Category: Prayer Intention

“You gave Your sons good ground for hope.” —Wisdom 12:19 Before we totally committed our lives to Jesus, we walked in the valley of hopelessness. Life in general seemed hopeless. To cope with this, we would retreat to what we thought were bastions of hope — our children, work, marriages, or a special activity. These rays of hope usually dimmed. So we tried to constantly distract ourselves or alter our consciousness to ignore the gnawing and sometimes savage hopelessness within us. When we saw someone hopeful, we were either cynical or wanted to ask him to defend his hope (1...

“When the Pharisees were outside they began to plot against [Jesus] to find a way to destroy Him. Jesus was aware of this, and so He withdrew from that place.” —Matthew 12:14-15 The popular poem, “Footsteps,” expresses the anguish of the psalmist: “Why, O Lord, do You stand aloof? Why hide in times of distress?” (Ps 10:1) We look to God for help, and He seems to withdraw from us (see Mt 12:15). We are oppressed and in dire straits, and cry out to God for aid. Yet instead of strong action, God seems to do nothing and things get...

“See, I will make the shadow cast by the sun on the stairway to the terrace of Ahaz go back the ten steps it has advanced.” —Isaiah 38:8 God by definition is infinite and therefore can and will go beyond the laws of the natural world, which He created. He certainly will go far beyond humanity’s very limited understanding of nature. When the Lord goes beyond the laws of nature, we call this a miracle. For example, the Lord healed King Hezekiah of a terminal illness (Is 38:5) and combined this with an awesome miracle of making the “shadow cast...

“We conceived and writhed in pain, giving birth to wind; salvation we have not achieved for the earth, the inhabitants of the world cannot bring it forth.” —Isaiah 26:18 We not only cannot bring forth salvation; we cannot do anything of ourselves. Jesus bluntly stated: “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5). The day we discover this truth of our inability to do anything without Christ is one of the best days of our lives. At first, we are shocked. We thought for years we were doing things by our own power. Now we find out the truth....

“By my own power I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I am shrewd.” –Isaiah 10:13 Assyria prided itself in accomplishing its mission to punish Israel for its pride. This is asking for trouble. So the Lord responded: “I will punish the utterance of the king of Assyria’s proud heart, and the boastfulness of his haughty eyes” (Is 10:12-13). Pride has an extreme power to blind us spiritually. We can even pride ourselves on punishing others’ pride. In the Western world, we live in a culture of death, that is, a culture of sin, for “the wages of...