Paul’s prayer for the persecuted
by Julian Mann, TCW:
CHRISTIANS need the spiritual and moral strength for which the Apostle Paul prayed in the Prayer Book Epistle reading for today, whatever the political conditions of the nations in which they find themselves.
Paul, a prisoner for proclaiming Christian truth, was writing to the Christians in 1st Century Ephesus:
‘Wherefore I desire that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which is your glory.For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God (Ephesians 3v13-19 – King James Version).
Ephesus in Roman Asia was a challenging place in which to live as a Christian. Diana, the Roman goddess of hunting, worshipped by the pagan Greeks as Artemis, had an enormous temple dedicated to her in the city. The Acts of the Apostles describes how Paul’s preaching of the Christian message in Ephesus, where he was based from around AD 53 to 56, threatened the economic vested interests in the cult of Diana:
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