Cell Groups in November

This month we will be talking in cell groups about how the early Church faced persecution, and how they responded.  Teaching about persecution on Wednesday was difficult for me for a couple reasons:

1.  I've never been persecuted for my faith.  I mean, I've been called a few names here and there, but never anything like what the early Church faced or some Christians in other parts of the world still face today. 

2.  The group of kids I was speaking to have never been persecuted for their faith. 

I think because we so seldom deal with persecution, we are likely to just fly by it in Scripture sometimes.  When we do address it, it's normally along the lines of "Those early Christians were so brave!" or "Be grateful you don't have to deal with this." or "There are still persecuted Christians in the world."  Any of those are great messages to take away and important to know for sure, but I believe that there can still be lessons to be put into our world, our place, our lives.  What strikes me about the picture painted in Acts about the Church's persecution is that God was working through it all.  After Stephen is stoned in Acts 7, chapter 8 begins by telling us that the believers scattered, and went "throughout Judea and Samaria" and further down it says they "preached the Word everywhere they went."  Reference that what Jesus told them in 1:8 - "you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the Earth."   God's will was being carried out.  The early Christians had amazing faith to believe this.  They did not have the benefit we have of being able to see where it all ended up.  It's important to remember that these men and women are not characters on a sheet of paper, but that they are historical figures.  They were real people with real lives, real families, real emotions. 

I believe they were able to have such faith because they believed in the cross and the resurrection.  Sometimes I believe we miss part of the significance of the cross because we just talk about the atonement that comes from it - about how it forgives us our sins so we get to go to heaven.  That's definitely HUGE - but it's not all.  The early Church saw the cross not just as a gift to be enjoyed, but a model to be copied.  Jesus took the abuse of all the evil and sin in the world, and responded with love and humility.  He did not fight back in the sense that we think of "fighting".  He fought with the only weapon the gospel permits us to use against evil - love.  Among his final words were "forgive them Father, for they do not know what they are doing."  There is no coincidence in the similarity of Stephen's final words on Earth: "Lord, do not hold this sin against them."

We can see the power of love and mercy throughout Acts.  In Acts 16 we see it in action again.  This time Paul and Silas have been unjustly imprisoned and beaten.  In fact, beaten is a too tame a word.  The text says "severely flogged".  The Romans were known for their efficiency in punishment, so the fact that Luke feels the need to include the word "severely" has to tell us something of the pain Paul and Silas must have endured.   During the night, while Paul and Silas are singing and praying while chained in the center of the prison, they are miraculously freed when an earthquake topples the jail.  When they see their jailer prepared to take his life so that he won't face a similar fate to what they had previously endured, they do not wish to seem him harmed.  Instead they call out to him.  They preach to him the gospel.  As a result, not only does the prison guard come to follow Christ, but the rest of his family as well. 

I hope and pray that at some point I can have that kind of faith in the cross.  Not just to believe that my sins are covered by the blood that was spilled upon it, but to believe Jesus when he said that I would have to take up a cross to truly find life (my paraphrase of Mt. 10:37-39).  This month as the groups talk about what the first century Church endured, I hope that it will inspire a generation of young Christians to take up their cross daily.  While I don't foresee any of our teens having their life literally on the line like Stephen, I do know that there will be times that they suffer for doing good.  I know there will be times when they will be hated.  When those times come, I hope they respond in love.  I pray they will be able to do so because I want them to find the life that Jesus promises that too few find, but I also want them to so that those who hate them may be redeemed as well.  I doubt this will happen by December, but I hope it either begins or continues a good work in them so that God will carry it out to completion throughout a life of discipleship to Christ.