by Marilynn Chadwick
When we have a strong Christology, we pray as Jesus prayed and we serve as Jesus served. Prayer opens the door for our earthly assignments to the least and the lost. If we are praying as Jesus prayed and seeing the world through his eyes, we will naturally ask God to “break our heart for the very things that break his.”
This means we pray with a readiness for action. A well-developed Christology compels us to walk where Jesus walked and serve as Jesus served, all the while becoming conformed to his image (Rom 8:39). Jesus becomes our example for what “Spirit filled, and Spirit empowered ministry” ought to look like. Indwelled with his Holy Spirit, we follow in Jesus’s footsteps.
If we are praying as Jesus prayed, then “How do I pray?” becomes “What can I give?” and ultimately, “Where do I go?” We sense Christ’s burdens; we search for ways to take up his cross. We trust the Holy Spirit to guide us in specific prayer. Strategic action often follows when we listen to the voice of Christ. The doctrine of the Incarnation, God in human flesh, reminds us of God’s desire for intimacy with us.
We are changed as we meditate on the identity of Christ—Jesus as a real person. We see his Jewishness, his location in first-century Palestine. Sometimes referred to as the “scandal of particularity,” Jesus’s identity reminds us that God’s love is big enough to love humanity in very specific ways. God is with us and for us, and because he “reaches into our specificity,” our prayers will move us into concrete actions. We are challenged to follow Jesus in loving the vulnerable, the humble, the “least of these” (Mat 25:40).
After the events of 9/11, I was struck by my own lack of awareness of believers in vulnerable areas—more specifically, in the global persecuted church. One day, I was prompted to pray for the nation of Sudan after reading an article in our city’s paper. I learned that Sudanese Christians had been targeted for extermination by their own government—for decades. The genocide had slaughtered over two-million citizens and displaced more than twice that many. An excerpt from my journal dated October 11, 2001, reads:
Lord, I confess I have not travailed for your persecuted people worldwide.
My view has been so narrow. The great suffering in the Sudan is staggering.
Show me how to pray.
How could I get my arms around such a huge nation as the Sudan? I decided to pray for a random man and called him “Sudan Sam.” The Sudan now had a face. A door eventually opened for me to travel with a humanitarian coalition to deliver survival kits to women and children forced to flee their village near the Darfur region of Sudan. The suffering we encountered was unthinkable. Pastors told of the rape and torture of Christians; some had been crucified. Yet, for over two decades, the eyes of the world had been elsewhere.
...to be continued