Thursday, September 02
Endurance
But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:13-14)
Nothing shall separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:39).
The Spirit-filled life is not an experience to be cultivated in special conditions, like indoor crocuses. Christians are not flowers. During the early expansion of the industrial cities of England, some clergymen could not be persuaded to take a parish among the hordes of unwashed workers, because they said it might spoil their "spirituality." The Holy Spirit makes believers tough specimens for all conditions. They carry perpetual springtime in their souls and are "winterized," just as homes are prepared for the cold weather.
The apostles discovered a new resilience, a new strength within them, power that operated in their weakness and sent them out into a brutal pagan world to demolish its idol establishment and change history. That is a true mark of the Spirit-filled life.
"We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is fitting, because your faith grows exceedingly, and the love of every one of you all abounds toward each other, so that we ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that you endure, which is manifest evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be counted worthy of the Kingdom of God, for which you also suffer."
Things like that are happening today. A new age of persecution is testing the Church throughout the world. We may have to lay down our physical lives, but we are proving that the baptism in the Spirit makes people undefeatable.
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: ‘For Your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.' Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us."