Sermon Transcript
Well, thanks, you guys. It’s encouraging. Every week that I come, I feel like my heart is encouraged. I hope the same for you. It feels like it’s a boost for us to be together on Sundays.
And I tell you, I need that kind of a boost. I have my share of down days, and oftentimes it’s just the result of, you know, physical exhaustion, emotional depletion. In fact, I can pretty much count on the fact that Mondays for me will be typically a down day. It follows a busy day. Like today.
Got up early this morning preaching a couple messages, guest lunch, and then the leadership community, 3 and a half hours together there. And so once you put all that together, by the end of the day I’m going to be spent and I’m probably in no condition to counsel you on Monday. If you want, you know, Monday counseling from me, you probably better should pick a different day than that. I’m just going to need to go home and be alone for about a week. You know, then that’s hopefully what’ll happen and I’ll recover.
But that’s kind of life, isn’t it? And whatever challenges we face, we along with those challenges face the problem of, you know, physical exhaustion or emotional depletion. But then there’s all the other unwanted stuff that comes into our lives, the trials, the hardship, the pain, the suffering, or just the annoying stuff. The annoying stuff that happens to us, that annoying phone call, why don’t they just go away, get us off the list, or whatever the annoying stuff is. Inevitably, trials in this life are just something that we’re gonna experience.
We wish that they were avoidable, you know, like nonexistent. I’m pretty sure you can relate to that, that you’d be happy if you never had another trial again, if you never had another health issue or family stress problem. Or the death of a loved one or a relationship meltdown or a diet challenge or a financial problem or car problem or computer problem, phone problem or career problem. Wouldn’t it be great? You get the idea.
On top of all of that, you know, on top of all that stuff that we face, it would just be so wonderful if we could just live in a world where everything was perfect, no sin, no evil, you know, heaven, heaven on earth. Wouldn’t that be great? And of course, that’s something that we hope for. We know that’s something that’s promised, that Jesus is going to return, and when he returns, things are going to change. It’s no longer going to be problems and trials and suffering and evil and sin and death and all of that stuff.
There’s going to be a day where it’s going to be no more crying and no more pain and no more suffering, and life’s going to be just like it was meant to be. Forever. Now, if we could have that right now, we’d be happy, wouldn’t we? Say yes, okay? Say yes.
Yeah, we would be happy. I identify with C.S. Lewis, who, when speaking about God and his work in this present world, he had this to say. C.S. Lewis had this to say about trials and pain and suffering.
He said, we want, in fact, not so much a Father in heaven as a grandfather in heaven whose plan for the universe was simply that that it might be truly said at the end of each day, a good time was had by all. Now doesn’t that sound like what we want? That God would be a grandfather? You know, now that I’m a grandfather, I kind of identify all the more with what C.S. Lewis is saying here, because it’s a grandfather’s delight and it’s a grandfather’s duty to ensure a good time is had by all.
Isn’t that what grandparents do? So, Grandpa, can I eat some ice cream? Grandpa’s answer, yes, of course, no problem. Can I go to the movies instead of, you know, doing my homework? Of course you can.
Yes, yes, that’s what I’m here for. Eat whenever you want to eat. Go to sleep whenever you want to go to sleep. Do whatever it is that you want to do. That’s great.
Well, we would like God to take that kind of approach, a grandfather’s approach rather than a father’s approach to child raising. But the fact is, is that God’s taken an approach right now that includes trials, And pain and suffering, they’re just part of our life. And that’s why as we get here to this, you know, Between Two Worlds study on 1 Peter, there’s included in this study matters of hardship and matters of trial and pain and all of that. And today we come to a section of Scripture that I want to invite you to turn there with me. It’s 1 Peter chapter 1 and verses 6 to 9.
Where Peter has to write to a group of people who are living in the midst of hardship, who are living in the midst of pain. And if you know the background, you know that they’ve lost their homes, that they are no longer living where they once lived. They are exiled. They’re aliens in foreign lands. Family members have died.
So, they’re in dangerous situations and Peter wants to encourage them. He wants to encourage them and so he writes these words in 1 Peter 1:6-9, in this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief and all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him, and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Now, if you were with us last week, you may remember— and I don’t take that for granted that you will remember— But you may remember that the previous passage that we focused on was all about hope.
