{"id":1221,"date":"2019-03-20T13:37:43","date_gmt":"2019-03-20T13:37:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/?p=1221"},"modified":"2019-03-20T13:37:43","modified_gmt":"2019-03-20T13:37:43","slug":"persecution-and-discipleship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/persecution-and-discipleship\/","title":{"rendered":"Persecution and Discipleship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As\nI prepared to lead a bible study on The Cost of Discipleship, I ran across two\ngreat resources, which shed light on:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8211; The relative newness of Western persecution<br>&#8211; The personal experience of God\u2026in persecution<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.imb.org\/2017\/03\/28\/suffering-persecution-prepare\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">Christianity Promises Suffering and Persecution: Here\u2019s How to Prepare<\/a> by Zane Pratt<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cThe\ncomfortable experience of Christians in the West has actually been an anomaly\nin this regard. Because of the Christian heritage of Western civilization,\ncombined with democratic freedoms and historic rule of law, Western Christians\nhave largely been left alone for their faith. Even today, as Western nations\nbecome increasingly post-Christian (and even anti-Christian), the opposition\nexperienced by most Christians goes little beyond mockery. However, there are\nsigns that this protected status may be changing. If it continues to do so, it\nwill simply put Western Christians in the same boat as their brothers and\nsisters all over the world.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.challies.com\/articles\/5-reasons-to-rejoice-in-persecution\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">5 Reasons to Rejoice in Persecution<\/a> by Tim Challies<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>God is\nnear to you in your persecution. 1 Peter 4:14 says, \u201cIf you are insulted for\nthe name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God\nrests upon you.\u201d This is a promise that God does not abandon you in your\npersecution, but is right there with you in the middle of it. This is one very\ngood reason to read church history. What you find as you read about people who\nare being persecuted is that they have a supernatural joy and that they so\noften speak about God\u2019s nearness in their suffering. When it seems that\neveryone else has abandoned them, they have a much deeper awareness of the\npresence of the Holy Spirit living within them, blessing them, and comforting\nthem. While they do not love being persecuted, they would not trade away their\npersonal experience of God in that persecution. As C.S. Lewis so aptly said,\nGod whispers to us in our pleasures but shouts to us in our pain. Rejoice,\nbecause God is with you.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I prepared to lead a bible study on The Cost of Discipleship, I ran across two great resources, which shed light on: &#8211; The relative newness of Western persecution&#8211; The personal experience of God\u2026in persecution Christianity Promises Suffering and Persecution: Here\u2019s How to Prepare by Zane Pratt \u201cThe comfortable experience of Christians in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christian-living"],"acf":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/cross-600x300.png","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/cross-600x300.png","author_info":{"display_name":"Kent Husted","author_link":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/author\/khusted\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empoweringaction.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}