AP

James 1:1-3  James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,  To the twelve tribes scattered among the nations:  Greetings.  Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

The Early Church faced fierce, unprecedented persecution.  Hard as it would have been for them – and today many of our brothers and sisters in Christ in Asia, Africa and other places, could readily identify with their suffering – we can see two significant reasons for the Sovereign Lord allowing it happen as he did when we read these opening verses of the Apostle James’ letter to them

The first is that their being ‘scattered among the nations’ provided an excellent opportunity for the ‘good news’ Gospel they embraced to begin its predestined spread to the ‘ends of the earth’.  God has at his disposal many and varied ways of assisting us in the commission the Risen Lord Jesus Christ has entrusted to us to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20).

I live in the vicinity of the University of Wollongong and it is so encouraging seeing so many people coming there from all around the world to pursue undergraduate and post-graduate degrees, and then to see the ministry of AFES reaching so many of them with the Gospel.  The University’s strategy is to gain income that will allow it to keep functioning, but God’s strategy is to gain followers of the Lord Jesus Christ who will go back to their homelands to tell others of the life-giving discovery they have made!  Please pray for them as many will face persecution because of their commitment to Christ.

The second significant reason for the Sovereign Lord allowing persecution to happen is that “the testing of [y]our faith produces perseverance” that makes us “mature and complete, not lacking anything” (verse 4).  My wife and I pray regularly for the persecuted Church thoughout the world, and as we do so we really feel for what they are having to go through – imprisonment, torture, separation from loved ones, isolation/alienation, loss of work and income, and so on – wondering how we could cope with such hardship and privation.  But we also hear very encouraging reports about how the Lord is sustaining them through it all, and how the Church is growing in spite of, or rather because of, this persecution.

Thank you, James, for helping me to keep everything in a Kingdom perspective as I am prone to struggle with relatively minor challenges in my life.

– Bruce Christian