It's a beautiful thing to God when a Christian does battle with pain.
When he faces threats, punishments, and tortures by mocking death and treading underfoot the horror of the executioner; when he raises up his freedom in Jesus Christ as a standard before kings and princes; when he yields to God alone and, triumphant and victorious, he tramples upon the very man who has pronounced sentence upon him.
God finds all these things beautiful.
~Minucius Felix,The Octavius 37, A.D. 160 - 230
Christian martyrs are our mighty warriors
Christians are not physically violent people. Our kingdom is from Heaven (John 18:36), and our warfare is with "principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of THIS WORLD, and spiritual wickedness in the heavens" (Eph. 6:12).
This does not mean our weapons are not real. Our weapons are real, and they overthrow the world.
Martyrdom was the Christian's primary method of warfare, and stories of Christian martyrs were met not with mourning, but with TRIUMPH.
The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow. The blood of Christians IS SEED.(Tertullian, Apology 50, c. A.D. 200)
Some Tertullian Martyrs thoughts...
... In the first place, then, O blessed, 'do not grieve the Holy Spirit who has entered prison with you. For, if He had not accompanied you there in your present trial, you would not be there today. See to it, therefore, that He remain with you there and so lead you out of that place to the Lord.
Indeed, the prison is the Devil's house too, where he keeps his household. But you have come to the prison for the very purpose of trampling upon him right in his own house. For you have engaged him in battle already outside the prison and trampled him underfoot... (Tertullian's letter To The Martyrs, Chapter 1)
