Anguish: extreme pain, distress, or anxiety Question? Do you know the Lord Jesus as your Saviour and Lord? If the answer is a sure Yes, may I ask, do you feel any anguish at all about someone dear to you who has turned away from God to go their own way, and shows no sign of repenting?
I was struck by something that the speaker at GBM day recently said. (I was watching online). In the course of his message, Ray Evans referred to how the apostle Paul, writing to the Roman church, moves from the joy and glory of Christians being ‘more than conquerors’ through Christ, in Romans ch 8, to sharing his ’great sorrow and unending anguish’ for his people – the people of Israel – because they mostly had rejected the good news of salvation in Jesus, their promised Messiah. It was a matter of ongoing anxiety for him.
Chapter 9 of Romans is deeply into the sovereignty of God and His choosing of His elect people before creation, and notes that ’not all who are descended from Israel are Israel’.
Yet Paul still agonises for his lost people and states clearly in chapter 10:1, ’my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.’ Now we should, of course, pray for the people of Israel today, that the Holy Spirit might yet work in their hearts to enlighten them.
But what about us? Quite a number of us in the Fellowship at Rehoboth have dear ones – family members, children, grandchildren, maybe close relatives who seem far from the Lord, or who at least show little concern. How do we view them? Has our spiritual burden for them waned as they’ve drifted away from what they were taught when young, perhaps in Sunday School. Are we inclined to reason, well that’s just how they are?
Paul had unceasing anguish in his heart for his people. Do we, do I, have that sort of anguish every day? Are they not heading for a lost eternity – our own dear ones? How much do we care? Can we share their names for prayer, so that the burden is not something we privately have to cope with? Paul knew what it was to be burdened for the needs of others, and actually asks the believers in the Galatian church to ‘Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ’. Gal 6:2
Do you have a burden for which, maybe you feel responsible somehow? Why not share it with another believer for prayer, and, indeed, pray together.
David the psalmist of Israel, was able to give thanks in Psalm 68: 19. He wrote: Praise be to the Lord, to God our Saviour, who daily bears our burdens.
He didn’t pen that just because it sounded good. He surely wrote from his experience of the Lord’s gracious help with the many burdens he’d experienced. May we take the anxiety, anguish even, for our lost loved ones to our Lord Jesus, the Burden Bearer, as we share together prayerfully.
Steve
Elder
November 2025
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