What to Expect From

Those in Power
If You’re Serious
About Following Christ
by Rob Wilkerson
Church in the Boro

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A decision to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow King Jesus means a
life of radical decision-making. It is a decision to live in the culture, yet with
ideals that are above the culture, always radically opposed to those with ideals
far beneath the culture, which really operate as the undercurrent and root system
of the culture. When you make a decision to follow a Person like Jesus, you
also make a decision to stand against some things, and that something is run by
innumerable someones who live for pleasure and power. The smartest ones
create conspiracies for your harm. The smarter ones carry them out. The smart
ones enforce them. And everyone else chants with support.

This is just the way "the system" works. While we are not part of the world any
longer as Christians, Jesus says we are definitely living in it. He told His
disciples in advance to expect to be mistreated, persecuted, and even
murdered. And He worded His warning in the context of a governmental
environment (see Mark 13:9-13; and John 15-16). I think an application here
for us as Christians is to always assume that corruption goes straight "to the top."
It's biblically naive to assume the best of those in government. It was John E.
Acton, a historian and moralist, who is famously quoted for saying, "Power tends
to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost
always bad men." William Pitt, Prime Minister of Britain from 1766-1778, is
also famous for his idea: "Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those
who possess it."

So it begs the question, what's should a person expect who has made a serious
decision to follow King Jesus? What can they expect from people in power,
and from those who serve with them? I've outlined eight expectations below for
true Christians. The first four are frightening. The last four are empowering.
And might I recommend that you meditate and pray through one a day for the
next week, if for other reason than it will get quite overwhelming.

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One…
Expect for your enemies to launch and
successfully carry out a character-
defamation campaign.

This is Satan's oldest and best trick. He played it against God on Adam and
Eve in the garden. "Did God really say...?" Essentially, the devil was attacking
the character of God in order to defame Him in the minds of His children.

If you’re serious about following Jesus, then be ready for the devil to use other
people to do the same thing to you. The internet sites you visit, the bank
accounts you've opened, the financial transactions you've made, the hotels and
restaurants you've patronized, your co-workers and neighbors and even your
family members and distant relatives will all be used to gather information about
you for one purpose.

That purpose is ancient and it always works so well: spin and manipulate all
information gathered so that it can always be interpreted negatively, causing
people to cast aspersion on your real motivations. If your enemies can get the
public to believe a false reason as to why you really did what you did, then you
and everything you stand for are discredited and marginalized. And in turn they
have rallied a majority of their people around them and against you and
"people like you."

A word of advice for those who get caught in the web that's been spun for
them. If you manage to find legitimate evidence of wrongdoing on your part,
acknowledge it, confess it as wrong, ask forgiveness of anyone you need to,
receive God's forgiveness, and carry on as one who us justified in the sight of
God because of Christ. That alone is a lighthouse of integrity in a world where
everyone fights and murders for self-vindication, self-justification, and overall self-
righteousness.

If, however, they have to create or manufacture evidence of wrong doing,

receive it, defend yourself with the facts in a humble and lenient manner, and
simply stretch out your arms and receive whatever consequences may come.
Either way, God Himself is always for you and never against you. The Apostle
Peter put it this way.

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“It is God’s will that your honorable lives should silence those
ignorant people who make foolish accusations against you. For
you are free, yet you are God’s slaves, so don’t use your freedom
as an excuse to do evil. Respect everyone, and love your Christian
brothers and sisters. Fear God and respect the king...God is
pleased with you when you do what you know is right and patiently
endure unfair treatment. Of course, you get no credit for being
patient if you are beaten for doing wrong. But if you suffer for
doing good and endure it patiently, God is pleased with you” (1
Peter 2:15-20, NLT).

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Two…
Expect for your enemies to redirect the
focus to a lesser wrong, and villainize
you for expecting accountability.
There is a force at work in our culture which is frighteningly ironic and powerfully
frustrating. It commits acts of evil and then points the finger of accusation and
condemnation against others who do evil...or those whom they perceive as
doing evil.

