…when affliction or trouble or persecution comes on account of the Word, at once he is caused to stumble [he is repelled and begins to distrust and desert Him Whom he ought to trust and obey] and he falls away. – Matthew 13:21, AMP

Few of us know what it is really like to face persecution. Many of us may have been snubbed or even verbally abused to some small degree. But to be beaten? To be threatened with murder? Most of us have no clue what that is like. But many of the players of the 1966 Texas Western College championship basketball team did.

The 2006 movie Glory Road recounts the events surrounding Texas Western’s meteoric rise to championship status. The TW Miner basketball team was the first all-black basketball team in NCAA history and the first to win the NCAA Division 1 national championship. Both in the movie and in real life, the players faced horrible persecution in a country still saturated with prejudice. As a result of the hatred they faced almost daily, the players (and their coach) wrestled with whether or not the game of basketball was worth all of the strife. When they realized, however, that what they were pursuing was not victory in basketball but victory over prejudice, they found the strength to overcome, and they found the will to win against all odds.

Christians throughout the centuries have suffered persecution at different times and in different places. Many around the globe face persecution today. Many more will encounter persecution in the future. When the persecution comes it will be terribly tempting to throw up our hands, to stop standing for what is right, and to seek comfort in anonimity. But when we realize that we are not fighting for ourselves but for the Creator of the universe, God will give us the strength to stand firm in the face of adversity.

Don’t fall away from the faith like the fair-weather Christians depicted in Matthew 13:21. Stand firm instead, and draw strength from the Christ who endured the worst persecution in history so that we might escape the worst punishment in eternity – life in the Lake of Fire.

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