The Promise That Wasn’t a Rescue

When we are under pressure, we want God to say, I’m about to get you out of this. Sometimes he does. But listen to what Jesus actually said to the church at Smyrna, a church that was poor and pushed around.

“Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried.” He didn’t promise the prison wouldn’t come. He told them ahead of time that it would.

Then he gave them something better than an escape: “be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” Jesus didn’t offer them a way around the trial. He offered himself in it, and a crown at the end of it.

That can sound like hard news. It is also freeing. You don’t have to read every hard thing as a sign that God has left. He told his people they would suffer, and he told them not to fear it. If you are in something you can’t get out of, he hasn’t gone anywhere. Be faithful. The crown is real.