This week we pray for
BELIEVERS IN PRISON
It is estimated that at any given time, several thousand believers in Christ are imprisoned in Muslim countries because of their determination to live for Christ as their Savior and Lord.
Most of them experience harsh and inhumane conditions. They are often given no food or access to legal help. The police beat them to dissuade them from following Christ and to extract information and confessions about other believers. Some die at the hands of the police.
PRAYER
O God, give our Christian brothers and sisters in prison grace in their severe trials. Give them strength to stand firm in their faith and stay loyal to you. Give them courage to resist Satan and his temptations. Deliver them from evil.
May they be comforted by thinking about Jesus “who endured such hostility against himself from sinners” (Hebrews 12:3).
Visit them, O Lord, in a special way. Manifest to them the love and compassion of Christ. Soothe their physical wounds and emotional hurts. Comfort their hearts, and help them forgive and love their enemies.
Come down and reveal yourself to them as you did with Daniel’s three friends in the fiery furnace. Assure them that their families are in your care. If it is your will, you can deliver them miraculously as you did with Peter. Yet if some will be put to death like John the Baptist and James, give them grace and strength to stand firm to the end.
Lord God, convict their tormentors. May every one of these tormentors, persecutors, and blasphemers turn to you as Saul of Tarsus did.
Help us, the ones who live in relative freedom, to remember those in prison as if we were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if we ourselves were suffering (Hebrews 13:3).
To you, the God of all comfort, we owe our real freedom and our eternal life. In you we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). Amen.
PROMISE
He will guard the footsteps of his loyal servants, while the wicked will be silenced in darkness (1 Samuel 2:9, REB).
2023 Praying for Muslims 