I am a Jesus pusher!!! “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake” (Matthew 5:11). This is a DECLARATION OF YOUR PERSONAL LINKAGE with Him. It is for my sake. Persecution is directly linked to Him. As described in the sequence of the Beatitudes, the Kingdom of Heaven is an intimate embrace with His person. The nature of His person flows through the Kingdom person. The qualities being expressed out of the life of the believer are a direct by-product of His being.
My father was a pastor of a church focused on the social, liberal aspects of Christianity. Intimacy with Jesus was not their primary concern. After a couple of years of preaching and living Jesus among them, they asked us to leave. The district superintendent of the denomination asked the pulpit committee, “What is the problem, the reason, for the request?” One possibility was his preaching; but their answer was that the preaching was the best they had ever heard. Perhaps their reason was his theology; but their answer was that he always preached the Bible. Finally a person on this committee blurted out, “He just can’t make chili like our last pastor.” Now everyone understood that this was not the reason, but because they could not put their real reason into words, they blamed it on the chili.
May I be so in love with Jesus, it is the only thing about me that irritates people. When true persecution comes, it is a testimony of my personal linkage with Jesus. The Beatitudes are a declaration of His nature filling my life; people can see Him in every area of my living. There are no activities, attitudes, or spoken words emerging from my life that do not highlight Jesus. Persecution is a declaration of my personal linkage with Him. I am a Jesus pusher!!!