Many times the only evil you will be guilty of is exposing their evil. But
somehow a label of evil will be attached to that which you are doing. Things
will be turned inside out, upside down, and every which way but right side up.
Bruce Hornsby was right when he wrote and sung, "that's just the way it is."

This same force is also at work creating a fear of stopping those who do evil.
Somehow, the atmosphere most of us breathe lulls us asleep so that we are
fearful of standing up for those who are victims, and that includes those of us
who hold some sort of position of authority. The victim mistreated in an ill
manner, and those in authority sit idly by doing nothing, really.

Yet if the victim responds with ill treatment or words, or if they respond with a
call to accountability for those in authority, then expect the victim will be held
accountable instead of the one who did what was wrong. Again, that’s just the
way it is.

This fear is astounding at times, but it seems to rule the hearts of the average
citizen who's essentially asleep in the matrix, especially including those in
authority. Tolerate wrong doing from anyone, but only so long as it's not
coming from the victim.

This is what you must expect from those in power if you are serious about
following King Jesus. It's been this backward since the beginning of time.

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Three…
Expect for your enemies to label you
unpatriotic, indict you for hate crimes, and
even call you a terrorist.

This is how deep evil runs when a society experiences a total reversal of right
and wrong. The OT prophet of Isaiah described this sadness in his own nation
at the time.

"What sorrow for those who say that evil is good and good is evil,
that dark is light and light is dark, that bitter is sweet and sweet is
bitter. What sorrow for those who are wise in their own eyes and
think themselves so clever" (Isaiah 5:20-21).

When things are turned upside down, regardless of what nation you live in,
expect to be labeled unpatriotic when you point out what is wrong. Expect to
be indicted for your "hate crime," and expect to be grouped with the terrorists.
After all, you are a terror to them, for the wrath of God is breathing down their
necks, and they feel it sting their conscience. The only way to quiet it is to quiet
you, by whatever means necessary.

This mindset has grown slowly over the last half-century, and it's called hyper-
nationalism. It works so well because it's an age-old tool of Satan against
God's people. Nationalism is always okay. There is always to be expected
among thinking people a deep degree of appreciation for the country in which
God has sovereignly put us.

However, Satan knows how to manipulate this appreciation and turn it into blind
loyalty. This concept is simple: make a person so proud of his/her nation that
they intentionally ignore all wrong doing or even the hint of it among those who
are leading the country.

The OT prophets were almost always persecuted in the name of nationalism.

Jesus was murdered because of it. The disciples were persecuted for it, and
almost all of them murdered in other countries because of it. Paul was
persecuted and murdered for it.

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There are always low-life leaders like Herod Antipas who imprisoned and
murdered John the Baptist merely for calling his hand on the adultery he was
enjoying with his brother Phillip's wife. Most leaders are smart enough however,
to save face by pointing to some greater wrongdoing in the name of doing
right. Then secretly, they find a way to silence the whistleblower.

The bottom line is that when you follow King Jesus you will do things that will
make lesser kings hate you and caricature you as unpatriotic. Nevertheless, "we
must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29) when governing men command us
to disobey God. The need of that hour is to be filled with the Holy Spirit which
produces a boldness that does not disintegrate in the face of persecution or even
certain death.

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Four…
Expect for your enemies not to run and
hide, when they are exposed, but rather
to sink even lower in their plans and plots
against you.

Remember this one thing: truth means nothing to those who are buried beneath
the collapsed rubble of integrity. This especially holds true when the very air
they breath (the zeitgeist they've helped create) fosters a comprehensive collapse
of integrity across the board. When this happens, a person's only mission is to
get out of the rubble and get their revenge on you.

Instead of acknowledging, repenting, reconciling, restoring, and rebuilding the

consequences of their wrongdoing, they will sink to lower levels (forms, methods,
means and even laws) to prevent their discovery and do you harm. Silencing
and eliminating you and "your kind" will be their black-op mission, and they will
probably win...at least for now.

