. The act or practice of persecuting; the infliction of pain, punishment or death upon others unjustly, particularly for adhering to a religious creed or mode of worship, either by way of penalty or for compelling them to renounce their principles.

We can see from this definition, persecution is the infliction of pain, punishment or death on others unjustly, particularly for believing on God. This is a much broader definition of persecution than many of us picture of right away. We may tend to think of how the Roman Empire threw Christians to the lions, or the Jews beating and imprisoning the early church. In this day and age, there are many governments all over the world that actively seek out and suppress Christians in their countries. This is certainly persecution for your faith, and we should be in prayer that the Lord would strengthen and support our brothers and sisters in these situations.

But when we truly consider how many of us have suffered persecution in the light of the definition, a wider picture becomes apparent. We may not think that we suffer persecutions, but we should be aware that any unjust suffering for our faith comes under this heading. We can find this principle clearly shown in the Scriptures that show us about the life of the Apostle Paul. We know that he suffered many things for his faith, but among them he counts a certain messenger from Satan, which was a cause of physical distress.

2Co 12:7
(7) And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.

Was this persecution? Certainly! It was a problem that caused him unjust pain, from the devil, because of his life and revelations of Jesus Christ. So there are persecutions that come on us from the Devil because of our beliefs, and these cause us worries, pain and troubles, just as they caused Paul problems. The Bible warns us to defend ourselves against the fiery darts of the enemy with the shield of faith. These are not problems in the physical, but in the spiritual, for we are told to take the shield of faith, breastplate of righteousness and helmet of salvation with which to defend ourselves.

These fiery darts come in many ways. Evil thoughts, depression, worry and doubts all come from the wicked one. God is not the author of any of these things, for they do not spring from love, but from fear. And if we have made the decision to live Godly in Christ Jesus, the adversary will be sure to send all of his evil messengers against us. Can these messengers of the enemy take our spiritual peace? Certainly they can! Just read the book of Job. He was such a wonderful example of a believer that the Lord himself took pride in pointing out his conduct to Satan. Is it any surprise then that the Devil took a personal interest in trying to bring Job to the point of turning away from God?

As Satan's fiery darts started to strike home in the life of Job, how did he react? We know from the testimony of the Scriptures that he didn't sin with his mouth. But he did curse the day that he was born, and wish for the day of his death. These are not the actions of a man in Spiritual Rest, but rather one sinking in the depths of despair. However, through all his trials he had peace with God in his soul – even to the point where he demanded to see God, where he would approach him as a prince, confident in his position. But this peace in the soul was accompanied by great trouble in the spiritual and physical realms.

I hope that you can see from these scriptural examples that persecution and trials from the Devil are a natural part of the life of a Believer. Although this sounds unpleasant, we have the promise from God that all things work together for our good. These trials are very grevious to us at times. Often we can go though them with a song in our heart, as Paul and Silas did when they sang in the jail at midnight. But sometimes the trial is so heavy we can only cry out to God as our spirits are overwhelmed with despair and pain. This does not mean that we are lost, or even separated from the love of Jesus. Indeed, we know that nothing can separate us from Jesus' love. But it does mean that we have lost our spiritual peace, and have been separated from our spiritual rest.

Persecution is only one of the ways in which we can loose our spiritual rest. Sometimes the Lord himself can take our peace away for a time. We are going to look at that in the next part of our study.

Spiritual Rest Part 1

Spiritual Rest

Rest is a wonderful state to be in. It means that you are free from worry, free from trouble and turmoil, relaxed and happy. We all long to be at rest from our labours and enter into the perfect peace and bliss that Jesus promised. But what exactly did Jesus promise us? Was it a freedom from all worry and trouble, or was it slightly different? Can we ever enter into a state of rest while we are living on this world, or could we be looking for a solution to our problems that Jesus didn't promise us? We are going to take a scriptural look at rest now, and I trust that you will be blessed and encouraged by the outcome.

In order for us to understand rest, I would like to take a little look at how a human is made up. We are not simply beings of flesh and bones, but have a spiritual side to our lives as well. Not only this, but inside the heart of every human dwells their soul – the part of a person that is at the core of who they truly are. To help understand this concept, here is a diagram:

Here we can see that we are made up of Body, Spirit and Soul. The seat of the Spirit is the mind – the place where we do all of our conscious thinking. But the seat of the Soul is the heart. This is the innermost part of our beings, the place that defines who we truly are. Our Body is the building that we live in, but it is not really us. It what we live in, and we interact with our surrounding world with 5 bodily senses. Our Spirit is our mind, and it also has 5 senses with which it interacts and thinks. But in our Soul there is only one way of interacting. This is to believe something or disbelieve it. It either accepts or rejects an idea, it welcomes or turns away a thought.

We know that the body is at rest when the 5 senses are not under stress. Your body relaxes when you sleep. Your eyes can relax when you close them. Sometimes your body can relax while the senses are at work; for example, listening to music is a wonderful way to relax, even though your sense of hearing must be active in order to do so.

We also know that your soul comes to rest in God, when it has faith in the work that Jesus did on Calvary. When we receive salvation and become settled in it, our heart knows peace, and our souls trust in the Lord. Whatever else happens in our lives, we know that God has saved us. We can rest, as Job did in all his troubles, and say “though He slay me, yet will I trust Him”. This kind of faith is independent of any situation that you find yourself in, because it does not depend on the outward conditions of your life, but rather on the inward peace and rest that God has given to your Soul.

But our Spirit has 5 senses also, and they are not always at rest. Now, we know that our bodies can be at perfect rest, yet our spirits troubled. For example we may have bad dreams as we sleep. What causes this? It is something happening in your spirit to disturb you. The senses in your body are not involved as they are at rest – asleep. And we can also find places in the scriptures where people have rest in their souls, yet are troubled in their spirits and bodies.

We can take as an example the Apostle Paul. Here is a scripture from Second Corinthians where he describes his situation on coming into a new area of work for the Gospel of Christ:

2Co 7:5-7
(5) For, when we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but we were troubled on every side; without were fightings, within were fears.
(6) Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus;
(7) And not by his coming only, but by the consolation wherewith he was comforted in you, when he told us your earnest desire, your mourning, your fervent mind toward me; so that I rejoiced the more.

So, here is Paul. We know that he is sure of his salvation and his relationship with God. This is the rest that he has in his Soul. But at the same time he is admitting to being troubled by many fightings and fears. This is clearly not spiritual rest, but spiritual warfare! And the sources of Spiritual warfare and spiritual trouble are many. We are going to examine a few of them a little later on. But we should be encouraged that there are also sources of spiritual comfort. Paul finds comfort from his troubles when Titus arrived, and also by his news of the prayers and thoughts of others.

So we can see by this that Spiritual rest is not something that is promised to a Christian for their earthly life. If we are looking for rest in our minds as a sign that God is pleased with us, or that we are on the right track with the Lord, then we are looking for something that God didn't promise us. We know that He promised that He would not leave us comfortless, but how can He comfort us until we are in trouble?

Living right is not a guarantee of spiritual rest. Infact, the opposite is true. Let us take a look at another scripture written by Paul, in which he lists some of the problems that has come to him while he was serving God.

2Ti 3:10-12
(10) But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience,
(11) Persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured: but out of them all the Lord delivered me.
(12) Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.

We find that the promise of God is this: if you live Godly in Christ Jesus, you will suffer persecution. What is persecution, and how does it fit into the life of a Christian? This is a question that we will look at in the next part of this study.