Translated Teaching (attachment)
1Cor 13:7
It (love)"always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Always perseveres
No mater what happens, Lord told us to persevere every thing. But it seems not very simple to do that properly. Sometimes, we get angry when we should keep silence, and sometimes, we are not certain what on earth we should persevere before the evil affairs.
That is really a complex problem. But we can find the answer from the Bible which clearly tells us how to persevere always.
We all know that King David was a very faithful servant of God. Solomon praised his father before the Lord as "he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart" (1Kin3:10). God was pleased by the righteous things David did, and evil things he did brought him a whole repentance.
Facing envy and chasing, David never said a word of evil to Saul, and did everything good for him. He forgave his evil, persevered his mockery, and didn't touch him even when he had a chance to kill him. David knew, that Saul was God's anointed one.
But to Goliath, from Gath, an enemy of God and God's people, David killed him without hesitation.
Jesus told his disciples that "I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you."(Lk 10:19)
To trample God's enemy is a kind of perseverance in God's sight.
Let us see another example, (1Sam 15) Agag king of the Amalekites found favorite before the King Saul, and the King didn't put him to death.
But Saul's kindness and goodness are evil before God. When Priest
Samuel rebuked him, he said to Samuel, "I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king. The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the LORD your God at Gilgal". He refers to God as Samuel's God, not his.
Priest Samuel came, killed the sheep and cattle and said to Saul, "the LORD has rejected you as king over Israel!"
Sometimes, perseverance means constantly waiting even withdrawing, but sometimes, it is jealousy of God, a kind of braveness and adventure.
The foundation of perseverance is jealousy, hating the wickedness.
We discover that the forms of perseverance are different on Jesus when he treated various people.
For the cripple, the poor, the blind, and other sick people, Jesus cured them with mercy, gave them bread when they were hungry, gave life when they died.
For the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, he uncovered their Hypocrites clearly and told them that they were the blind, the cripple, the whitewashed tombs. Jesus testified God's word in this way to avoid that the Hypocrites ruined God's truth and confused the believers. That is another kind of perseverance.
In the temple courts, (that means the body of those who trust in God) Jesus found it was a great mess there. It should be clean and orderly in God's palace, why it became a market? People who sold doves refer to those who boast their spiritual gifts before others. The burnt offering should be cut into pieces before being sacrificed, but the sheep and cattle here were still living in the old form, not for offering, but for money. The sheep and cattle refers to those who offer themselves to serve God, they have never been broken by God, but pursue the wealth and fame in their old selves. Today's social churches, are just in this situation.
Facing the mess, Jesus made a whip out of cords and drove all from the temple area. Did Jesus' behavior come from flesh and blood? Of course not. This is just another form of perseverance for the word. If he didn't purify the synagogue, how were God's temple and the faith?
Pharisees thought that Jesus broke the law, but in fact, on the contrary, he obeyed God's word, the heavenly law.
Sometimes the heavenly law is distinct from the worldly law, even contrary from one another. Peter said, "Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God" (Acts 4:19)
We of course should obey the part of worldly doctrines that are consistent with God's. But we Christians ought to submit to God's word (the sound doctrines in the whole Bible) when it is different from the worldly teaching.
In a word, the Lord tells us to "always persevere". We are obliged to put it into practice in our daily life and fulfill his word properly in accordance with his good wills.
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