It’s all about living in this world with living hope, and that living hope is possible for God’s children because we can hang on to the fact that through a new beginning, through a new beginning and a never-ending, we can live right now with living hope. Well, in addition to that, we can also be people who are rejoicing. Even in the midst of circumstances that are anything but, you know, perfect. So he says in verse 6, in this you greatly rejoice. And the question we want to ask there is, so what’s the this?
What is the this that I’m rejoicing in? Well, the this, as you go back to verse 5, that this is the revelation of Jesus, that Jesus is going to come back. And when Jesus comes back, it’s going to be in the last time, he says there. When Jesus returns, salvation is going to be revealed, salvation in all of its fullness. Jesus is going to save us from sin and darkness when he returns, and we’re going to have life evermore with him.
But until that day is revealed, for a little while, verse 6, for a little while, we’re going to suffer grief and all kinds of trials. Now, the people that he’s writing to absolutely knew that. I mean, that was just a part of the world that they were living in under Nero and the persecution and all the rest of that. But not just them, we as well, we’re going to be experiencing trials of a variety of kinds. You notice that?
Of all different kinds. Trials are just a part of life. But he gives some comfort even right here in Verse 6, a little bit of comfort is found in knowing that these trials only come for a little while. They’re just here for a little while. They’re not gonna last forever.
As a staff wife used to say, they come to pass. They come to pass. Now that’s something you can hang on to. This isn’t gonna go on forever. They’re here for a short time, and so we’re gonna be able to get past these trials at some point.
They’re not gonna last forever. They’re not gonna last forever. In fact, say that with me. My pain will not last forever. Say that.
My pain will not last forever. Say it one more time. My pain will not last forever. Do you believe that? Doesn’t that give you a little sense of relief?
Huh, you mean this isn’t always gonna be like this? No. It’s kinda like the people who are living in Phoenix. We last lived in Phoenix before we moved over here to the Bay Area, and of course we got to experience the summers in Phoenix, and if you’ve ever been there in the summer, you know that you’re wondering if you died and went to the wrong place. You know, it’s just like, no, this is not good.
Got to get out of here. You know, why would people ever want to live here? Well, most of the people that live there aren’t living there with the thought of, oh, it’s going to be like this all year round. We love it like this. No, that’s not it at all.
They are enduring the little while of trials. It’s just for a short season. So that’s the thought. You know, it’s just for a short season. Problem is, it’s not, you know, just the summer months, June, July, and August.
If you live there, you know, no, no, no, no, no. It is— it’s not June, July, and August. It’s like May, June, July, August, September, October, you know, at least. Like 6 months or more that you’re going through this. But still, while you’re going through this, the whole time you’re thinking about, oh, okay, we can get through this because the better season’s coming.
That’s the picture here. We know that it’s just for a little while, and just even living with that perspective can help us get through something that’s challenging, difficult, something we’d rather not be in. Maybe that’s how you feel about school right now. You know, oh, man, I hate school, or whatever your feelings are. But to be able to know it’s just for a season, it’s just for a little while.
School’s not going to be forever. And I know work’s difficult right now, but work’s not going to be forever. And I know that you have that little baby that wakes up in the middle of the night right now. Well, it’s not gonna always be that way. The baby’s gonna actually sleep through the night.
I know it’s a season, it’s terrible, it’s hard, but it’s not gonna be forever. And just knowing that it’s not gonna be forever can bring comfort. Well, that’s where Peter begins. This is just for a little while. Whatever trials we’re facing, it’s just for a little while.
We can find comfort in that. But then he goes on. And he says in verse 7, these trials have come so that your faith of greater worth than gold, which perishes, which perishes, excuse me, even though refined by fire, may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. And here Peter really gets into the heart of what he wants these people to hang on to. In fact, let me summarize for you verse 7, or just really the thought of these verses we’re looking at this morning, with 3 words, simply this.
This: trials prove faith. Trials prove faith. You say you’re a person of faith, you say that you want to walk by faith and not by sight, that you want your faith to grow, that you want to see God do the impossible through your life through faith. Well, Peter is saying expect trials. Now we would rather he wasn’t saying that, but he’s saying expect trials because trials prove faith.
