Jesus said to His followers (disciples, us ?), “You will be hated by all because of Me.”
Then Jesus said, “HE WHO KILLS YOU WILL THINK HE IS DOING GOD SERVICE.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In light of Jesus’ words, what would be His strongest approval of His followers, and how would He show it ?
Martrydom is God’s ultimate mark of approval\/commendation for a Christian.
For the first Christian martyr, Stephen, Jesus gave a standing ovation in heaven.
When Jesus went back to heaven, He sat down at His Father’s right hand, but when Stephen was stoned, he “saw Jesus standing . . .”
I think He does that for every martyr !<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Do not be afraid—just believe.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Instead, fear the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
I heard a dear family friend, Charlie Hohle, say that verse in Daddy’s house after he was martyred.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jesus said to His followers (disciples, us ?), “You will be hated by all because of Me.”Then Jesus said, “HE WHO KILLS YOU WILL THINK HE IS DOING GOD SERVICE.” In light of Jesus’ words, what would be His strongest approval of His followers, and how would He show it ?Martrydom is God’s ultimate mark […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2,3,7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-educational","category-faith_based","category-family","category-inspire_lifter","category-political-cultural"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6279"}],"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=6279"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6281,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6279\/revisions\/6281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}