Shame

“rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name.”  Acts 5:41

Shame – Have you ever been treated shamefully?  Abused?  Slandered?  Insulted?  Treated without dignity?  Everyone has some story of shameful mistreatment.  But not everyone goes away rejoicing.  Today most of us hire an attorney.  The world’s way is to get even.  God’s way is to realize what a privilege He has given us.  It’s another example of God’s upside-down logic.

Several of the disciples are called before the religious court for proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah.  The court takes the conservative position on the issue.  If these men are liars, they will eventually fail.  But if they proclaim the truth, it is better not to put them to death.  After all, you don’t want God upset.  So, the court orders them flogged and released.  This was no minor punishment.  They were beaten until the skin came off – whipped until they bled.  You and I would have the civil rights lawyers crawling all over this case. 

But the disciples leave, backs bleeding, rejoicing that they were considered worthy.  Can you imagine that?  They were so transformed by Christ that they did not consider themselves worthy to suffer for Him.  They rejoiced that God allowed them to be beaten as a testimony to Jesus.  The Greek word atimazo tells us that they were rejoicing because they experienced dishonorable treatment for His name’s sake. 

A lot of bad things happen in life.  A lot of things we generally don’t deserve at the hands of evil men.  But how many of us walk away from those shameful experiences praising God that our trials meant He thought us worthy to suffer.  We think suffering is unworthy.  We think it shouldn’t happen.  You see how backwards we think.  We can’t imagine that suffering has anything good about it.  We complain.  We sue.  We fight.  We cry out to God, “Oh, why did you let this happen Lord”.  But the disciples walked away from the prison saying, “Oh Lord, I never thought I would be worthy enough to follow your footsteps on this path.  Thank you, Lord, that you saw in me what I could not see.  I was worthy to carry Your name and to suffer for it.”   

If we met Peter and James and John on that day, we would probably shake our heads, thinking, “These men are crazy.  They were abused.  They should go to court and get a settlement.”  We would never understand why they were singing hymns of praise to God.  We would certainly never imagine that suffering was a worthy calling.  But we are a lot further away from the Master than they were. 

Who’s thinking clearly now?