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Turning to God

Lord, we turn to you this morning, our Heavenly Father. You are sovereign over all your creation. Your reign has no boundaries, it has no rivals, it has no end. You know everything that is to be known. You wonder about nothing. You have no questions by which you seek answers. And yet while we are the crown of your creation and while we bear your image God it seems with each passing day lately that our questions grow louder, our pain grows more palpable, our suffering and sorrow deepens, and the tears on our cheeks flow like mighty rivers.

Bringing Our Complaint

So God we just come before you today sorrowful and hurting and we wonder when does the joy return? When can Satan and all the reminders of this broken world be defeated and destroyed once and for all? When can these masks come off? When can we feel safe again gathered with one another in our homes? When can your church be more hospitable? When do we stop hearing the daily death toll from a virus that has taken so many and that threatens so many more? When can we visit and gather again with our elderly loved ones? When will the wailing of sirens cease and need for hospitals vanish? When will death die itself? When will you return for your bride Lord? When can we come home? We are ready and we become all the more ready with each passing day. We are sad Lord. We are hurting Lord. Our sadness feels like a thousand-pound weight is pressing down upon our chest inviting us to cry out in despair. And we can be crushed by these pains but we desire instead to be lifted up by you and for our mourning to turn to dancing.

Boldly Asking For Help

We are tired of the constant drum beat of brokenness that our world marches to and reminds of each day. We are weary Lord. And so, it is in our weariness, our suffering, our anguish, our pain, our sorrow, that we come to you in faith asking you for help to continue walking in it, for strength to persevere. For endurance in this life until you call us to our eternal one. Give us wisdom Lord when all our earthly eyes can see is difficulty.

Choosing To Trust

Lord we know that in you we find our only hope. We are trusting you right now like a child trusts its Father and with however many tomorrow’s we might have. We are choosing to trust you Lord because you have never forsaken us. We know Lord that if this earthly tent of ours is destroyed, we have a building from you God, an eternal dwelling in the heavens, not made with human hands. Indeed, Lord we groan in this body, desiring to put on our dwelling from heaven, since, when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. Indeed Lord, we groan while we are in this body, burdened as we are, because we do not want to be unclothed but clothed, so that mortality may be swallowed up by life. And it is you Father who prepared us for this very purpose, who gave us the Spirit as a down payment. And so Lord we trust you and we are always confident and know that while we are at home in the body we are away from you Lord. Help us Father to walk by faith, not by sight. So Father, whether we are at home or away, we desire to make it our aim to be pleasing to you. Father you sent Christ to die for us so that we might no longer live for ourselves, but for Christ who died for us and was raised.

Lord we long to be fully restored. We long to be at home with you in heaven, surrounded by the faithful saints who have gone before us. We long for the day you’ve promised when You Lord will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and where death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away…Father we long for that Day which you have promised. You will find us faithfully waiting until that day arrives. But we ask today, that you would Come Lord. Do not tarry! Come quickly! We trust that you will.

In Jesus name we pray. Amen