"More than Conquerors"
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or
sword? . . . Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. Rom. 8: 35- 37.
God's servants receive no honor or recognition from the world. Stephen was stoned because he preached Christ and Him crucified. Paul was imprisoned, beaten,
stoned, and finally put to death, because he was a faithful messenger of God to the Gentiles. The apostle John was banished to the Isle of Patmos, "for the word of
God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ" (Rev. 1: 9.). These examples of human steadfastness in the might of divine power are a witness to the world of the
faithfulness of God's promises, of His abiding presence and sustaining grace.
Jesus does not present to His followers the hope of attaining earthly glory and riches, of living a life free from trial. Instead He calls upon them to follow Him in the
path of self- denial and reproach. He who came to redeem the world was opposed by the united forces of evil. . . .
In all ages Satan has persecuted the people of God. He has tortured them and put them to death, but in dying they became conquerors. They bore witness to the
power of One mightier than Satan. Wicked men may torture and kill the body, but they cannot touch the life that is hid with Christ in God. They can incarcerate men
and women in prison walls, but they cannot bind the spirit.
Through trial and persecution the glory-- the character-- of God is revealed in His chosen ones. The believers in Christ, hated and persecuted by the world, are
educated and disciplined in the school of Christ. On earth they walk in narrow paths; they are purified in the furnace of affliction. They follow Christ through sore
conflicts; they endure self- denial, and experience bitter disappointments; but thus they learn the guilt and woe of sin, and they look upon it with abhorrence. Being
partakers of Christ's sufferings, they can look beyond the gloom to the glory, saying, "I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared
with the glory which shall be revealed in us" (Rom. 8: 18).
From God's Amazing Grace - Page 281
