The reality of life on earth is that it is not immune to hardships. Even though the Bible is full of promises the power of these promises comes from prayer.
In John 16:33 Jesus says,
“In this world you will have trouble.”
This is not a “feel good” promise but it’s the truth. One thing about Jesus is He never sugar-coated anything. He told us how is was, how it is, and how it will be. This life was not designed for us to never have hardship. But it is in the suffering that we grow. It’s the seasons of being tested that challenge our faith.
Whether you are in a storm right now or just getting out of one, at some point, you will come face-to-face with another one. Walking through hardship in a storm is where our faith has an opportunity to become stronger.
There will be seasons where God may allow us to struggle beyond what we think we can handle or solve on our own. His desire is to strip us from ourselves. And if you’re stubborn like I was it may take 10 or 30 years. We were never designed to suffer alone. We were designed to allow God to help us in our struggles.
Prayer gets us in communication with Him. But we have a tendency to only pray when we’re struggling. As with everything in life we have a sporadic nature in our commitments. We start things and then let them go by the wayside. As we’ve gained a clear perspective of who we are it’s easy to leave things behind that we once thought we’re important.
A commitment to prayer should not be one of those. God is our refuge and our strength, our very present help in trouble.
Prayer enlarges our hearts until we are capable of containing God’s gift of Himself.
From Pity to Praise 