May 2013
Dear praying friend,
Recently someone said to me, “God’s job description is to create and to control! Our job is simply to trust and obey!” That hit me when I was reading the awareness page of this month’s prayer calendar about child brides. Everything in me wanted to create systems to punish and control the perpetrators! But that’s not my job. It’s God’s! He has the power to rescue, to save and to restore broken bodies, broken hearts and lives. I can only TRUST and OBEY – trust God to deliver the weak and innocent. Trust that he hears my prayers and their muted cries. And then I obey; obey his command to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves” (Proverbs 31:8). We are to seek biblical justice through prayer for these girls who have no influence, no power, no options … only helplessness. Is it easy? No, it is not.
Adoniram Judson, the great missionary, wrote: “Let me beg you, not to rest contented with the commonplace religion that is so prevalent.” And Edwina Patterson commented in her article “No Prayer-No Power”: “Commonplace religion is a religion that’s convenient. It’s easy. It’s tolerant. It’s non-threatening. It leaves us in our comfort zone. There is no self-denial in it, no cross bearing, no prayers coming from the innermost depths of the heart, and there is no power!”
This resonates deeply in my heart, especially facing the call to trust and obey when we pray for the “50 million young teens or preteens whose innocence is being sacrificed to arranged marriages” (UNFPA). Just imagine being forced to marry a stranger. Imagine being a child bride and a year later a child mother locked in this strange man’s house working as a slave. Imagine spending your life tied up by ignorance and poverty because no one sent you to school. Imagine being silent – because you have to be and will perpetually be treated as a minor.
God is not unjust. He is a God of justice. Let’s pray that his kingdom will come in the lives of these vulnerable young women, and that their governments, their parents and the authorities will protect their rights. But most of all, pray that Jesus himself will reach out and save and heal them.
In his grip of grace,
Marli Spieker
Global Ministry Director/Founder
Project Hannah
TWR