Dear TC-HOP Family,
Last week I began writing about a prayer list I have been using to help me in my prayers of supplication. It is taken from the acronym F-E-L-L-O-W-S-H-I-P, and last week I wrote about the first letter F, which stands for the Fear of the Lord. Eph. 3:16 says, “I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being…” As we pray these prayers it is our desire that the Lord would strengthen us in our inner man to walk in the power He has ordained for us.
The next letter E, stands for Endurance or patience. Rom. 15:5 states that it is God who gives endurance, so if He is the one who is giving, we are the ones who should be doing the asking.
First of all we need to be reminded, as is written in IICorth.1:3-5, that He is the God of all comfort, and that He comforts us in all our troubles. For what reason does He do this? So that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. So as we are going through difficult circumstances in our lives which test us, we need to pray that the Lord would strengthen our spirit so that we can persevere with a steadfast heart, and that also we in turn, as we are comforted, will be able to comfort others, which produces “patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer.” Also, as Paul later states in verses 9-10, we may feel in our hearts the sentence of death, but this happens so, “that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us. On Him we have set our hope…” So we will also pray as stated in Col.1:11, to be “strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you (I) may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father..”
The first L of the acronym stands for Love. As I pray concerning this I like to use John 17:23-26 and substitute my name for those who Jesus is praying for. “You (father) …have loved them (Gary) as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they whom You gave Me (Gary) may be with me where I am…I have declared to them (Gary) Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in (Gary).” I pray that the Father would tenderize my heart by releasing revelation of His love for me. I ask that I may feel the power of His four-fold love (love from You, for You, to myself then overflowing to others). I pray from Song of Songs 8:6-7, that He would place His seal over my heart, this love as strong as death, that blazes like fire and which waters cannot quench. I also pray from Eph. 3:18-19 that I may have the power, ”to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the Love of Christ, and to know this love (in my inner man) that surpasses knowledge…” Finally, I pray from Phil.1:9, “that your (my) love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you (I) may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ…”
So my prayers are that the Lord would give me the patient endurance I need to persevere through my life circumstances, be able help others in difficult situations because of the comfort the Lord has given me and through the power of His love.
Please come join us this week as we seek the Lord at the TC-HOP.
Blessings,
Gary