“Congratulations on being selected to the Honor Society. Congratulations on your team’s victory. Congratulations on your graduation. Congratulations on your engagement. Congratulations on your wedding. Congratulations on the birth of your son. Congratulations on your promotion to vice president. Congratulations on your persecution.” 

Run that one by me again . . . Congratulations on persecution? Picture a Christian girl coming in
from school with her face wet with tears, saying, “I was ridiculed in front of the whole class because I’m
waiting for marriage. Everywhere I go they laugh at me.” A son comes in upset because the whole football team made fun of him when they found out he’d never tasted a beer. A husband sulks in from work having been denied a promotion because he refused to falsify expense reports. A wife’s family ridicules her because she’s “a part of that Campbellite church that thinks they’re the only ones going to heaven.” Don’t tell me you haven’t been there (cf. 2 Timothy 3:12).

As you looked into those eyes swelled with tears and hearts heavy with hurt, what did you say? “I’m
so sorry”? “I pity you”? With a wide smile you should have said, “Congratulations!” This is what Jesus would say. More specifically, He would reply, “Rejoice and be exceedingly glad . . . for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:12). How can we rejoice in persecution? By realizing what persecution indicates.