Welcome to the In Touch podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, January 29th.

Hostility seems to be increasing everywhere.

But what should you do when it's your faith that triggers aggression?

Today, we discover what the Bible teaches about responding when we are persecuted.

None of us really like conflict very much, or we don't like persecution for sure.

But in the world in which you and I live, if you and I live a godly life, we are going to face conflict

and we are going to face persecution. It may be persecution on your job, and I hear this all the time,

a persecution at home, a persecution in your schooling among your peers, but it's there. And those

people who sort of go through life and never have any enemies and everybody just loves them to death

and never ruffle into waters, here's what God says. And I want you to turn, if you will,

to 2 Timothy chapter 3. Because 2nd Timothy chapter 3 is a warning and no one is more of authority

on how to deal with persecution than the apostle Paul. So he says in this third chapter of 2nd

Timothy, beginning in verse 10, Paul said to Timothy, he said,

Now, but you followed my teaching, my conduct, my purpose, my faith, my patience, my love,

my perseverance, my persecutions, and sufferings, such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium,

and at Listera, what persecutions I endured, and out of them all, the Lord

delivered me. He said, now, you have followed me, you have watched me, and he says, I'm sure,

I hope you've learned some things, and indeed he says, and all who desire to live godly in Christ

Jesus will be persecuted. He said, I don't like persecution. Well, I'm sure Paul did neither. But the truth is,

if you and I live a godly life, I didn't say if you're a church member, or if you just want to be sort of a

nice kind of a Christian, whatever that is, but he says if you live godly in Christ Jesus, you can

expect conflict and persecution in your life because you and I are living

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