Are You Being Attacked and Reviled? This Word is for You! Part 1 of 3

If you are being reviled in this season, if there is someone in your life that is just dead set on persecuting you or bullying you or falsely accusing you or slandering you, if there's someone that's just really trying to make your life as difficult as possible or hurt you in whatever way that they can, then this word is for you from God. Recently I was in a prayer set and we were singing and worshiping telling the Lord that he's everything to us and that he is our purpose and our one goal. And I was singing this to the Lord, meaning it with my whole heart. And the Lord told me as I was singing this to read First Peter 2.

I encourage you to read all of it because it really spells out our new identity in Christ and how we're called to act as believers who have given our lives to them. But right now, I feel like the Lord is telling me to specifically share verse 15. It urges us to submit ourselves to every human authority for the Lord's sake. Then verse 15 says, "For it is God's will that by doing good, you should silence," which means to close a mouth with a muzzle, to make speechless, to reduce, to silence, to put in check, to hold one's peace the ignorant talk of foolish men.

And the original language here of foolish men means egotistic, acting rashly or rash, without reflection or intelligence, stupid, unwise, senseless, and mindless. Now, a lot of us when we are dealing with foolish men, by the definition, the very last thing that we want to do is submit ourselves to them. But God's kingdom is the upside down kingdom. His ways are completely backwards from the world's ways.

His ways are the exact opposite of self-preservation, self-centeredness, egoism, pride, defensiveness, and selfishness. And when we become a Christian, we chose to fully give our lives to him for his glory. So God commands us when dealing with foolish people to do good to them. Why?

Because it is his will that by us doing good, which in the original language here means doing right, doing something which profits others, showing favor to another, doing someone a favor, we would silence their ignorant talk. When most of us deal with these foolish kind of people, we most definitely want to silence them. But the world's ways of silencing someone often looks like bullying, threatening, coercing, intimidating, manipulating, trying to forbid them from talking, things that are controlling and forceful. But God says that if we want to silence foolish people, his way to do that is submitting and doing good to them.

A lot of us claim that Jesus is our one thing, that he is our goal, our purpose, that our lives are for the sake to live to glorify him. But if that is really true and we aren't just hypocrites or Pharisees, if he is really our goal, our one purpose, we would do good to everyone, even including foolish people that persecute us. If we really live for his glory and he is really our goal, then we would look like him in our responses to the people that crucify us. And he never, not once, struck back or tried to control.

If this is something you need help truly understanding and living out in your responses in your everyday life, the links to my coaching and my ministry links are in the caption below. And don't forget to share this with a friend that needs encouragement.