After watching closely the inflation situation and the incredible build-up of the super bubbles of housing, stocks, commodities and bonds coming together to form the perfect storm, JC’s Manifesto made an appeal, on the prompting of the Lord’s Spirit, in Dec 2021 for financial assistance to help certain churches to stock up basic necessities for 2022. All thanks to the Lord for convicting several friends to come forward to help. Also contributed to certain church and para church ministry for their year end Christmas effort to share the Good News.
Latest update (4 March 2022) :
We have helped a Kenya church to stock up basic necessities as well as enable them to do farming. The food inflation hardship became a reality in Kenya now.
Can
we pray imprecatory prayers like in the imprecatory psalms ?
Psalms 58 NLT
1 Justice—do you rulers know the meaning of the word?
Do you judge the people fairly? 2 No! You plot injustice in your hearts.
You spread violence throughout the land. 3 These wicked people are born sinners;
even from birth they have lied and gone their own way. 4 They spit venom like deadly snakes;
they are like cobras that refuse to listen, 5 ignoring the tunes of the snake charmers,
no matter how skillfully they play.
6 Break off their fangs, O God!
Smash the jaws of these lions, O Lord! 7 May they disappear like water into thirsty ground.
Make their weapons useless in their hands.[c] 8 May they be like snails that dissolve into slime,
like a stillborn child who will never see the sun. 9 God will sweep them away, both young and old,
faster than a pot heats over burning thorns.
10 The godly will rejoice when they see injustice avenged.
They will wash their feet in the blood of the wicked. 11 Then at last everyone will say,
“There truly is a reward for those who live for God;
surely there is a God who judges justly here on earth.”
King
David prayed the most such psalms and there was apparently no rebuke from the
Lord. I believe the Lord will prefer us to be honest with our feelings
before Him than to feel bitter and harbour wrong thoughts. King David prayed
against God’s enemies and it is surely right to hate sin and oppression.
In Revelation, we do notice that the martyred saints plead for God’s quick
vengeance. Each time, we pray for our Lord to return quickly, we are
actually praying for Him to come quickly to judge and establish retributive
justice.
On
the other hand, our Lord Jesus exhorted us to love and pray for our enemies. Scripture
has exhorted us not to gloat over the misfortune of anyone and that will
include enemies. We are exhorted to pray and submit to the governing
authorities too. And we must not take
revenge into our own hands against anyone for vengeance belongs to the Lord. Will we then be violating the law of Christ
by praying imprecation against God’s enemies ?
Since
Scripture is inerrant and infallible, we must believe all exhortation to be
true. If so, there is an instance for
loving and praying for our enemies and also another to pray for God’s intervention
by praying imprecation, just like we are exhorted not to judge as in fault
finding (Matt 7:1) but we are also exhorted to judge serious sins in the church.
(1 Cor 5:9-13). The Lord hates
oppression of the people, especially His people. Even the manifesto of our Lord Jesus in Luke
4:18 includes relieving the oppressed. I
believe we can pray for the repentance of the oppressive rulers first and if
there is no repentance, we can pray for the Lord’s intervention to remove the
oppression. But we need to examine our motives first. Are we praying due to personal grudge or are
we distressed by the gross injustice and oppression of the people ?
King
David prayed for the counsel of a certain person for his son Absalom, who had
rebelled against him, to be turned into foolishness. (2 Sam 15:31)
For a start, we can surely pray for the wicked plans, platform, credibility of
evil and oppressive governing authorities to fail, or even to lose the approval
and trust of the people, and eventually their removal from power rather than
their demise through the Lord’s intervention.
