Today we're joined by many others to pray for our daughter Kirsten as she goes to doctor appointments. She's struggled with arthritis for twelve years and is facing another possible joint replacement.
"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," says a proverb. But sometime challenges seem so harsh or prolonged that we die to peripheral things, to anything that isn't necessary for survival. The cost for inner strength and spiritual stamina is excruciatingly high. Those we love and pray for may go through hardships of finances, health, and relationships. Many of you readers have swum deep waters and walked through the fire.
We never come through unscathed. As we are tested, weaknesses are exposed and strengths are reinforced. If we allow God free access during those times of trouble, he takes us – broken and undone – and reworks his image into clarity and usefulness within us.
I don't know what God has for Kirsten today. I do know that our prayers are effective because I've watched her mature under his wise care. Our prayer is for her complete healing. But now we wait to see what God will do. In her and in us.
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*Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens. Our God is a God who saves; from the Sovereign Lord comes escape from death. Psalm 68:19, 20 NIV
*Yet I am always with You; You hold me by my right hand. You guide me with Your counsel, and afterward You will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but You? And earth has nothing I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Psalm 73:23-26 NIV
*The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: "I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness. I will build you up again and you will be rebuilt, O Virgin Israel. Again you will take up your tambourines and go out to dance with the joyful." Jeremiah 31:3, 4 NIV
*Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." John 4:13-14 NLT
*But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by His grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. Titus 3:4-7 NIV
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