Fruit From the Darkness

Here are two posts, or excerpts I read one afternoon and copied for you because it meant a lot to me, and I feel sure it could help someone out there, too.

I will let the posts speak for themselves.

What If Your Reputation Is Unjustly Bad?

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• Article by John Piper
• Topic: Glorification / Resurrection of the Body

[Jesus] told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. (Luke 14:7–11)

"Jesus says it is better to be thought worse than you are, and then be publicly vindicated, than to be thought better than you are and then be publicly humiliated.
Yes, but what if you take the lowest seat and no one comes to invite you to the front? What if your reputation in this world is always worse among men than it is with God? What if your life is one continual false accusation (Matthew 5:11)? “We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered” (Psalm 44:22; Romans 8:36). “We have become like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things” (1 Corinthians 4:13).
This parable does not promise that people will always come through for you. They won’t. Some will think you worse than you are till the day you die."

"What this parable ultimately promises is that at the final wedding feast, Jesus himself will set things right. Your reputation will be vindicated. Truth will come out. The whole universe will know if your reputation was wrong.

So here’s the life-changing truth: It is better to be thought worse than you are now, and have the Lord set things right in the last day, than to be thought better than you are now, only to have Jesus put you in your place in the end."

"In other words, don’t care much about whether your family and friends and acquaintances and enemies know what you are really like. Be true, be real, be humble, and let the Lord settle the matter in the end. In that day, the price of taking the lower place will be seen to be very small."

http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/what-if-your-reputation-is-unjustly-bad

Here's a second excerpt.

"Try as they may, people can’t keep Jesus down. They can’t keep him buried. They may use physical force or academic scorn or media blackout or political harassment or religious caricature. For a season, they will think the tomb is finally sealed. But it never works. He breaks out."

"China may have been “closed” for forty years to Western missionaries, and it’s not because Jesus slipped and fell into the tomb. He stepped in. And when it was sealed over, he saved fifty million Chinese from inside — without Western missionaries. And when it was time, he pushed the stone away so we could see what he had done."

No One Takes His Life

"It’s not hard to figure out: He can break out because he wasn’t forced in. He lets himself be libeled and harassed and black-balled and scorned and shoved around and killed.

I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. (John 10:17–18)

No one can keep him down because no one ever knocked him down. He lay down when he was ready."

At Work in the Dark

"When it looks like he is buried for good, Jesus is doing something awesome in the dark."

 “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how” (Mark 4:26–27).

The world thinks Jesus is done for — out of the way. They think his word is buried for good in the dust of irrelevant antiquity.

But Jesus is at work in the dark places: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). He let himself be buried — “no one takes my life from me” — and he will come out in power when and where he pleases — “I have authority to take it up again.” 

And his hands will be full of fruit made in the dark.

from http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/can-t-keep-jesus-down