More About Persecution
Several years ago Pstr Joe and I were leaders of a prayer group. We met with our core group prior to the meeting to pray for the meeting, and God told us we would be attacked by someone who wanted to challenge our beliefs on healing and faith. We asked God what to do about it. He told us the names of the spirits behind this attack and what to pray to stop it. We did as God had told us, and we went into the meeting confident in God’s protection. The meeting went well, and we saw God move powerfully during the meeting. I thought we had dodged the persecution, and was thanking God when a man came up to me obviously angry. He brought his hand up and shook his finger at me. Then said, “Never mind” and walked away. Through the years God has helped us all along the way to protect us from that spirit, or avoid it, or see our way through it to victory.
Lately God has been enforcing our faith in His deliverance/ protection from the spirit of persecution. Yes, Jesus warns us there will be persecution, same as the national weather service warns us of severe weather. The weather service doesn’t expect us to succumb to bad weather, but it’s a warning to prepare for it. God is the same way. One preacher I was listening to recently said that God would deliver us from sickness, poverty, bad relationships and even from stupidity, but not from persecution. Then how is Daniel’s deliverance explained? What about Shadrach, Mishak, and Abendigo? David? Elijah? Elisha? Even Paul was victorious over persecution until he laid down his life. In last line of the Our Father Jesus says, “You lead us NOT into adversity (and aren’t we always every day all the time to be led by the Holy Spirit? Ro 8:14, Gal 5:16, Gal 5:25 and isn’t persecution a type of adversity?), but You rescue us away from the pain, the evil, the calamitous, disease, and harm. That’s how it reads from the Greek. It seems to me from the Our Father, that deliverance from persecution comes from declaring that God rescues us away from the persecution by faith. Jesus showed us how to pray for it, but we must believe that He is our rescuer, and then follow the leading of the Holy Spirit to be delivered from it. Bottom-line is we can stand up to that spirit and defeat it! Isn’t God good?