Now, in what way do trials prove faith? Well, he points at 2 different ways. First of all, trials refine faith. Trials refine faith. You notice he says, these trials have come so that your faith, though tested by fire— and this word test is the word that gives across the concept of refining.
Trials refine faith like fire refines He even uses that image here of fire as it connects with gold that is refined. So, an ancient goldsmith, when a goldsmith wanted precious gold, he would then heat the gold with fire in a furnace or a fire in some way, and that heat would liquefy the gold, and any impurities that would be in the gold would rise to the surface. They would float to the surface of the gold. And then the goldsmith would skim those impurities off of the top of the surface of the gold. In fact, it was said that a goldsmith knew he had pure gold when he was able to look into the gold and see his image there.
And that’s the picture. God, through fire or through trials, wants to surface in our lives the impurities so that He Himself can be seen through us, so that Christ can be seen through us. Do you remember the story of Job and how Job, his faith was refined or it was tested by fire? This was a man of faith who God wanted to see him become a man of great faith. And in the process, Job said this, Job 23:10, but he knows the way that I take when he has tested me, or you could use there the word refined, When he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.
See, what Job knew was that there would be good that would come on the other end of these trials, that they would make him a better person, better than he was at that point in time. And so Job, knowing that proven gold or tested gold had immense worth, more worth than unrefined gold, he’s saying here that refined faith has has great worth, and that’s what Peter’s going after here, eternal dividends. He’s going after faith that has more value than temporal gold. James actually wrote about this, the book just previous to 1 Peter, where James 1:2-4, he writes, consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials. You say, are you kidding me?
I should consider it joy? He goes on and says, knowing that the testing— there it is again, the testing— the refinement of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. You’ve probably heard about people of great faith. Well, oftentimes if you get behind their story, you’re going to find out that they’ve gone through some pretty difficult circumstances in their life.
There have been things that have happened in their life that refined them, that surfaced impurities. Had I not gone through such and such, I would not be the person I am now. I just heard an interview this week with one of the basketball players here in our area, and he was talking about the trials that he’s gone through and how much better of a player he is now because he came through those trials. And that’s the picture that you see here. You see that Peter is painting a picture of how trials can refine us.
They can make us stronger. They can help us be more loving and more caring and more patient and more trusting.
And as we are changed, Jesus Christ is revealed in us even before his revealing comes. And Peter’s saying, you know, that’s a perspective that you can bring to your trials, something that can give you hope and encouragement in the midst of the trials that you’re faced with right now. Dr. Harry Ironside was a senior pastor at Memorial Church in Chicago, and a young pastor came to see him. And at one point in the conversation, this young pastor said to Dr. Ironside, he said, would you pray for me? Dr. Ironside said, sure, I’d be happy to do that.
How can I best pray for you? And the young pastor said, well, to be perfectly honest, I need more patience. I keep blowing my cork and it’s ruining my ministry. So Ironside said, okay, I’d be happy to pray with you about that. So they got down on their knees and Dr. Ironside began, oh Lord, please, please send this brother persecution.
Please send this brother problems. The young pastor who had heard Dr. Ironside was hard of hearing stopped Dr. Ironside and he said, you know, I’m not sure that you maybe heard what I was saying, that you got my request, but, you know, I didn’t want you to pray for persecution. I wanted you to pray for patience. I need patience, not persecution. And Dr. Ironside said, oh yeah, I understood.
I heard you. But persecution brings patience. That’s what the Scripture teaches us. Persecution brings patience. So, Lord, please send this pastor all kinds of problems, he continued his prayer.
Now, I’ve got to admit, I’ve never taken that approach when asked by others to pray about their patience. I mean, maybe if I did take that approach, it might change my counseling ministry and my mercy ministry and prayer ministry to others. Nobody would want to come and talk to me, you know, that sort of thing. But the fact is, and this is what Peter’s getting across here, is the fact is, is that trials Trials are the soil in which faith grows.
If we want to be people of faith who reveal the faith to others, trials are going to be a part of that process because trials transform us and they change us. It’s part of the work of salvation. You may not have even noticed this, but look at verse 9. Where he’s talking about the trials that they’re going through, and he says, for you are receiving— as you’re going through these trials— for you are receiving the goal of your faith. And what’s the goal of our faith?
