4. We keep forgetting the Lord told us to expect to be treated badly.
“An hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God” (John 16:2). God’s people keep expecting to be loved and appreciated by those to whom we minister and often end up getting blind-sided by their hostility. We wonder, “Why are they treating us this way? All I was doing was helping and blessing.” “Where is God? What’s wrong?”
Answer: Nothing is wrong. You are right on schedule.
We have forgotten Matthew 10:16-22 and similar passages where Jesus warned us that we would be hated “by all for (His) name’s sake.”
I run into disillusioned ministers who were badly treated by churches, and are angry at the Lord who called them into this work but seems to have no place for them to serve. Some no longer go to church. You wonder if these people don’t read their Bibles. Don’t they see that Scripture warns us to expect trouble from inside the church as well as outside? (Acts 20:28ff for one.)
5. We keep forgetting He told us to love our enemies.
This point follows on the heels of the previous ones for good reason. They treat us badly and how are we to react? We are to love them, not nurse our anger, bear grudges or protect our resentment as though we now possess a get-out-of-jail-free card entitling us to despise them.
Anyone who spends even a few minutes on Facebook reading the posts of professing Christians will come away horrified at the hostility some of the Lord’s people express toward other religions, worldly pleasure lovers and wayward politicians.
6. We no longer remember that we are commissioned to throw parties for the undeserving and undesirable.
“When you give a reception (banquet), invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, since they do not have the means to repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14:13-14).
These people have our Lord’s heart. They are special to Him. “He who gives to the poor lends to the Lord,” Scripture says in Proverbs. The closer we are to Jesus, the more such ones will matter to us too. (If you haven’t read Tony Campolo’s The Kingdom of God Is a Party, then get it and dive in. Tony has a way of hitting us between the eyes with the 2×4 of God’s love.)
