In 2005, Gene Veith wrote an amazing article in WORLD Magazine entitled Praying for Persecution. In it, he quotes a leader of a Chinese Christian house-church movement who asked that the world, “Stop praying for persecution in China to end.” The house-church leader then added, “It is through persecution that the church has grown.”
Now, in 2007, that growth is being made public to the world. An article today in Asia Times Online, Christianity Finds a Fulcrum in Asia, reports that “Ten thousand Chinese become Christians each day…and 200 million Chinese may comprise the world's largest concentration of Christians by mid-century.”
Ten thousand a day. Amazing. The article, of course, focuses more on the political and demographic changes that this growth brings with it ― including making China a “replacement” for an increasingly secularized and Islamicized Europe ― but the spiritual ramifications are breathtaking. (Democracy would be good, too, no doubt...)
Read this article. Thank God for the spread of his Word, and pray that many more people, of every nation, race, tribe and language, would be taken into the fold of the Good Shepherd.
And, if you’re brave, join that Chinese house-church leader, who said, “We, in fact, are praying that the American church might taste the same persecution so revival would come to the American church like we have seen in China.”
Soli Deo Gloria.
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O God, from whom all good proceeds: Grant that by your inspiration I may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guiding may do them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.
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2 comments:
Interesting.
Well, I think this is two-sided. "Lead us not into temptation" might have a place here. As Lutheran commentator Lenski explains, "We ask our Father to take providential charge of us and thus not bring us into temptation in the effective sense; hence to keep us out of some situations because our faith could not endure them (example, Peter) and in other situations so to strengthen us that we may be victorious." I wouldn't seek persecution as such, even though I believe in the abstract that it could be used to strengthen us. I would pray for endurance before I asked for any additional strain. To pray for persecution as such sounds a bit too much like taking Peter's place, who after pleading his loyalty couldn't even stand up to a slave. (And I recently remembered he was wearing a sword at the time!)
One of my favorite parts of Corey Ten Boom's book The Hiding Place is where her father tells her that a martyr's faith is only granted at the time it is needed. So none of us likely has it now.
That's a really good point, and an excellent observation from The Hiding Place, too.
I guess the assumption is -- and I know all about assumptions -- the assumption is that when the martyr's faith was needed, it would be granted.
Every prayer we pray prays that his will (not ours) be done. If the Lord doesn't think we're up to it, then in his wisdom he won't send the persectution. So maybe the prayer is, in effect, a prayer that we are strong enough to handle it by his grace.
Seeking persecution is probably not advisable, for the reckless reasons you cited. But asking that we may be found worthy of being persecuted, if it be the Lord's will, is in my mind a slightly different prayer.
Different still is the thought that the greater "masses" of the church in America be strengthened by seeing the example of the brave courageous few.
If I had my druthers, I'd be in the latter category. But maybe the Lord knows I'm really one of the former.
Food for thought.
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