Uncomfortable Words

Our typical prayers pray for deliverance to more comfortable places.  We pray for relief from pain, peace in place of brokenness, and a safer way.  There is nothing wrong with such petitions.  The Scripture teaches us to pray such intercessory words which is one of the reasons the Wesley Covenant Prayer jars our spirit as it calls us to pray, "Put me to suffering."  Suffering is not what we seek in our life and, yet, as the words of this prayer fall from our lips, we hear such a request to God.  If we do not take a deep breath and wonder what we are praying with these words, it is likely that we have become overcome with the dullness of rote repetition.    

The history of the Jesus movement going forth from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth is filled with men and women who did not count suffering for Christ too high a price to pay.  On August 4, 1964 a missionary named Burleigh Law became a martyr for Jesus while serving Him in the Belgian Congo.  Seventy years ago on January 8, Jim Elliot walked the road of suffering and death as he sought to take the gospel to a hostile and savage tribe of Ecuador.  While our journey for Christ may not take us to a martyr's death, there never has been a promise of a rose garden tour on a bright sunny day.  

Being put to suffering has a thousand looks.  As we ask God to help us comfort a soul fresh with grief, it will mean walking again within the pain of our own.  It is experienced in the heart of a pastor troubled by his willingness to defend his faith in Christ, but finding it harder to invite to Christ those who hear the defense.  There is suffering found in taking Jesus so seriously that others regard us as fanatics, or someone out of touch with reality.  Praying such a prayer may carry us into places filled with such intense suffering that our own bed of tranquility is never the same.  "Put me to suffering," we pray.  Really?