John 11:45-57 | What's the lesson for me today?

Seeing how Jesus was treated for His righteous serves as an encouragement to me. As a believer, you find very quickly that people very quickly lose fondness for you in your faith. You get mistreated, talked poorly too and poorly about. You face ridicule and scrutiny from those that should be coming alongside you. Well these were the people who should have accepted Christ. They were the ones who knew the Law and the Prophets. They could look and see and discover for themselves who Jesus is. But in light of all of that, they rejected Him. Not only did they reject Him, they sought to kill Him.

In light of a recent book I have been reading, I started praying the prayer, "Lord, show me where I am deceived." It is the nature of deception that you do not know when you are deceived. You need truth to confront that. Well one area I have found myself deceived is a strange belief that entered my heart. If I was being treated poorly by someone in the church, it had to be my fault. I had to have done something horribly wrong. So I would search and seek and hope to find what failure I had wrought on these people and grow frustrated when I couldn't find anything. I was convinced there had to be a reason. It was through reading the life of Jesus that my eyes were opened to the nature of man in their rejection of righteousness.

I am encouraged to take heart at the persecution. Jesus did everything right and they killed Him for it. He was truly righteous, kind, gracious, and loving. That warranted persecution, gossip, slander, accusation, and dissention. And Jesus stepped into it with boldness. He was wise in navigating it. He continued loving the people. More than how Jesus was treated, the lesson to me is how He treated them back.

What lesson are you taking away today?