Praying in Persecution

But I say to you [Jesus said], love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Matthew 5:44 RSV

Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, has some commandments for us with regard to our attitude toward persecution. We are to:

1. Rejoice and be exceeding glad (Matthew 5:12)

2. Love our enemies (5:44)

3. Bless them that curse us (5:44)

4. Do good to them that hate us (5:44)

5. Pray for them that despitefully use us and persecute us (5:44)

I have a friend who lost his job, a fortune, his wife, and his home. But he tenaciously held to his faith—the only thing he had left. One day he stopped to watch some men doing stonework on a huge church. One of them was chiseling a triangular piece of stone.

“What are you going to do with that?” asked my friend.

The workman said, “See that little opening away up there near the spire? Well, I’m shaping this down here so it will fit up there.”

Tears filled my friend’s eyes as he walked away, for it seemed that God had spoken through the workman to explain the ordeal through which he was passing, “I’m shaping you down here so you’ll fit in up there.”

After you have “suffered a while, make you perfect . . . settle you,” echo the words from the Bible.

The persecuted for “righteousness’ sake” are happy because they are identified with Christ. The enmity of the world is tangible proof that we are on the right side, that we are identified with our blessed Lord. He said that our stand for Him would arouse the wrath of the world. “And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved” (Matthew 10:22).

Our Father and our God, You created me with Your own hands. And You know me better than I know myself. Shape me, Lord, so that I can fit into heaven some day. Knock off my rough edges. Chisel away my faults and failures. Refine me with fire to purify and make me valuable to You. In Christ. Amen.

Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).