It's NOT about me!

The flesh almost always seems to seek acceptance from our peers. I am no different in that area. The thing we have to remember is that it is not about our own acceptance but the acceptance of Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We will always have critics and people who sit back and try to "grade" our service. If we allow ourselves to be discouraged by those people then we will allow Satan to defeat us. It takes courage to step out of our comfort zone and step up to serve Him. When we step up He tells us that we will face persecution (John 15:20) but we forget that that even other followers will be the ones doing the persecuting, often without even realizing they are doing it. I want to encourage our leaders to keep serving Him the best that we can and keep doing so for His glory. The only thing that matters is would He find my service to be a worthy sacrifice. To answer that we have to ask ourselves a few questions.

1)Are we working to advance the Kingdom of God?
2)Are we working to bring Him glory (not ourselves)?
3)Are we giving Him our BEST?
4)Is it our goal to please Him?
5)Are serving Him with Biblical doctrine?

If we can answer yes to all of these questions then the persecution should be easier to take. The truth is that NONE of us are worthy of what God offers us but we are all accepted by Him. If we truly believe that the rejection we will face won't matter.