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By Danny B. Smith, Purple Ark Ministries

© Copyright Reserved July 14, 2010

Why Do You Persecute Jesus?

KJV Act : 22 7  And I fell onto the ground, and heard a voice saying unto me, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?

What is our greatest search in Christ?  Today I was asked, why do you persecute Jesus?   It was a young teenager who was presenting me with this question.  At first I became sensitive to the suggestion that I was doing something wrong.  The young man continued to share the story of Saul and how Jesus had presented him with the same quest, you see Jesus had appeared to Saul on the way to Damascus and asked Saul, ”why do you persecute me”?  The young man explained, because Christ is the head of the church and we are the body, Jesus feels our pain, he is us, this is why he asked Saul this question. 

Today we must humble our hearts to the loving nature of Christ and asked the same question, do we persecute Christ in the way we treat others.  

Later I thought about the young man and began to pray, asking the Lord to  forgive me for anything that I had done unaware of my neglect to the spiritually poor, the sinner, the angry woman on the street, the alcoholic who only wanted someone to talk to, the homeless  woman who had lost her mind,  the angry child in search for food in the park garbage, the rich who are still afraid to trust  the unknown, the burden of a family that takes up your whole day, I am so sorry Lord if I have neglected any of these that belong to you, forgive us Lord when we persecute you in not loving the hard to reach souls.

I am more aware today that I have a long way to go to understand the love of Jesus, he is beautiful.  I ponder what moved him to die on cross, I ponder his love for us, his love for those who persecute him in  those we must learn to love.

The young man in his final word to me, said that, “on  judgment day Jesus will ask if we gave him food to eat when he was hungry , clothes to wear, when he did not have any , and if we went to see him when he was in prison. he said that if we serve any of the least this way, we have served him, he asked us to serve without looking at the outer appearances of anything’.

 Today I had to start over again, becoming less of myself  in order to be more in Christ. 

Prayer:   Dear Lord, teach us how to love without judging the outer appearances of this world, bless the church that hungers for more of your presence, bless the missionaries that serve the homeless with blinded compassion, we cannot always see how our faith has served God's plan or how it has neglected the body of Christ. Teach us dear Father to be Christ sensitive.

In Jesus Name   Amen