In Our Times of Trouble

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death is working in us, but life in you.
2 Corinthians 4: 7-12




Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Father of Comfort, God of Mercy:
We come together seeking You in prayer now because we are confronted by difficult, challenging and heartbreaking things and we want your help. In the lives of our friends and our family members and ourselves, we want the goodness which we believe is the stuff of your imminent and coming kingdom to prevail. We also want your comfort, solace and assurance.

We do not ask You to remove what exists by Your permission; for as Paul has written in the first letter to the Corinthians “… we know in part and we prophesy in part.” (1 Corinthians 13:9). We remember that You “…answered Job out of the whirlwind and said…’Would you indeed annul My judgment? Would You condemn me that you may be justified?'” (Job 40:6-8) So we resist the temptation to point out to you what we believe you must want and refuse to claim authority to command You to do it.

We ask that You make our hearts tender toward the people we know who are troubled, who are dying physically, and who are sick-perhaps unto death-spiritually. We ask that You do not let us put aside their troubles tomorrow or the next day, nor let their trouble overwhelm our energy to remain engaged with them and struggle with them. We ask that You do not let them defeat our confidence, overwhelm our joy or take away our rest in You.

We know that while Your Spirit has brought us face to face with these situations and invited us into to them to bear with our acquaintances and family members their pain, (as Paul wrote in Galatians 6:2 “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”), Your ultimate goal is their restoration and perfection with us. As the writer of Hebrews said, “And all these people of faith, having obtained a good testimony through faith, DID NOT receive the promise, God having something better for us that they should not be made perfect apart from us.” (Hebrews 11:39-40).

Enable us to suffer with them, bear with them, and endure with them that Your grace is, and will be ever more, palpable and that we might have with them joy in their eventual restoration.

We acknowledge that we and our words of faith are not their salvation, deliverance or comfort: You are. Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth, “For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves (phew) we are your bond servants for Jesus’ sake.” 2nd Corinthians 4: 5

We know that these things that trouble us did not just happen to us and those that we love, but that You have sent us to live in them, “always carrying around in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death is working in us, but life in them…” 2nd Corinthians 4:10-12.

Oh, Padre de Nuestro Senor Jesu Christo, free and embolden us to “… lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us looking unto Jesus, the author AND finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12: 1b-2)