A Call To The Remnant

The persecution of the saints worldwide is beginning to appear on the horizon. There is no mistake in the timing. God has been preparing us for the time that will soon be upon us. We will be like a well watered garden spiritually. In many ways we will be glad that the world shall no longer be pretending to be tolerant. All the cards, so to speak, will be on the table. It’s a time of revealing, on both sides, and there will only be two sides. The wheat shall be one side and they will be a people who have counted the cost, and the price? Total separation from a world that has turned on them. We shall pass through a veil of tears and a garden of Gethsemane. And then, the world will put its hands on us and take us, yet we shall be surrendered in it.

If you find yourself wearied right now, by the world and by it’s attitudes towards us, what will you do when all the pretense is gone and their hatred is in no way veiled? If the very thought of coming persecution causes you to lose your peace, what will the actual persecution do to your mind? You must do the business of Gethsemane before they take a hold of you. You have to pass from agony and despair to total acceptance and surrender in the sure knowledge that you have been called, and equipped, for such a time as this. For the joy that is set before you, for the fulfilling of the will of God, let us set our face like flint, as our Lord did. Flint is hard and resolute, let us be strong and resolute is our cause.

Our primary focus in life, no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in, must be the glory of God. This rends the heavens and fills our heart with the power that we need. Paul and Silas did not cry out in the dungeon that God would release them. They did not cry out “woe is me, help me Lord.’ They sang praises unto God. And the power of God came flooding down and the the jail was shaken to its very foundations. This is power, for the hour of our testings that is to come. This is instructive to the saints. Praising God when everything is stripped from us is how we glorify God, it is a sign of our unconditional love for Him and it disarms the enemy of our souls and it looses the shackles of this world.

I would encourage you today, not by telling you that all of our problems are behind us, indeed they are not and the greatest challenges lie just ahead.  No, my encouragement to you is that our souls will be like well watered gardens even in the middle of a wilderness desert of persecution. The greatest fellowship you will ever experience, as many now so desperately desire, will be yours as the enemy comes in like a flood and the Lord raises up a standard.

Your depth of relationship with the Lord will exceed anything you have ever imagined, and after the wheat has been separated from the tares, your fellowship with your fellow brothers and sisters will be sublime. Let us run with the footmen now and not grow weary, and in the running let us rather be conditioned and strengthened. And when the swift horses of persecution comes we shall be swifter. We shall run and not grow weary, we shall walk and not grow faint and we shall rise up with the eagles and soar in the updrafts of His presence that surely falls upon us when we praise Him in the midnight hour.