Vol.2 Issue 6 June 2015

 THE GENERAL PRAYER – PART VII

This month we continue with looking at the General Prayer from TLH pg. 23-24. The next section we pray reads as follows:

All who are in trouble, want, sickness, anguish of labor, peril of death, or any other adversity, especially those who are in suffering for Thy name’s and for Thy truth’s sake, comfort, O God, with Thy Holy Spirit, that they may receive and acknowledge their afflictions as the manifestation of Thy fatherly will. 

The Church now prays for those who are suffering in any sense of the word. In this petition we ought to comfort. How often do you find yourself among these descriptions of suffering? Trouble, want, sickness, anguish of labor, peril of death, or any other adversity. These cover the full range of human suffering, don’t they? Trouble is the first on the list because it is the umbrella under which the rest of the list reside. Want deals with a deficiency in life. You don’t have enough (or any) of something you think you need. Sickness strikes everyone at different times and at different stages of life. Sickness is a lack of health. Anguish of labor doesn’t mean that someone doesn’t like their job. Someone is in anguish of labor when their work seems too much for them or when they get no joy from their God-given vocations. Peril of death is obvious, anyone who is close to dying from want or sickness. Then we pray for those in any other adversity. The prayer, being General, is general enough to include all forms of human suffering, even that which we cannot see with our eyes.

The final suffering that is mentioned is “suffering for Thy name’s and for Thy truth’s sake.” We pray for those who are enduring the weight of

persecution. We hear of Christians in other parts of the world who are suffering for the Faith. We read headlines about ISIS beheading Christians and Boko Haram murdering Christians and selling their girls into slavery. We may think of Christians in China who must worship underground. These people are clearly suffering for the sake of Christ’s name and the Christian truth.

But there are different shades of persecution. Not all martyrs spill their blood. Many in our own country suffer for their Christian faith. Businesses close their doors because of their refusal to kotow to the demands of the homosexual agenda. College students must ‘cooperate to graduate’ from most institutions, checking their Christian faith at the door lest they fail to earn the approval of militant atheist professors. The persecution of the faithful is even happening from the pulpits in some denominations where the feminist agenda preaches a gender-sensitive deity whose chief attribute is tolerance. Those who do not confess these articles of the secular faith (immorality, atheism, and feminism) are mocked and maligned as backward, hillbilly, and bigoted. We live in an age which hates the Church. This age hates the church because it hates Christ, His Gospel, and His authority. This petition covers the gamut of all those who are suffering for the name and truth of Christ in any way, shape, or form.

Notice though what do are not praying for in this petition. We pray: “Comfort, O God, with Thy Holy Spirit, that they may receive and acknowledge their afflictions as the manifestation of Thy fatherly will.” We do NOT pray for the alleviation of the Christian’s suffering. We don’t ask the Lord to stop the suffering because that would be praying against His revealed will in Scripture. Yes. You read that

right. It is God’s will that His church suffer persecution. St. Paul tells young Timothy, “Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.”

Persecution and suffering are woven into the Christian life because persecution and suffering were part of the life of Christ our Lord during the days of His humiliation. The Christian lives under the cross, that is, under suffering and hardship, because Christ lived under suffering and hardship. His entire ministry is summarized not in the glory of the empty tomb but in the agony of the cross. The cross is His true glory for it is there that we see God most clearly revealed.

So it is with Christ’s Christians. St. Paul writes in several places that he rejoices in His sufferings (especially those for the sake of the Gospel). This isn’t because the Apostle enjoys pain. He knows that suffering for the sake of the Gospel is to suffer with Christ. And if we suffer with Christ we will also be vindicated like Christ. St. Paul writes, “For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ.” (2 Corinthians 1:5) Though we suffer, our consolation is that our Lord suffered and was vindicated by God the Father. St. Peter says it another way: “Rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.” (1 Peter 4:13)

Instead of praying for an end to suffering we pray for that the Spirit might comfort those suffering, “that that they may receive and acknowledge their afflictions as the manifestation of Thy fatherly will.” We pray that all who suffer might acknowledge that these afflictions, whatever they might be, are a manifestation, i.e. a visible sign, of

God’s fatherly will. Your sufferings, your persecutions are a sign that your Father in heaven is favorable to you. The author of Hebrews writes:

For whom the LORD loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. (Hebrews 12:6-8)

Everyone God claims as a son He chastens, not in wrath but in love. God is Father. Fathers discipline their sons out of love, for their benefit. This is most certainly true even when the earthly son does not see the immediate benefit of such chastening and discipline. Because they don’t see the benefit does not mean there aren’t any. So it is with our heavenly Father. He disciples all those He calls ‘Son’ in Holy Baptism. He does this by allowing trial, cross, suffering, and persecution.

When you find yourself in the midst of any kind of suffering give thanks to God for it! Rejoice in it! It is a certain sign that you are a Son of the Heavenly Father and that He is favorable and gracious to you. Do not become despondent and despairing over your cross, whatever it might be. You have the promises of Christ that whatever you suffer is the Father’s good and gracious will, just as it was the Father’s good and gracious will that His Only-Begotten Son suffer for the sins of the world. Remember: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? (Romans 8:35) None of these are able to do that, for we possess the love of God revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. We must suffer because Christ suffered, for through Baptism we are Sons of God.