Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I am a foreigner to my own family,
    a stranger to my own mother’s children;
for zeal for your house consumes me,
    and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.

• Psalm 69:8-9

For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.”

• Romans 15:3

Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

• Hebrews 12:3

“What reproaches fell on Jesus? Everything that was hurled in slander against God hurt our Lord. The slanders that were hurled against Himself made no impression on Him; His suffering was on account of His Father. On what account do you suffer? Do you suffer because men speak ill of you? Read Hebrews 12:3: ‘For consider him that hath endured such gainsaying of sinners against himself, that ye wax not weary, fainting in your souls.’ Perfect love takes no account of the evil done unto it. It was the reproaches that hit and scandalized the true centre of His life that Jesus Christ noticed in pain. What was that true centre? Absolute devotion to God the Father and to His Will; and as surely as you get Christ-centred you will understand what the Apostle Paul meant when he talks about ‘filling up that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ’. Jesus Christ could not be touched on the line of self-pity. The practical emphasis here is that our service is not to be that of pity, but of personal, passionate love to God, and a longing to see many more brought to the centre where God has brought us.”

• Oswald Chambers, Daily Thoughts for Disciples (August 8, from Biblical Psychology)

My wife was a person who never let anyone know she was hurting.  She had a hard time telling the doctor.  I would go with her to keep her focused.  “No, Doctor, she is not just fine.”  And she had an ever-present smile.

But that is physical pain.  When insults are hurled in our direction because of our faith, do we want to lash out in response?  Oh, we might want to, but that is what the evil, within the other person, wants us to do.  The evil says, “This Christian does not have it all together as they pretend.  If you poke them hard enough, they will poke back.”

If we “poke back,” and then the fight starts, at that point it is no longer suffering for righteousness sake, it is simply a brawl.

But when we endure insults, an occasional shove, or even a slap, and we resist the flash back, there is the other side of such persecution.  We must not harbor ill feelings.  We must not have anger smolder deep within us.

I had trouble with that.  I was overworked, promised a promotion if I just worked harder, but then passed over for the guy who hardly worked at all.  Later on, a friend of mine said that I did it all wrong.  The bosses would never promote the hard worker that did high quality work.  If that person became the boss, who would be left to get any of the work done?  I harbored ill will, not against an individual, but against a system that punished someone for working hard.

But in that frustration, I moved to a few short-lived jobs before finding another company that did the same thing as the first.  The boss sat in the corner and “looked busy” while I ran the department.  But God had taught me the lesson.  I did what was needed.  I completed countless jobs under budget to maximize the profit, knowing that I would never get the promotion, the higher pay, and the annual bonuses.

And did I need that extra cash?  It would have been spent or invested, but God has provided.  For all the evil done to me, I survived, and in ways that they could never understand, I thrived.  God is the best boss that I ever had.

God has a way of seeing us through the dark times.  It is up to us to see God through those times.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.