If you believe in Jesus Christ and what He did and what He taught then you will believe in prayer. I am praying this morning with a heavier heart than usual because we sense the "disturbance in the force" as Obi Wan would put it. I am not being funny when I say that. Because we all came from God and we are made in His image, I believe there is a spiritual force-like connection between us and our fellow image-bearers and that is why we go with what Paul says that we are to mourn with those who mourn. That spiritual connection we have to each other brings us the heaviness we feel in regard to the Paris situation. Then the thing to do is to actually pray. Not just to read countless posts about it, watch the news cycle to death, talk about it at work with everyone who will listen and get stuck in the draining cesspool of despair about how bad the world is and the ensuing end time paranoia that can result. We need to pray.
What did Jesus pray? The one prayer that popped into my mind in regard to the pain in Paris was the prayer He prayed from the Cross. "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do"(Luke 23:34). While He was suffering at the hands of cruel men he prayed for them. He prayed for men whose minds where so dark that they tortured a good man who never did anything to deserve it. They actually thought they knew what they were doing and that they were right. While He was dying at their hands Jesus prayed for them and for their release from the evil they were unleashing. From the Cross He demonstrated for us what He taught in Matthew 5:44. He said, "But I say to you, love (that is unselfishly seek the best of higher good for) your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may (show yourselves to) be the children of Your Father in Heaven."
It's hard to be like Jesus. As Rich Mullins put it in a lyric, "It's hard to turn the other cheek, hard to bless when others curse you, it's hard to be a man of peace, oh its hard to be like Jesus."
My first prayer, Lord Jesus, is for the victims and their families. Please help them through this valley of the shadow of death. Send the right people into their lives to bring the healing. Then, Lord, I pray for the authorities in government and law and ask for help and wisdom and guidance for them. Then, Lord I pray for the ones who think that this kind of violence in good. Please may their future plans fail and may they have some revelation come to them so that they can come to You, Jesus and have their hearts changed like Your love changed Mosab Hassan Yousef.
In Your Mighty Name, Jesus.
AMEN
I know that because of the intense emotion and other factors that some folks reading this will disagree and argue. But your argument wouldn't be with me. It would be with Jesus.
You can watch the testimony of how the love of Jesus changed such a man. Mosab's story is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a9S5Q1dNYA
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