I mean, ultimately, it’s the salvation, he says, of your souls. Do you remember how Jesus came and he said, you know, I came that you might have life and that you might have it abundantly? That’s what he wants for his followers. He wants us to experience The abundant life. But could it be that the abundant life that we want and the abundant life that God wants for us, could it be that they’re not one and the same?
And yet they should be? That they don’t line up, that we see the abundant life different than God sees the abundant life, that when we see the abundant life, we’re talking about stuff, worldly stuff, you know, more stuff. But the abundant life that God has in mind for us is an abundance of love, an abundance of joy, an abundance of peace, an abundance of patience, an abundance of contentment, an abundance of worship, and an abundance of purity, and an abundance of truth, and an abundance of mercy, and an abundance of humility, that kind of thing. And that progress in those areas is the fruit of a saved And that’s what really God’s after. He’s after saving our souls.
Let me say this differently. God is more interested, as it’s been said, God is more interested in our character than He is in our immediate comfort.
He’s more interested in making us holy than He is in making us happy. He’s more interested in preparing us for eternity than He is in giving us now what our flesh craves. Charles Spurgeon said it this way, a little faith will take your soul to heaven, but great faith will bring heaven to your soul.
And I think that’s what Peter’s getting at. He’s getting at the development of faith, and faith develops as faith is refined by trials. If we will by faith receive, the trials that have come our way as a gift from God.
So trials refine faith. They can make us better people. They can prepare us for Jesus’ revelation. But then secondly, he says trials reveal faith. They reveal faith.
They show you and other people that you have genuine faith, that we have genuine faith. So he says in 1 Peter 1:7, these trials have come so that your faith may be proved— what? Genuine. So that your faith may be proved genuine and then may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Now, you’ve heard this before and you know this: hardship has a way of revealing what we really are.
Find out what we really are in the midst of hardship. You know, I used to think I was a very patient person until we had children. Then I found out I don’t have much patience. Hardship just has a way of revealing who you truly are. You’ve heard it said before, if you want to know what somebody is like, bump them and see what spills out.
Well, trials or hardship reveal whether our faith is genuine or not. And if we have genuine faith, even in the midst of trials, it will result in— look at— praise and glory and honor, praise and glory and honor to the Jesus who’s ultimately going to be revealed. And these— excuse me— these trials that we’re experiencing right now hopefully will ultimately lead to when Jesus comes to a praise and glory and honor from us to him. He goes though farther than that to say that genuine faith is going to be not only revealed then, but it’s ultimately going to be revealed right now. Verse 8, he says, though you’ve not seen him.
And these are people like us. So they had not actually had a one-on-one kind of experience with Jesus. They came after Jesus. They came to faith after Jesus. So they didn’t get to interact with him.
They didn’t get the weight of what it would have been like to believe if Jesus was talking to you and all of that. So he says, though you’ve not seen him, in spite of the fact, like us, we’ve not seen Jesus, Peter says, you love him. And even though you don’t see him now, you believe in him, and you’re filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy. What a picture that is. They didn’t just, you know, know about him and there was no connection from Jesus to them.
There was a vital connection in such a way that even in the midst of hardships, Even in the midst of hardships, they were manifesting love for the Lord. This is agape love, by the way. It’s sacrificial love. That’s something that usually costs a person something, and in this case, they didn’t have their homes any longer.
Loved ones were dying. They were not living in their land. Yet even still, they loved the Lord. They believed in the Lord. Their belief in no way was lessening.
Because of the trials that they were going through. For them, that means that salvation was more than just, you know, a mental belief in Jesus. They really were connected to Jesus through their heart, which resulted in their willingness to follow Jesus and obey him and please and surrender to him, even when it made no sense. You’ve been down that road where you didn’t understand, why is this happening to me right now? You know, what’s going on?
I don’t get this, God. Can I get kind of an explanation? And yet you found through that that you could still hold on to belief, kind of like Job-like belief. So what do we know about Job? Job lost everything.
There was a point there in Job’s life where his body was just painful sores. It was just one sore after another from head to toe. And in the midst of that, we’re told in Job 2:8, then Job took a piece of broken pottery and he scraped himself with it. As he sat among the ashes. I mean, just imagine this awful picture.
The guy’s in pain, he’s scraping off these sores, and his wife said to him, are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die. And he replied, you are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God and not trouble? That’s amazing.
