Preparing to Fast (Part VI – Word of God cont’d)

By Odon Bulamba

Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Persecution is not only physical. You can go to Vietnam and be persecuted. Jesus doesn’t need this persecution; Jesus needs you to be persecuted inside. It means to sacrifice your time for others and sacrifice your life for others. Accept to be humiliated for God’s glory, accept to pray for difficult people, accept to be friends with those who are isolated, accept to tell the truth to those who don’t want to hear the truth and you’ll see that you are nothing. People will mock you and humiliate you, this is persecution because your never have peace. If you don’t hold on you might flee where you live. So we must ask God to help us have the courage and to have perseverance, this is persecution. If you want the kingdom of God to belong to you accept to be persecuted.

Blessed are you when people insult and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil because of Me. Let people think bad things about you, let people abuse you, let them persecute you, sometimes let them lie against you and through this Jesus will know that you are His disciple.

If you get angry for example, you prove you are not one of God’s disciples. If someone abuses you, praise the Lord and you’ll see that the person who abused you will be touched. If someone speaks falsely against, do not try to find what it’s about, do not even say what happened, just accept it. If you ask Peter what happened between him and Angela you risk to light the fire. You can break the peace between the two and cause physical or spiritual disaster. If God asked you whether you are His disciples or not, you’ll lack an answer because you didn’t accept to be abused and didn’t accept people to speak falsely against you. To be Jesus’ disciples we must accept these things.

Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for they persecuted the prophets also who were before you. We must be glad. We must walk on the same road as the prophets who were persecuted physically and spiritually. We must be careful and help those whom we are going to pray for.

The Bible says it is better to give than receive. Give your testimony, which you may have received from the prayer. I have a testimony. I praise God for giving us the opportunity to meet and pray together. It is our first time to pray together. It is good to see everyone raising hands and praying freely, I have never seen that while I’ve been with you. I was very happy to see that you asked for forgiveness in everything. To confess our sins to one another and those whom we have offended was something good. Also to sacrifice our time and pray for others for the glory of God is something that is very good.