John chapter 15.
You know, the Bible says that whoever will be ashamed of Christ and his words in this
evil and adulterous generation, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed.
You know, we're not--why would we be ashamed of the Word of God in an evil and adulterous
generation?
You'd expect the evil and adulterous people to be ashamed.
Why be ashamed about being a godly Christian?
There's no shame in that.
Verse 18 of chapter 15, "If the world hate you, you know that it hated me before it hated
you.
If you were of the world, the world would love his own.
But because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore
the world hateth you.
Remember the word that I said unto you, the servant is not greater than his lord.
If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.
If they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.
But all these things will they do unto you for my name's sake, because they know not
him that sent me.
If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin.
And now they have no cloak for their sin, he that hateth me hateth my Father also.
Now what we see here is that first of all, the Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians, "I
take pleasure in persecutions."
Acts chapter 5, "They took a beating for preaching in the name of Christ, and they went away
rejoicing."
Luke 6, "Rejoice and leap for joy when you get persecuted."
Matthew 5, "Rejoice and be exceeding glad, great is your reward in heaven."
But what I take from John chapter 15 is that if you're following Christ, you're going to
be persecuted.
And so the reason persecution is a blessing, in addition to the rewards, in addition to
the glory that shall be revealed in us, is that we get to be a partaker of Christ's sufferings.
We get to follow in Christ's footsteps.
He's saying, "Look, if you are persecuted, well you know I was persecuted too.
If they hate you, they hated me too."
And so it's a fellowship with Christ.
You ever get together with people who have kind of gone through the same experience,
and there's kind of a bond there because you've kind of gone through the same thing?
You know, like for example, I had dry socket in my mouth, which was like the most painful
experience ever.
And I went, you know, when I talk to somebody else who had dry socket, it's like, "Yeah,
you know, and we can talk about how bad it was."
Just people who've gone through similar experiences, you know, I'm sure that's what they're doing
down at the VFW hall, right, getting together and talking about, back in NAMM and back in
all these different battles and deployments and whatever.
You know what?
Hey, I want to have a partaker with Christ and His suffering.
I want to have fellowship with Him.
I want to follow Christ, and so that involves being persecuted.