Shall we accept good from God and not trouble? In all of this Job did not sin in what he said. In other words, he didn’t grow weak in faith. He continued to believe even in the midst of his pain. And that’s what was going on evidently with these people that Peter was writing to.
They were continuing to love the Lord. They’re continuing in spite of their trials to believe in the Lord. And then he adds joy, and they were experiencing inexpressible and glorious joy. I mean, how can that be possible? Well, the only way that could be possible is through the work of God in us.
This is supernatural result where even in the midst of trial, there’s this glorious joy, there’s this supernatural joy, joy connected to the fact that we know God’s in control and he’s working and I can rejoice in that.
C.S. Lewis in 1961 wrote the book A Grief Observed. And in this book, Lewis talks about his emotional journey following his wife’s death, his wife Helen. She died of cancer 3 years after they were married. 3 years after they were married.
And in the aftermath of Helen’s death, Lewis’ faith changed. He wrote about that. And at one point he said this with regard to pain and grief. He said, God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already.
It was I who didn’t.
This isn’t for God, this is for me. I think Peter’s getting at that, isn’t he, when he’s talking about if our faith is genuine, it’s going to be proven when Jesus comes with praise and worship and honor of the Lord. But right now, it’s going to be proven through our continuing love of the Lord and our continuing belief in the Lord and the joy that the Lord is giving us.
Trials reveal genuine faith. They show us, as Lewis is saying, they show us what’s going on inside with our faith. And by the way, genuine faith doesn’t lose it in the midst of trials. It doesn’t walk away from loving the Lord. It doesn’t walk away from believing in the Lord.
You may remember the parable Jesus told about the 4 soils and how these soils are different responses to life. And one of the soils that he talked about was the rocky soil, the hard soil. And Jesus said in Matthew 13:20-21, the one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time, and when trouble or persecution comes because of the word, because of the testimony that we have for the Lord in the world, when it comes, just like it came for the people that Peter was writing to, when it comes, he quickly falls away. He’s saying this particular individual who is a proclaimer, somebody who proclaims faith, needs to look again at his faith because it could be that the faith that he’s been hanging on to may be kind of a shirttail faith.
You know, it’s my parents’ faith or my friend’s faith. I’m hanging on to that. It’s my childhood faith. Or maybe it’s a faith that came because you were at a summer camp and you had a great experience. Or maybe it’s a choir tour faith, or, you know, faith that you came to because you needed God to get you a job, and you said, Lord, if you’ll get me a job, then I’m gonna believe in you and I’m gonna be one of your followers.
Or maybe it was just a faith of desperation, but in it all, it could have just been a self-faith. A selfish faith, a disingenuous faith, not real faith, just short-lived faith. And in that case, the trials then would reveal whether or not there is genuine faith. In fact, one of the best things that could happen in the midst of the trials is that it would come to confirm our faith. And if the trials don’t confirm our faith, I mean, if we walk away from loving God in the midst of trials and we no longer believe in the Lord in the midst of trials, and we’re not experiencing the joy of the Lord in the midst of trials, we gotta ask ourselves, what’s going on with my faith?
Is it genuine faith, or do I need to come back again and say, really, do I have a relationship with the God that I say I have a relationship with or not? You know, he began this whole thing, 1 Peter 1:6, he began this whole thing with the thought that trials come if necessary. In fact, if you have the NASB translation, Verse 6 uses the words, if necessary, which is to say God is working through these trials and He has something that He wants to do that’s necessary through these trials.
It could be the death of a loved one that ultimately brings people to faith in Jesus Christ. C.S. Lewis once said, in the problem of pain. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. Shouts in our pain.
Isn’t that true? Sometimes the only way God can get our attention is through trials that bring us to our knees.
So Peter is saying to this group of people, And by what he’s saying, you know, know what he’s not saying. I mean, wouldn’t you— if you were writing to a group of people that are in pain, wouldn’t you just be able to say, you know, don’t worry about it, everything’s going to be okay? He’s not able to say that. He’s saying, The trials are going to be there, and they come with a purpose. The purpose here is that they’re proving your faith.
They are proving your faith by refining your faith and by revealing your faith, that you might become the people that God wants you to be.
