Popular preachers, beware of popularity.<\/p>\n
Rather, seek God’s blessing.<\/p>\n
Seek to qualify for Jesus’ promises:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake:\u00a0 for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.<\/p>\n
Blessed are you, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.<\/p>\n
Rejoice, and be exceeding glad:\u00a0 for great is your reward in heaven;\u00a0 for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
If we are really following Jesus, why aren’t we persecuted more?\u00a0 Have we come up with a better formula than Jesus’ words?<\/p>\n
Wait and see . . .<\/p>\n
or<\/p>\n
Repent and seek . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Popular preachers, beware of popularity. Rather, seek God’s blessing. Seek to qualify for Jesus’ promises: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake:\u00a0 for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith_based"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}