A prayer based on Lamentations 3.

<aside> 🙏🏻 Our Father in heaven, We praise You that You are loving and faithful. That You are merciful and compassionate. We praise You that because of Your great love, shown to us in Your Son, the Lord Jesus, those who trust in Him will not be consumed when You punish sin. We praise You that You are good to those whose hope is in Him. That daily You show mercy and compassion because of Your great faithfulness to Your people. We praise You for Your rule and justice. That You are sovereign over the universe and over every part of our lives. That both calamities and good things come from You and are used by You to fulfil Your saving purposes.

Lord, we thank You that we can cry out to You in every circumstance of life, and especially when we are going through trials. When life is a struggle for us. When we feel helpless and the pain is intense. When we are overwhelmed. When we fear that our faith will fail. It is truly wonderful to be able to have this close relationship with You our heavenly Father and to know that You hear our pleas.

We know Father, that You allow hard things to come upon us for our good to make us more like Christ. We know that sometimes these difficulties are You disciplining us to bring us to our senses when we have gone astray. To show us how serious our rebellion is. To show us our need to trust in Jesus in all things. And to shape and fashion us into His likeness.

Help us, by Your Spirit, when these times of pain and disappointment come upon us, to use them as an opportunity to examine our lives. To see if there is sin present which needs to be confessed and turned from, and which needs to be responded to with repentance and faith. Thank You that we can do this knowing that the punishment for all our sin has already been taken by Jesus when He died on the cross. Thank You that because of His death, You are free to show us mercy and forgiveness for all our failings, which gives us a real freedom to come to You; with honestly to express how we are feeling, and with confidence that You will be gracious to us.

So Holy Spirit, reveal to us now where we have gone astray. Expose our faults, our disobedience, our wrong attitudes and actions. Help us turn back to the Lord and His ways. Strengthen our trust in God’s mercy and justice which shines brightly at the cross. And increase our certainty that when Jesus returns, all wrongs will be righted, this world will be made new, and we will not be consumed by His judgment, but be made new ourselves.

Amen.

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