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WINNING WITH THE WORD “Winning with the Word” is a weekly blog that will help you to be a winner in life by applying God’s principles for living the abundant life as found in the Bible, God’s manual for life. AN INVITATION TO YOU: To subscribe to this blog, click here.  To subscribe to this podcast, click here. If this blog and podcast have blessed you, please encourage your family and friends to subscribe as well. Thank you! Be sure to check out our Featured Book of the Week at the end of this post. ______________________________________ Do you prefer listening instead of reading? Then click below to listen to today's blog post on podcast. https://media.blubrry.com/winning_with_the_word/content.blubrry.com/winning_with_the_word/WWW_03_08_21_The_Privilege_of_Persecution.mp3 ______________________________________ Hello and Happy Day! This is Dr. MaryAnn Diorio, novelist and life coach, welcoming you to another episode of Winning with the Word. Today is March 8, 2021, and this is Episode #5 of Series 2021. This episode is titled "The Privilege of Persecution." _______________________________ You may find the title of this week's message a bit disconcerting, if not downright frightening. If so, I hear you! But the truth is that the Body of Christ here in the United States will undergo persecution. Indeed, it has already begun. Thus far, it has been only "soft persecution" in the form of censorship, reviling, mocking, and ridicule. But in the days ahead, we will witness more severe persecution, as is happening to our brothers and sisters in countries like China, Iran, and, most recently, Myanmar.  Given the degeneration that has been occurring in America over the last five decades, it will not be long before the same type of persecution hits our shores in full force. Why we in the American Church think that we are immune to persecution is a mystery to me, especially since we have opened the doors to persecution because we have not been salt and light in our nation. We have allowed the forces of darkness to take territory that we, the Church, should have protected. Instead of overcoming the world, we have become like the world. We have embraced ideologies blatantly contrary to the Word of God, and yet, we expect God to bless us. This is deception at its most basic level. Let the truth be told: the buck stops with the Church. Always! When the Church fails in its duty to stand up for righteousness, corruption always follows. As goes the Church, so goes the Culture. Back in November, a prophetic word came forth in my church. The message was, "Prepare for the fire of persecution!"  The same prophetic message has come forth from other places in the Body of Christ. It is a warning from the Lord to get ourselves ready to face severe persecution for following Him. As goes the Church, so goes the Culture. How do we do that? Here are some steps we can take to ensure that when full-blown persecution comes to Christ-followers here in the United States, we will be able to stand against it: 1. Cultivate your relationship with Jesus Christ. Be intentional about doing so. Cultivating a relationship with Jesus Christ means spending time in His Presence, worshipping Him, communing with Him, studying His Word.  2. Obey what the Holy Spirit tells you to do. Hearing the Word without obeying it leads to deception. James 1: 22 makes this clear: "Be doers of the word, and not hearers only. Otherwise, you are deceiving yourselves." 3. Pray continually. Prayer is an ongoing conversation with God. It is the means by which we remain in contact with the Lord, the means by which we abide in Him. When we commune with God throughout the day, we receive a continual supply of all that we need to remain strong in the face of persecution. Persecution is not a pleasant topic, but it is a topic we must address and a situation we must confront. We often quote Philippians 3: 10,