Lord, may I also experience the joy resulting from doing right and opposing evil in my sphere of influence.

RON BOYD-MAC MILLAN “I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one”. 1 John 2:14 Ron Boyd-MacMillan recounts an interesting persecution situation in the UK. A pastor in England had moved to the middle of London. He looked round his neighborhood and wondered, What is the evil that I can defy here? He realized that there were gangs of youths, who were dealing in drugs. So he called together twenty men from his new church and said, “We must seek out the young people and be positive role models, because they don’t have any. They only have fathers who beat them, if they take any notice of them at all.” After a few weeks, the gang members began to respond and some gave their lives to Christ. A few weeks later, there was a burly man standing at the church door who said, “Keep your hands off my kids. I’m the local drug dealer. They’re my messenger boys. They’re my kids. Leave them alone, or you’ll be in for it.” The pastor replied, “They’re not your kids. They are God’s kids, and I’ll accept the consequences.” After a few weeks, there was a baptismal service at the church and when one of the gang members came up out of the baptismal waters, a stone shot through the church window. The boy who had come out of the pool picked up the stone, held it up and said to the church members, “This is a great bullet, because they wouldn’t be shooting at us if we weren’t making a difference.” Along with the horror, they felt joy. And so in their own way they became part of the persecuted church.