Rocked by Accusations

Good Morning & Greetings my dear friends! Welcome to this beautiful new day with Jesus!

When we walk with the Lord, every day is a new opportunity to glorify him, every day is a new chance that we receive from the Lord to bring honour, praise and worship to God. Sometimes this opportunity that comes our way may look very beautiful but other times the opportunity that we get may be extremely torturous, full of disasters and distresses and in those seasons when we continue to trust in God, in spite of the challenges we go through, the worship that God receives out of it, the praise that God receives out of it is equivalent to no other.

Apostle Paul was led by the Holy Spirit, he was driven by the presence of God, he was full of Jesus. It says that he would constantly make this confession that for him to live is Christ and to die is gain, he was all sold out for Jesus. When he was in Jerusalem, as seen in Acts 21 the city is in complete confusion. He had done something that the church leaders asked him to do and yet everything worked against him. In verse 30, the whole city was rocked by these accusations, so there was a certain accusation that was made against the apostle Paul. It was not just by a few groups, but the entire city rose up in accusation against Apostle Paul. It says a great riot followed, Paul was grabbed and was dragged out of the temple and immediately the doors of the temple were shut behind him.

Here was a man of God, led by the spirit of God, now he is going through a torturous situation. How can we bring glory to God when we are going through something like that? How can we bring honour to God when we are facing persecution? How can we bring praises out of our mouth especially in times and seasons when our physical body is subjected to pain?

Not everything we go through is persecution. Some things that we go through may be persecution, especially if it is a result of you preaching the good news of following Christ, that can be persecution, even if it is not persecution if there are people that are hurting you, causing pain in your life, how do you respond? What can you do so we can bring worship to God in a situation like what apostle Paul was stuck in right now?

Can we stop looking at God and criticising God for allowing us to go through this? can we stop pointing fingers at each other? Can we even stop blaming ourselves? Apostle Paul could have looked down on himself. He didn’t do any of that, in fact, he gladly rejoices, praise and worship through this whole process of being persecuted. My prayer for us in this season is when we face adverse circumstances, our reaction will be one of worship, spiritual rejoicing. Naturally, there would be no happiness, in the natural body, but there can be a spiritual joy that comes from your trust in God, that joy can be exercised in the midst of closed doors.

In a heart that is surrendered to God, and in that place of true surrender is where joy and peace and trust are truly birthed and multiplies and it begins to flow out of your life and begins to impact the people around you.

So many times apostle Paul was imprisoned and every time he got imprisoned, he will have an attitude of worship. One time he would write to the church is Philippi saying, I am in chains and I am rejoicing and I hope you will rejoice too, and he gave them an order saying, I say unto you rejoice and again I say unto you rejoice.

How can you bring glory to God in an adverse situation? It is by your joy, by your worship, by your trust in God in spite of what you are going through. It could be either because of persecution or because of other circumstances in your life, but, we cannot stop worshipping God, no matter what. There can be no circumstances in our life that can arise and take away our worship, our joy, or our trust in the Lord.

I hope that this word will encourage and empower you for the day ahead.

God bless you.