753 Reacting to Persecution - Romans 12:14

How do you react when others treat you badly and be honest about it? Hey, it's Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One. Thanks for joining me again today on the Follower of One Podcast.

We've been doing this series on how we interact with others. And today we're in Romans chapter 12, verse 14, and I'm reading from the New American Standard Bible. "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse."

This is a series of verses where, in very rapid fire fashion, Paul lays out a bunch of quick commands for how we interact with others. And we've been talking about this for a few days now. Today's verse, bless those who persecute you bless and do not curse them.

He's repeating the word bless twice in this verse. He's reminding us and emphasizing that we're to speak well, even of the people who treat us badly. I don't believe this persecution is just religious persecution. It can be people who just have it out for you or people that don't like you.

When we're treated badly, we have a choice. We can whine and complain and curse about it, or we can bless those people. I have a particularly difficult time with this. My self talk is negative and I tend to jump to conclusions about things. And I don't want to speak well of people who treat me badly, even if they were oblivious to it, even if they did it accidentally. And so I have to bend my mind on a regular basis to be someone who speaks a blessing instead of a curse.

I want to look for something positive to say and some way to be a blessing to the people I interact with every day, regardless of how they treat me. That's the command our Lord gives us. And he gives it to us here through the apostle Paul, but we have it in other places in scripture too. We have it in Matthew five and first Peter three.

How are we doing? How do we react when people don't treat us well? Let's do a little gut check today. How have we spoken to others online? How are we interacting with them in social media? How are we thinking about other people when we're behind the wheel of our car? How are we doing that, when we're in line in a grocery store, or trying to get somewhere in a hurry.

Oftentimes when I'm in a hurry, I'm a real pain in the tail and I don't want to be. And so this verse is a reminder for me to bless others, bless and do not curse. I want to be someone who's actively blessing people. Whether they're oblivious to me or they're actively persecuting me, I need to be actively blessing them. I need to speak well and wish well for them and do what I can to be a blessing to them.

Today, I don't know about you, but that's a challenge for me. I've thrown down the gauntlet. Today is a Monday, I believe when you'll be hearing this, if you hear it on its air date and therefore we have a challenge. We have a challenge to be godly people, blessing others, even the ones who treat us badly on purpose in our workplaces today. Can you do that? I hope you can. And I hope you help me do that as well. Let's pray for the people that we will interact with today. Ask God to make us intentional about the way that we bless other people, simply because we have this command here in scripture, to bless those who persecute us, and to, bless them and not curse them.

Thank you for being a marketplace minister. Thank you for every bit of energy that you spend trying to be more Christlike today. Our world needs it. And so let's do as good a job as we can do. Let's try and live like we follow Jesus today.

And one way we can do that is by blessing those who don't treat us the way we wanted to be treated. Thank you for being a marketplace minister, as I said earlier. Let's go today and make a difference in the lives of the people that we work with. Thanks very much.

Hey, I wanted to add a little challenge. We have another marketplace mission trip coming up in a few weeks. Why not go to https://community.followerofone.org and join us on the next Marketplace Mission Trip. It's two weeks where we get to practice these very things on a daily basis. Thank you.