R - REASONABLE
I - INSPIRED
S - STUPID
K - KINGDOM
Inspired, but not with results of personal victory, but rather results of personal sacrifice for a transcendent cause to achieve a long term victory (ie. martyrdom, asceticism).
Mark 8:35 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” - Jim Elliot
Many gave up their life for the faith:
Jesus was tortured and crucified
Stephen was stoned
James Zebedee was beheaded by sword
Antipas was slowly burned alive in a brazen bull
Matthew was killed by halberd
Andrew was crucified
Philip was scourged and crucified
Matthias was stoned then beheaded
Peter was crucified upside down
James brother of Jesus was thrown from temple pinnacle then clubbed.
Thaddeus (aka. Jude) was crucified
Bartholomew beaten at length then crucified.
Thomas was killed by spear
Luke was hanged
Paul spent years in prison and was beheaded
Simon was crucified
Polycarp was burned at the stake and when they didn’t kill him he was stabbed
John Huss was burned at the stake
William Tyndale was choked to death at the stake, then burned.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged
Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Pete Fleming and Roger Youderian were speared
Cassie Bernall and Rachel Joy Scott were shot
There are many who gave up their lives by denying the pleasures and treasures of this world to serve the kingdom cause: Hudson Taylor, William Carey, David Livingstone, Eric Liddell, Amy Carmichael, Elisabeth Elliot, Rachel Saint, Mother Teresa
Revelation 12:11-12 10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
“Now have come the salvation and the power
and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Messiah.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
11 They triumphed over him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death.
Hebrews 10:39 39 But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved.
