No Servant Is Greater Than His Master

Persecution normally is an instrument of revival. Let us beware of focusing on numerical growth. We would be remiss if we focused on the main benefit of persecution as bringing revival to the church.

The best, the greatest, the most significant benefit of persecution is that it brings Christ close in the life of the persecuted believer. You. Me. We get the opportunity to know Christ better! That is the great miracle of it!

How does it happen?

Illustration

Ahmad is an amazing young man of only thirty. He was a former Muslim extremist who turned to Christ in the late 1980’s. He lives in Cairo and started a church for Muslim converts. When the fellowship reached fifty in number he was betrayed, and jailed in October 1990.

In that jail, this young man of 21 or so he was tortured. They pushed a cattle prod into his mouth. He was whipped, and hung from the ceiling with his hands tied behind his back. And worst of all, he was given what the prisoners called, “the experience.”

He was placed in a stone box. A cube, no bigger than five feet square. No light. No toilet. And left there for three months with food passed through the door every few days. Most went crazy as a result of “the experience.” He did not. He found Christ there. But more importantly, the words he used, in reflecting on how Christ came close there, are the most brilliant description of the process: how persecution actually delivers more of God. Here’s what he said:

Illustration

“After I was converted, I got used to walking the way of the Cross. This was just a more intense Cross. With great suffering you can discover a different Jesus than you do in luxury. In the pain, you deal with the most weak point of your personality – I was very weak physically and mentally. The suffering exposes who you really are – worthless, greedy, sinful, selfish.

Normally we are able to hide who we really are from ourselves. But persecution makes you so weak, you cannot hide any longer. So you have to face how awful you really are. But then the incredible realization comes...just as you are in a darkest moment of despair… “I am all this, but Jesus loves me just the same. He loves me as I am.” And Christ rushes in and fills me. That is the position of true power and intimacy in the Christian life…where you are so broken, so empty, so sorrowful, that you can do nothing else but welcome Christ in. And in normal life, we are so selfish, so foolish, so stubborn, that we never do it. It takes persecution. That’s the way we are made! ”

The most liberating place we can live as Christians is when we fully accept our weaknesses, and let Christ in. It’s the teaching of Jesus in the Beatitudes. Who gets filled? The hungry. Who gets filled? The poor. Who gets filled? The sorrowful. Who gets filled? The persecuted.

Normally, let’s face it, we don’t embrace weakness. Normally we think God is extremely lucky to have us on His side. How privileged He is that we place our gifts at his disposal. We don’t put it that way, but deep-down, these are the whispers we live by. We think we deserve all the plaudits. And the result is, we are just not empty enough! Not empty enough of ourselves that Christ may come in. Persecution is the ultimate way God creates emptiness in our hearts. But that emptiness – which seems so hard to bear – is the prelude to liberation. Only empty hearts are filled with Christ!