Have Your Way In Every Heart

September 8

“Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually,” Genesis 6:5.

The degree of wickedness described in Genesis 6:5 is quite pervasive. We who function within our little church conclaves and live in our pleasant neighborhoods and work in well-regulated offices and study in orderly schools and shop in air-conditioned department stores have little concept of the depth of depravity to which many among our race have sunk.

If we can tolerate the news on any given night, we are scarcely touched by the level of violence some of our brothers in Christ are enduring because we are so steeped in mayhem in our ordinary entertainment viewing, that we can scarcely connect the dots from which emerge a picture of unadulterated evil being perpetrated in some parts of the world against followers of our Lord.

But God hears and God sees. Our Holy and Heavenly Father knows the wickedness that is being unleashed upon His people by hordes of demonic barbarians whose blood lust knows no limit. Perhaps the ruthless extermination of His people, as described in Revelation 20:4, has already begun.

And though we can grasp on a superficial level the great sacrifice that our brothers in Christ are making for their faith in the One who has come to “set the captives free,” Luke 4:18, our overriding complacency is palpable. Because it is thousands of miles away from us, because we are not personally touched by the atrocities our fellow believers are enduring, we avert our eyes and stop our ears to their suffering. But God hears, and God sees.

Not only does He see the horrors to which Christians are being subjected in some parts of the world but He also sees the thoughts and intents of our hearts—hearts that do not allow themselves to be touched by the atrocities being perpetrated against the people of God. And in our indifference, we are found to be as guilty as the ruthless barbarians.

Should we not rise up as one voice and cry out against this inhumanity that is being unleashed upon our brethren! Should we not demand that the greatest military power in the world should rain down retribution upon the perpetrators of such unadulterated evil so the guiltless would be rescued from their barbarity!

Or are our consciences “seared by a hot iron,” I Timothy 4:2 and we cannot accept that our silence gives assent to the cruelty!

Lord Jesus, forgive us! Lord Jesus keep us on our knees before You as we supplicate Your mercy for our brethren that you will deliver them out of the hand of the evil one. Help us to pray even for the demonic hordes that are cruelly butchering them—that they would see that their actions do not please the Almighty but that they reflect only the intent of “the one who comes to steal, kill and destroy,” John 10:10.

Let them fall on their faces in repentance before You that they who are enemies of the Gospel and destroyers of the Saints and despisers of the Savior will be turned around from the evil of their ways; that the darkness in them will be overcome by He who is Light; that the death in them will be swallowed up by He who is Life; that the hell to which they’re bound will be exchanged for the narrow path to Heaven (see Matthew 7:14) as they embrace the Savior with full and transformed hearts.