Expect to Endure
God's Power in Persecution
Yesterday, I wrote about how persecution is to be expected for the Christian, as the Bible makes it clear that it is the path God has chosen for His people. What else can we expect?
While persecution is to be expected, we can also expect power. God gives us His power to persevere through persecution.
This power is available to all believers, as Paul prays in Ephesians 3:16: “That according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being.”
Paul had firsthand experience of this power, as he writes in 2 Corinthians 12:9–10: “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
God’s power is not given so that we can fight back against our persecutors. Rather, it is given so that we can endure with patience and joy. As Paul says, we are “strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy” (Colossians 1:11). With God’s power, we can expect to endure.
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ESV Expository Commentary
The ESV Expository Commentary is highlighted with the Father’s Day Gift Guide at Westminster Bookstore! Get 50% off the full set and use code DIVEINDIGDEEP on top of that to save an extra 5% off your entire order always.
Designed to strengthen the global church with a widely accessible, theologically sound, and pastorally wise resource for understanding and applying the overarching storyline of the Bible, this commentary series features the full text of the ESV Bible passage by passage, with crisp and theologically rich exposition and application.
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Jesus I My Cross Have Taken
You can watch our videos from Sunday worship including our rehearsal! We played The Lord is My Salvation, O Lord My Rock and My Redemer, Jesus I My Cross Have Taken, Let the World (Jesus Loves Me), and Yet Not I but Through Christ in Me.
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Endnotes
In Christ Our All, Chance Faulkner writes a 14-day devotional that focuses your eyes to gaze at Christ. What I loved most was how many beautiful perspectives Faulkner presents. This book reminded me of the great Puritans of the past, cutting to the heart with pointed questions while also encouraging and building your spirit up with Scripture. Giveaway and review.
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