Consider Jesus. As you are crucified, watch Him handle His crucifixion. Your Lord bequeathed to you an example of the high art of being crucified. Behold how He reacted to betrayal, to lies, to false witnesses. Jesus Christ absorbed these pains, even as they added the shamefulness of being crucified in public. Humiliated, degraded, defamed, tortured and then murdered. That day he raised acceptance of the cross into an art form. He learned to accept all things from the hand of His Father. Gene Edwards Website

If your reputation is perfectly intact on every front, if you never irritate anyone, if you never make a stir, you might be doing something wrong - or more likely, you're not doing something right. "Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for in the same way their fathers used to treat the false prophets" (Luke 6:26). The Bible has a crystal clear promise: All who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution" (2 Tim. 3:12). If we never experience persecution, if we never make a single soul angry (as Christ often did), something is probably wrong. R. Terry