5 All day long they twist my words;
all their schemes are for my ruin.
6 They conspire, they lurk,
they watch my steps,
hoping to take my life.
7 Because of their wickedness do not let them escape;
in your anger, God, bring the nations down. Psalm 56:5-7

Every day I hear stories of intense persecution somewhere in the world. Two things to note about that.

First, because we live in a very informed media world, we are getting information from sources that were not available even a few years ago.

Secondly, with this new information we have a bigger responsibility to pray for our Brothers and Sisters abroad. We have the country names, sometimes even the groups responsible for persecuting, but we lack names of people undergoing persecution.

Occasionally, someone’s name will appear in the news, but for every person’s name in the news, there are hundreds if not thousands of others who will never make the news. So when you pray, pray for those you hear in the news as representative of those NOT in the news. They could be evangelists, pastors, pastor’s wives, entire churches, and even children. In fact, they are just like you and me, except they do not enjoy freedom like we do.

How to pray for the Persecuted Church? Barnabus Aid gives us a little instruction on this.