Whispering our prayers

“It’s after midnight. The two youngest children are sleeping. You sneak out, dig up your Bible and bring it back inside. The curtains are pulled and very, very softly do you read to your wife and 16-year-old son. You’ve only recently shared the gospel with him. Now he’s old enough and wise enough not to accidentally betray you. Of course, he didn’t understand the gospel at first, but you’re teaching him. You’ve been praying for years that he’d be ready.”

“You read the Bible in the dark, you pray, the words are hardly audible. Do you sing in whispers? When you’re in a bold mood.”

“The Secret and Surprising Ways Christians Pray in North Korea” (from Open Doors, Secret and Surprising October 25, 2018)

Our fellowship has observed the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (IDOPPC) for over twenty years. While several advocacy groups like Open Doors (OD) and The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) provide inserts, power points and video material to help a pastor facilitate this gathering, the main thing is that Christians here, who are free to gather and pray and worship to their heart's content without any fear of reprisal by either their neighbors or local government officials take time to pray for their brothers and sisters in Christ in other parts of the globe who persist in Christian faith despite it being culturally unpopular, illegal and, in some places, downright dangerous.

In this year's observance I had Olivia, a sixth grader, begin our time of prayer by reading the story of Peter's incarceration found in Acts 12. Herod, feeling the approval of his subjects for beheading James, brother of John and apostle of Jesus, has Peter arrested. His plan is to do him in the next day. Meanwhile, fearing for Peter's life, the "church prayed strenuously" (12:6, The Message). God answered their concerted prayers in a remarkable way: he sent an angel to break Peter out of Herod's prison. Though they had prayed for just this very thing, it took a while before they could believe their eyes when Peter stood in the middle of their gathering. The point for all of us is that we need to labor in prayer for those imprisoned on behalf of Jesus. Frankly, a lot of us while good at laboring aren't very good at laboring in prayer.

Ji Hyeon A, a North Korean defector, was forced to have an abortion
without anesthesia because of her faith prior to her defection

We then watched two short videos about the life of the faithful in North Korea. Given it's reputation, it should not be a surprise to us to learn that life is extremely challenging for believers there. To confess Christ as Lord is literally to risk life imprisonment at a labor camp or be killed by a North Korean hit squad. As a segue to our time of intercession I had LeAnne, one of our young moms, read Jesus' words found in John 15. On the night that he himself was betrayed by a dear friend he grimly reminded the disciples, "If you find the godless world is hating you, remember it got its start hating me. If you lived on the world’s terms, the world would love you as one of its own. But since I picked you to live on God’s terms and no longer on the world’s terms, the world is going to hate you"  (vv. 18-19). Jesus didn't want us to be disillusioned when the things that happened to him happened to us. Through the centuries and up to the present day Christians have suffered economic deprivation, incarceration, torture and death on account of the faith. But if these things happened to our Shepherd without shame, it would be naive of any of us to think we would receive better treatment simply because we live in a modern world.

North Korea is physically and spiritually in darkness

At Refuge, we do our Sunday-morning praying in a few different ways. Every Sunday the altar is open and people are encouraged to come forward during the course of worship and, if they are able, kneel to receive prayer. At least half of the Sundays in a given year we practice “open mic”-praying. As worship is concluding there is a mic on the floor where people are encouraged – and at times literally “volunteered” - to come to the mic and pray for one of the individuals or ministries listed on a prayer insert in our bulletin. But on the rest of the Sundays we break into “prayer circles”, groups of 5-7 people who are then encouraged to spend time praying for each other. (Honestly, if I put the matter to a vote, the prayer circle format would win every time against the open mic one such is the fear that people have of speaking publicly, even among friends.)

At this year's IDOPPC gathering, having listened to the Scriptures

and having watched the testimonials of a few Christians who have endured persecution in North Korea we were ready to begin interceding for them. I asked them to break into prayer circles and with the help of an insert provided by VOM spend time praying for the faithful but to do so while whispering. As a rule we are not shouters here despite the fact that a good many of us consider ourselves Pentecostals. Even at our most jubilant we keep things to a dull roar. But in honor of those who have to whisper their prayers regularly for their own safety, we spent about twenty minutes whispering ours. Speaking for myself and a few others there was something emotionally moving as I listened to the corporate murmuring of our fellowship praying concertedly for those we will never meet this side of eternity.

While I prayed in our prayer circle Daniel 2 came to mind. Nebuchadnezzar, sitting on his throne in Babylon, is troubled by a dream that both terrifies and perplexes him. Unable to make heads or tails of it he summons his wise men and demands they not only they interpret his dream but tell him what he saw (an impossible act). While whining with proper court decorum just how impossible a thing their sovereign has just commanded, a young Hebrew man and one of the exiles from Jerusalem is brought before him and incredibly tells Nebuchadnezzar just what he's asking for to a T.

The king, Daniel states matter-of-factly, saw a towering statue of a man made up of all kinds of alloys but ultimately as tall and impressive as it was in one moment it was destroyed completely.

“While you were looking at this statue, a stone cut out of a mountain by an invisible hand hit the statue, smashing its iron-ceramic feet. Then the whole thing fell to pieces—iron, tile, bronze, silver, and gold, smashed to bits. It was like scraps of old newspapers in a vacant lot in a hot dry summer, blown every which way by the wind, scattered to oblivion. But the stone that hit the statue became a huge mountain, dominating the horizon.” (vv. 34-35, Msg).

As Daniel continues with the interpretation he informs the king that every different part of the statue is a kingdom of the world that becomes increasingly more brittle in its consistency as it descends to the toes.

“But throughout the history of these kingdoms, the God of heaven

will be building a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will this kingdom ever fall under the domination of another. In the end it will crush the other kingdoms and finish them off and come through it all standing strong and eternal. It will be like the stone cut from the mountain by the invisible hand that crushed the iron, the bronze, the ceramic, the silver, and the gold. The great God has let the king know what will happen in the years to come.” (vv. 44-45)

The present ruling powers – powers like China, North Korea, Iran, and other places where Christians must whisper their prayers lest they be found out – as absolute as they seem today in their dominance will one day be blown away. That thought helped me to whisper a little louder my “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.”

We wrapped up our time of whispering prayer by singing softly Chris Tomlin's song How Great Is Our God. There is something powerful when we quietly affirm together that whatever king or dictator or world leader would like to believe, his little kingdom is going to be ultimately replaced - crushed, really - by God's kingdom  which is coming in its fullness at the end of days.

To lead us back into worship, I had Olivia's older sister, Emily, a freshman in high school, read to us the story of Paul and Silas' imprisonment in Philippi as found in Acts 16. Despite being locked up for no good reason, despite being black and blue from the beating they had received, at midnight they chose to sing a "robust" hymn to God. A "robust" hymn is a hymn sung with gusto (which, admittedly, is not our strong suit either). But we must, as Paula, Olivia and Emily's mother, reminded all of us, because we can. 

Admittedly, if we personally knew some of those folks the intensity of our prayers would be greater. But there's the rub. While going about their daily lives and seeking to share the gospel with their friends and neighbors, they have to do so subtly and with great care. But God hears our whispers as much as our shouts and I have to believe that what we whispered here in our sanctuary a week or so ago, God heard loud and clear in this throne room and dispatched his angels to do comfort and empower those who continue to remain faithful to him.