We now pass through turbulent times, politically, economically and socially with the whole world being engulfed in violence and terrorism and spiritual darkness and with our Church having a name but being dead. Nowadays, the people of God throughout the world may be concerned about their safety, following the terrorists’ attack on the WTC in USA and the acts of violence and terrorism in other parts of the world including India. In the electronic and print media, we come across daily gruesome accidents which are likened to “the destruction that lays waste at noonday” and dreaded diseases like “the perilous pestilence that walks in darkness”. We may be worried about our school-going children, about our dear ones working in different offices and factories, about our loved ones staying abroad or traveling by air or by road. But what the Word of God says? Prophet Hosea lamented, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge”!

The Word of God in Psalm 91 says that there is security for His people under His shadow. There is a secret place for God's people under His shadow. Our security lies in the secret place of the Most High, and not in the might of our nations. When I was a child, my parents and the Sunday School teachers persuaded me to memorize this entire Psalm. Without knowing the significance of this wonderful Psalm, I memorized it. Today, many of us are like that. Though many of us may recite this Psalm from memory, yet we hardly take God at His Word. We should claim and appropriate His promises.

Secondly, we hardly intercede for the members of His Body scattered all over the world, claiming His promises. We are all “members of His Body, of His flesh, and of His bones” (Eph.5:30). Dear child of God, do you have the mind of Christ to agonize for the members of His body who face afflictions? If we fail to intercede for the members of His Body, the devil would try to afflict His body.

Let us remember the model prayer taught by our Lord to His disciples. In that prayer, we find the word “we” and not “I”. Similarly, let us pray not only for our own needs or for the people of our own circle but also for the members of His body all over the world, claiming His promises of deliverance from the perilous pestilence that walks in darkness and the destruction that lays waste at noonday. Daily we ought to pray “Our loving Heavenly Father, deliver Thy people from the pestilence that walks in darkness and the destruction that lays waste at noonday and keep them under Thy shadow". The devil will never and cannot enter His shadow to afflict His people. May God make you an intercessor for the body of Christ!

by Job Anbalagan