Pray the Word with David Platt is a resource from radical.net.

Luke chapter 6, verses 22 and 23,

blessed are you when people hate you,

and when they exclude you and revile you

and spurn your name as evil on account of the son of man.

Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy.

For behold, your reward is great in heaven,

for so their fathers did to the prophets.

Does this not seem like an impossible command?

I mean, no one of us is slandered or attacked or shamed or lied about,

reviled, excluded, and then feels elated by that. Now, we feel inflamed by these things.

John Piper said in a sermon on Matthew's version of Jesus saying this,

on the sermon on them out, I would argue that this is the most difficult command in the Bible,

namely for Jesus's sake to feel joy and gladness when you're reviled and persecuted and slandered.

How do you feel that which is totally unnatural for you to feel?

To rejoice and be glad.

The word he uses here for rejoicing is the same word we see later in Luke 15 when we see the father rejoicing over his son

who has come home. Like that kind of rejoicing, like deep rejoicing when people attack you to harm you

and what others think about you. You think about what this looks like for brothers and sisters in Christ in a place like North Korea today

or Yemen or Somalia where they are persecuted?

And then think even of examples in our own culture,

at least where I live,

...