I Confess That I’m Praying for God to Bless ISIS. No Really, I Am.

That statement may seem odd to read coming from a Christian pastor.  Stranger still coming from someone who has always, always, supported the men and women of our armed forces.  But it is absolutely true.  I am sincerely praying for God’s blessing to be granted to those who are a part of this current malevolent threat to their countrymen and neighboring states; ISIS.

It’s not that I in any way feel that they are just, or right, or validated in their vicious quest for power and domination.  I in no way condone or encourage the continued oppression and murder that they commit in the name of advancing a caliphate.  I abhor it.  I feel knots begin to form in my stomach when I hear about the violence and hatred perpetuated.  I ache for their advance to be stopped!  I know that it will require brave souls willing to lay down their lives for their brothers and sisters in humanity to help bring this to an end.  The atrocities that have been committed, against both Christians and Muslims, by this regime represent the basest and most vile incarnation of evil imaginable to me.  And still, I pray that God bestows blessing.

Why?  Because it is the best way I know to change their actions.

In Matthew 5: 43-45 Jesus gives these directions to His followers: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer explains it this way in The Cost of Discipleship, 

“’Bless them that persecute you.' If our enemy cannot put up with us any longer and takes to cursing us, our immediate reaction must be to lift up our hands and bless him. Our enemies are the blessed of the Lord. Their curse can do us no harm. May their poverty be enriched with all the riches of God, with the blessing of Him whom they seek to oppose in vain.  We are ready to endure their curses so long as they rebound to their blessing.”

Only God can irrigate a heart parched and hardened by hatred and fear so richly, that it actually becomes mold-able clay again.  Only Christ’s Mercy can convince a self-righteous and delusional heart of the vile truth of its oppressive and violent intent and action, and then change it.  Only the Spirit’s conviction can expose the guilt of a soul while simultaneously singing the siren invitation of forgiveness in Grace. 

You see, the blessing of the Lord is both a convicting and liberating power.  It can change a Prince of Egypt into a deliverer of their slaves from captivity.  The Grace God offers through Christ has the dominion to transform a shaky, quirky, and ADHD fisherman into a Rock strong enough to build a church on… and to make a murderous persecutor of a fledgling “Jesus Movement” into an Apostle who would help to ensure that that same movement would grow to be the Body of Christ for the world until His return.

So I pray. 

I pray for an end to the horrors committed by evil like the world hasn’t witnessed on this scale in decades. May it come through the fullness of Christ’s presence dawning in the lives and hearts of men and women who have never understood the full Divinity of one of their “Blessed prophets”.  I pray for alms giving by these individuals to move their own hearts; so they feel the compassion of Christ’s love for His beloved strangely warm and fill the voids of coldness left by a hopeless attempt to do enough to earn paradise.  I pray that the fullness of God so overwhelms and overflows in the awakening of human souls that Christ's Peace becomes a virus that cannot be contained; and that hatred, war and violence become its only casualties.  

I pray that God might forgive them for all that they do.  Sincerely.  I pray that in His forgiveness, they might come to understand the true nature and power of Christ to the end that His name is glorified and those He calls through Grace might respond to the invitation with repentance.

I pray for His glory to be known.  I pray for His kingdom to increase.  I pray for His people to be freed by captivity to His love.   May ISIS be richly blessed with all of these gifts.  May hearts of men and women in ISIS fall to Christ's Grace before they fall at the hands of the world’s armies if it's within God's will.  For that is the best way to ensure lasting change and enduring peace.

But then, I confess that I’ve always been an optimist; and a sucker for stories that witness to Redemption’s promise coming true.

Love in Christ always,

Chris