All of the prophecies about the end of this age point to this being the time of the greatest troubles the world has ever had. Sound encouraging? It is to true disciples. True disciples are not encouraged or discouraged by what’s happening in this world. This is when they will shine like the stars of heaven. What I am sharing in these next two Words for the Week is how we can go through these times and make them our best times.
There’s a simple answer to this: be a martyr every day. Martyrs are those who proved they loved the Lord and His truth more than their own lives. Do we love Him and His truth like this? The times are going to reveal some of the greatest martyrs who ever lived. This is the basic call of a disciple of the Lord.
Sometimes it is harder to live for the Lord than it is to die for Him, but disciples are called to die daily. If this is the kind of subject we don’t like, and we prefer to talk about things that “tickle our ears,” we’re about to have the hardest times of all. If we are those who run to the sound of battle, to the danger instead of away from it, we are coming to our finest hour. This is the greatest opportunity to prove our love for the Lord and His truth.
To die daily for Him is much more than giving up what we want to do to go to a prayer meeting. That should be second nature to us. To die daily is to live to seek His will in everything, no longer living for ourselves but for Him. As this becomes our lifestyle, it will lead to the happiest, most peaceful and fulfilling life we can live. There is no greater cause—no higher calling—than to serve the King of kings, especially in this age when virtually the whole world is against us, and some of the greatest threats are those who pretend to be for us. Even so, anything that we sacrifice now to serve Him will pay dividends for eternity.
The millions of martyrs who laid down their lives for the Lord and His truth will live on forever in unimaginable glory. As John wrote, this life is but a vapor. There is no better way to live this life than for Jesus Christ and His truth, regardless of the price we pay for it in this life. As we’ve seen in the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk, everything he did or said was amplified and multiplied after he was martyred. Though he has died to this life, his fruit is multiplying.
The Middle Ages were perhaps the darkest times in human history until what is coming. There were no Bibles available for consolation, as it was capital punishment just to be caught with one then, even if you were a priest. Except for secret meetings, there were few opportunities to hear the truth of His Word. People risked their lives just to hear it, and tens of millions died just to hear it. Charles Spurgeon said that he could find ten men who would die for the Bible for every one who would read it.
We get reports from all over the world about the multitudes who are, today, being martyred for Him. Persecution is the most common state of Christianity, not the casual comfort Christians in the West have enjoyed for so long. However, those in the church at Laodicea, where the people had everything they needed and lived comfortably, were given the greatest promises for overcoming their lukewarm spirit. Their call was to “be zealous and repent” (see Revelation 3:19). If we live in comfort and ease now, these are the most important things we can do to join the company of those zealous for the Lord.
We may feel better about ourselves when we give to the missions offering, but we are all called to live as missionaries and as martyrs, laying down our selfish desires to live for Him every day.
During the darkest of times—and the brightest of times for Christianity—faithful Christians obeyed the exhortation in the book of Hebrews: Jesus suffered outside the camp, so let us go to Him outside the camp. Jesus never became a part of the camp—the religious establishment—and neither did His early followers. Throughout history, even in what were considered bright times for Christianity, this only made the times harder for the truly faithful. The truly faithful were in the most jeopardy when the casual Christians, and the religious institutions, were flourishing.
We must not be deceived, as John wrote, “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (see 1 John 5:19). This is in every place—the whole world—and all of the time. As Christians, it is not smart to ever let our guard down, but we must never have our guard up to the degree that we are closed to people. This is risky, but it is necessary for those who follow Christ.
As the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, “Indeed, all who want to live in a godly way in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). We must not run from what might get us persecuted, but we should run to it. To follow our Lord, we can never protect ourselves to the degree that we close ourselves off to others, even those who can hurt us the most. To take up our crosses is to refuse to live in fear, even of death, but to put our faith in Him who has overcome death, even when it makes us the most vulnerable.
© 2025 Rick Joyner. All Rights Reserved.
