A Prayer about Seeing Our Suffering Differently

How do you respond to suffering in your life?

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope Romans 5:3-4

Holy Father, Gracious King, Suffering Servant, Comforting Spirit,

We come to you in desperate need of corrective surgery—

lasik for our limited perspective on suffering…

We confess, our first cry in intense suffering is often, 

“Why, God? Why would you allow this to happen to me?” 

And while, numerous Psalms of lament do raise a similar cry, 

equally numerous verses of Scripture tell us how you sovereignly work through suffering.

Help us to not only understand these ways intellectually, 

but to believe them deeply

in our heart and soul:

Suffering is one of the ways we know we are Christians, 

because indeed, Christians will suffer (See 2 Timothy 3:12-13).

Suffering shapes us into the likeness of Christ, giving us hope (See Romans 5:3-5).

When we suffer, we are comforted—by you, 

“the Lord who is near to the brokenhearted” (Ps. 34:18), 

and in turn, we learn how to comfort others in their affliction (See 2 Corinthians 1:3-7).

You rule over our suffering, 

and you work all that we suffer for our eventual good 

(whether we can see it at the time or not) (See Romans 8:28 and 2 Corinthians 12:7-9).

And finally (for this prayer, though there are many other reasons we could name),

Suffering leads to glory, 

and because it does, 

we can hope in our suffering! (See 2 Corinthians 4:17; Romans 8:18).

Help us, Lord, 

to know your nearness in all of our suffering 

and to see your glory both now and forevermore.

Amen. 

Read Romans 5:3-5; 8:18-39; 2 Corinthians 1:3-11.