Prayer 16/10/14 - Hope

Heavenly Father,

We want to praise you for being a loving God, a powerful God, a just God, a righteous God, A god of truth, a perfect God who created a beautiful and amazing world for us to live in. We want to praise you for all these things, and we see glimpses of your qualities all around us.

But the world is not perfect. And we are not perfect. We look around us, in our own lives, in our own communities, in our nation and in the world, and we do not see love, we don't see justice, we don't see righteousness or truth. We see pain, and suffering, the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer. We see sickness, and death. We see terror and oppression.

We acknowledge that part of this is our fault. We have sinned against you, and when we choose to be selfish, we contribute to injustice, oppression and wrong. And even though we make ourselves to be enemies of your truth, you have forgiven us through Jesus Christ, and we thank you for that.

Most of all, today we thank you for the hope that you give us. The world doesn't have hope the way we do. The world offers glimpses of your glory, and says, "Look, maybe you could have this. Maybe." But then it takes it away, so that the rest and joy we want is never within our reach. The world says, "Work harder, spend more, be smarter, be prettier, take what you want." But it doesn't work. The world offers a hope with no assurance.

But you have given us full assurance. When we hope in you, we don't hope for a chance. We trust in a certainty. Because it's not about what we do, it's about trusting in what you do, and you are perfect, and your ways are fantastic, and all good really does come from you. Help us to always recognise that.  Help us to accept the good things that come from you, and to trust in you when good things seem far away, and bad things seem so near, and so pervasive.

We thank you for the work of Compassion, who are able to bring this hope in a real way to people who need hope more than anything else, and facilitate so many people to be able to share your glorious hope with people we don't even know, but who need that help.

We pray for all of those amongst us, whether here with us, or members of our christian family, or those who we come into contact with, who are in the shadow of those bad things: we pray for the sick, we pray for the poor, we pray for the heartbroken, we pray for the lonely, we pray for the afraid, we pray for the lost, we pray for the marginalised. We pray that despite everything that happens in this world, you will give us all hope so certain and unshakeable that no matter what happens, we can look to you and say thank you for Jesus Christ, thank you that our biggest need has been met, and nothing can take that away.

Amen