"Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning." - Lamentations 3:21-23, NLT
Over the past few years, I have occasionally written a prayer to guide me during the year. It's not that the prayer has to represent my expectations for the year or describe my situation as I look at the year ahead. Instead, it captures a discussion I'm having with God.
This year my prayer (seen below) is a wrestling with fear. I am becoming increasingly aware of the awful power of fear in my life and the lives of others that I love. Fear is insidious. It captures the imagination and diverts it away from hope in Christ towards the stagnate pool that is our own strength and abilities.
In the face of fear, what should be glorious opportunities to serve God become ominous unknowns that threaten overwhelm us. Fear isolates, hides, confuses and manipulates. Fear is the perversion of our imagination. It stifles what God is doing in us to the point where few would even know that God was active in us at all.
After all, fear is the emotional response to an absence of God. When we look away from God, we find fear staring us in the face.
So it makes sense that the antidote to fear is to open ourselves up to God's presence; joining Him on His mission. If we look to God for answers, hope naturally results. Hope is the expectation that God will work. While I don't always start the day expecting God to work, my desire is that this prayer will cause me to turn my head towards Him and trust.
What does it look like for you to abandon fear and hope in God as you begin this year?
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