Ask Pastor Mike Live

Guest (Female): Hi Pastor Mike! I texted a question earlier but I'm so glad I was able to call before you got to it. My question is regarding persecution. I know the Bible talks a lot about how we will suffer persecution as a Christian and I've been saved almost a year now. I've preached the gospel to give or take 50 people, handing out tracts here and there. And the worst I've ever gotten is someone that's uninterested. I'm questioning: Am I doing enough? Am I not bold enough? Or what does that practically look like, especially here in Orange County?

Focal Point Ministries: I'm so glad you asked that. I know that some people, when they don't feel like they're suffering enough in their evangelism, ramp their evangelism up and they go to town. They start quoting passages at people as they walk by, they start wearing sandwich boards. They try to make sure that they raise the ire and the anger of the people that walk by.

I used to do college ministry in Tucson at the University of Arizona. We had a group that would come out and I'd get so angry at these guys. I would go over and confront them and say, "Hey, this is ridiculous. Let me tell you why." I would try to talk to them. Of course, they don't want to talk to me, but they would even go away thinking, "See, we're being reviled for Christ's sake, and this is good."

What we have to do is not try to evoke a kind of negative response. Everything in the scripture about our evangelism says we're supposed to do this with gentleness and respect. But I would tell you that if you don't see some kind of exclusion, some kind of spurning, some kind of ire, at least—the words are strong in Luke 6: hatred, exclusion, reviling, spurning. Those are the four words there. I would say you're in a very fortunate position. You must have a great family. You must have a great workplace.

But here's the deal: I'll bet a lot of things, if you're not living in a perfect Christian environment at home, at work, at school, or whatever, are you really, every time you sense that prompting to speak up, saying it? I even have that sometimes with strangers when they use the Lord's name in vain or something. I always want to do everything with gentleness and respect, but I know I'm going to evoke the ire of people.

I told a story not too long ago you might remember. I was just driving through Canes and some guy cut me off. Well, I'm going to respond, I hope, like a Christian, which is to say to him as he's angry, "Hey, I'm so sorry. You're right. I cut in front of you. I didn't see you. I didn't mean to." Even that nice response the guy couldn't handle. He went nuts. I would have been better off if I were a non-Christian yelling some bad words at him.

All I'm saying is make sure that whenever the prompting of God's Spirit or the conviction of God's Spirit is to say something or to speak up when they're talking about this, that, or the other, just make sure you're obedient to that. And then keep it up. Keep sharing the gospel and praise God that you're living in a relative time of peace.

I think a lot of our American counterparts before the sexual revolutions of the 60s and the 70s probably thought a lot the same: "Our church is doing great. We put in permits at the city and we get permits to build our churches and we want to ring our church bells and everyone goes great, no problem." So it'll change and there are times when God's going to put you in a situation where you certainly will qualify for verse 22 of Luke 6: hate, exclude, revile, and spurn.

Maybe you're joyfully doing that because it says you should rejoice. And maybe you're just good at rejoicing when someone doesn't invite you to that party at work because they don't want the goody-two-shoes there that's not going to drink or not going to get drunk with them or whatever it might be. So keep living for the Lord. Just know it's coming. It'll probably come. And if not, then you're an especially blessed Christian.

Don't try to evoke it. Don't try to get it happening. But I might even put a journal entry in your journal somewhere that you go back to and just put the heading: hatred, exclusion, reviling, and spurning. By spurning your name as evil, which means they're calling you a bad person. See if you can see anything coming up in the next two months that falls under one of those headings in your journal. I'll bet you're going to have some things there, even if they're small. And if they're small, praise God.

If you say, "I'm not really suffering for Christ, I should go start a church in Saudi Arabia," that's not necessarily what you should do. But I guarantee you if you did go to some part of the world that hates Christianity, where it's illegal to preach the Bible, you would suffer. So you're in a position where you're in a unique, maybe a nice cocoon situation, but don't stop sharing the gospel and praise God for every day without persecution.

Let me give you one more thing because we've been talking, because you brought it up, about evangelism, but there's another role that we play in the restraint of evil. There are times when I realize as salt and light in the world, my job in getting involved in something, in a conversation, sometimes it's even just out and about at a store, isn't for me to say, "I'm going to lead this person to Christ," although if I have that opportunity, great, I'll try to share the gospel. It's that I don't want this evil to continue and I'm going to step in so that I can say, "You need to stop. This needs to stop. You shouldn't do that."

I think of somebody I talked to, two people I can think of recently where they were doing something and I said, "This is bad. It's not just bad for you, which maybe I'd pass you by if it were just you, but it's bad for the business owner that you're affecting his clientele right here. And you're not here by permission. You shouldn't be here." And here I was thinking I'm going to say something because if everyone said something, these people wouldn't do it.

There was a guy hanging out at the ATM. To be specific, I was like, "Hey, this isn't the place for you to sit and hang out by the ATM. There are ladies that want to come up here and get their money and they're never going to do it with you standing here. You're ruining the bank's customer base right now and you need to get up and move." I wouldn't expect you to do that, but if you're a man that's big enough to maybe handle the guy who's there trying to sit down and loiter around the ATM—I don't think he had any nefarious purpose, but it was bad.

If I were the owner of the bank, and they weren't in session at that point, I think they'd want that. And so restraining evil, doing something that is going to be an influence of good, sometimes you need to look for the conviction in your life for that. I don't want a young lady in Orange County doing that kind of thing. But I think sometimes us men should be saying to people, even in the town center, "I don't think you should be doing this and you need to stop."

You could see some mom going off on her kid and maybe you need to take all the factors into consideration. Maybe this gal's whatever and you don't know about her life, but if you see something that's unjust, you've got to step in and at least say something. Because if everyone thought "if I lost my temper at the line at Costco, I know four people would stand up and say you shouldn't do that," I think people would think twice about it. When no one gets involved and no one wants to restrain bad behavior, no one just wants to give that social pressure for people not to be bad, I do think then we're missing that part of our job to be salt and light.

So that's another aspect of it and that may prompt something in your mind to say, "Next time you're somewhere, this is no time for the gospel so I'm done with my job." No, it may not be the time for the gospel, but it may be the time for you to restrain bad behavior in society. One day all the Christians in this world are going to be gone. That's my eschatology at least. I think at that point, when all hell breaks loose, of course it will be God's direct punishment upon the planet.

But a lot of that punishment, as I think it says in First Thessalonians, is because the restrainer has been removed. The action of the Spirit through the people of God and the church is going to be gone. And the world's going to be a worse place to live because when someone loses it or does something wrong, there isn't anybody that's going to say anything like we would. Christians are restraining evil. So restrain evil and make your little chart there of hate, exclude, revile, and spurn my name as evil. I'll bet you'll have a few of those to share in a few months. That's not a badge of honor, although he says if you're not being persecuted, you do need to look at your life because they persecuted me, they're going to persecute you. But maybe Jesus will be less persecuted in the 21st century in a place like Orange County than he would have been in Middle Eastern first century. But you get my point.

Guest (Female): Probably. I appreciate the response. Thank you.

Focal Point Ministries: Okay. Thanks for the call. Appreciate it.