Howard Hendricks, who used to be a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, used to talk about the faith-proving process. What’s that process like? And when he was talking about it, he often loved to talk about what students experienced at Dallas Seminary. He gave a picture on occasion where he would talk about a young college guy. He said, just picture a young college guy, and, you know, he graduates from college, he gets out there in the business world, and he’s eminently successful, Hendricks said.
But every time he turns around, he feels like there’s just something missing. He’s just kind of fed up with what it is that he’s doing. He feels like he’s missing out on God’s calling. And so he senses that the Lord wants him to move into vocational ministry in some way. And so Hendricks says, so we oftentimes here at the seminary have people come to the seminary because they’ve been in the business corporate world or whatever it was.
But they had this pull, pull of their heart from God to go into vocational Christian work. And so Hendricks says, so they often will land here in Dallas in seminary. But then he says, what often happens is about the end of the 3rd week of the 1st semester these guys are here, they begin to survey the scene and some of them will see that they still have no job and they’re beginning, in Hendricks’ words, and they’re beginning to think that they’re highly qualified to be utterly useless. So, they’re really questioning what in the world they’re doing there. Their wife may be sick, and furthermore, he said, their first 3 exams are returned and they’re marked with an F. And in Hendricks’ words, he says, and they know this much about Greek that it’s— he doesn’t know much about Greek, he says, he doesn’t know much about Greek, but he knows enough English to realize that the F doesn’t stand for fine.
So, I mean, it’s just things are going from, you know, bad to worse. And Hendricks says, but in these situations, I’ve seen students come to my office holding these exams that are all marked with F, asking me the question, Prof, so what’s happened?
And I will say to them, you know, the Lord’s in this circumstance. And often they’ll say, well, you know, I was convinced that I’m right where the Lord wants me to be, that You know, I’m right in the center of God’s will, but I have no job, my wife is sick, and I’m flunking 3 courses. And Hendricks said, in those circumstances, oftentimes I will find myself saying to them something to the effect of, my friend, this is as much a part of the curriculum God has designed to shape you as the courses that you are enrolled in. We wish it wasn’t, but it’s true. And I kind of think that’s what Peter’s trying to say here to the exiles that he was writing to, and really to people like us.
The trials and hardship and suffering, they’re part of the curriculum. We can let them make us bitter, or we can hold on and allow that to make us better, that the problems come with a purpose, that God’s working behind the circumstances that we’re facing, that these trials are proving our faith by refining and revealing our faith. And he’s saying to them, and I think he’s saying the same thing to us, so, so hang on to that perspective. Hang on to that perspective when hardship hits, whatever that hardship may be. Well, let’s pray.
Father, thanks for a text like this that speaks to us living in a world that is still filled with pain and suffering. And yes, we, like every other Christian, would long to be freed from such experiences. We would love to experience heaven on earth right now.
But Lord, until you are revealed, till you come back, you’re doing a work in the world, and you’re doing a work even in the midst of hardship to bring about your purposes, not just for the world but for even your children, for those who have relationship with you through Jesus Christ. And Father, my prayer would be that first of all, each one of us would have that relationship with you through Christ. And if we don’t, that even today you would work in the hearts of some that are here today to just help them be able to come to faith in you and start this life over experience the hope that’s connected to a life with you and the promise of a never-ending. But those of us who already have this, or those who embrace this this morning, Lord, may we see even in the midst of the circumstances that we’re faced with that you’ve got something you’re going to do through these trials. And in no way should they diminish our love for you, should they diminish our belief in you, And should they diminish our joy that can be grounded in you.
So we ask that you would intervene in miraculous ways, and we pray as you’ve told us to pray for help in these times of trouble. You’ve said you are our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble. So we pray for that. Whatever troubles we face, oh God, intervene in a miraculous way. Pray for healing.
We pray for hope. We pray for comfort.
We pray for humility. We pray for contentment.
And God, we pray for the help of others. You’ve said that you want us as family members to care, to bear one another’s burdens, to come alongside in time of need and to be there, to bring encouragement, comfort, hope. So we pray for all of that. May we be such brothers and sisters to each other. So I ask Lord, that you would help us take what it is that we’ve thought about these few moments, and may you use this to help us face circumstances that we’re faced with right now and what may come in the future, knowing that you are working.
And for that and more, we can find hope. We do this today in Jesus’ name. Amen.