The Bible is filled with plots like these to illustrate this basic nature of mankind,
especially those in power. It is fascinating to watch the Jewish councils and
lawmakers knowingly put their own God-ordained laws on hold temporarily for
"the greater good" as they tried the innocent Son of God in an illegally-held
night court.

It is frightening to watch the same people, a few hours later, knowingly choose
the release of a terrorist they themselves hated and imprisoned, just in order to
escalate the murder of an innocent Man. For me personally, I get blisteringly
angry reading how they escalated this murder under the plainly false pretense of
Roman nationalism, which they publicly hated with a passion.

What is more, it is a jaw-dropping moment of evil irony when in order to

maintain the cover up, the same government paid off the guards to keep quiet
about the single greatest event in all of world history: the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead!

In short, expect the enemy of your enemy to be temporarily and deceitfully used
as an ally against you to silence you. Remember that evil never recants when
exposed to the light. It simply digs deeper for a new place to hide.
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Now to turn the tables.

Five…
Expect that God is sitting in the heavens
laughing at the conspiracies of man.
Psalm 2 teaches this truth. The conspiracies of man are a comedy to the
Sovereign King of the Universe. They are an endless buffet of international
sitcoms to the One who holds the universe together by sheer command. And
what brings a genuine smile to the face of a Jesus-follower, with a deep sense of
holy laughter, is your enemies finding out one day that they themselves are
actually part of a bigger conspiracy being run by the King of the Universe. His
Church is redoing what they are undoing as a grand scheme of God's own
sovereign doing continues to unfold from the time before time began.

Six…
Expect that God will take one day
revenge on those who harm His children.
1 Thessalonians 2:16 teaches us this truth. God loves His children. He
adopted them before He ever created them. That is a love that fits no category.
He cannot and He will not sit idly by as His children are mishandled by greedy,
corrupt, deceitful, murderous men. Their accounts are filling up with both their
deeds and their consequences. And God has a measured punishment which fits
the crime. One day He will unleash it in the name of love (for His own) against
those who have senselessly and selfishly violated His sons and daughters for
pleasure, profit, and power.

Seven…
Expect to expect more because you're
not battling flesh and blood.
Ephesians 6:12 teaches this amazing view of reality. The men who seek to
harm you are not really behind the threats. It is Satan himself, along with his
demons, who are millenia-old masters of seeking to undo what God has done.
He is the great conspirator, though God is the grandest one. It is the devil who
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lay behind every act of character defamation, accusations of anti-patriotism, and
insidious plots against your livelihood and life. Those whom Satan uses are
simply tools being used as weapons against you. But your weapons are not of
this world, like your enemies'. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 teach that our weapons
have divine, supernatural power for destroying strongholds. Our work is in the
destruction of arguments and opinions...not people. We want to take them
captive to Jesus Christ, no longer held captive by the ideologies of Satan.

Eight…
Expect to endure what seems to be
worthless acts of violence and deceit
in order to love flesh and blood.
Here is Jesus' own teaching on the matter from Matthew 5. It serves as the last
word on the matter.

38 "You have heard the law that says the punishment must match
the injury: 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.'*39 But I
say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right
cheek, offer the other cheek also.40 If you are sued in court and
your shirt is taken from you, give your coat, too.41 If a soldier
demands that you carry his gear for a mile, carry it two
miles.42 Give to those who ask, and don't turn away from those
who want to borrow. 43 "You have heard the law that says, 'Love
your neighbor'* and hate your enemy.44 But I say, love your
enemies!* Pray for those who persecute you!45 In that way, you
will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives
his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the
just and the unjust alike.46 If you love only those who love you,
what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that
much.47 If you are kind only to your friends,* how are you different
from anyone else? Even pagans do that."

Greater is The One who

lives inside of you,

than the lesser

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one who
is in the world!