Good morning…..thank you for taking time to be inspired by God’s Word! My prayer is that my blog will provide some needed comfort and companionship along life’s journey. Please let me know what you think about the blog. Also, would you be interested in receiving the blog more often? What kind of content would you be interested in? Just let me know by commenting to this post. God bless.

Scott

God Answers Prayer

When my husband was critically ill, I prayed and fasted, asking God to heal him; but my husband died. At that moment I could not understand why God did not answer my prayer. But during my grieving moment a friend shared David’s story in today’s reading with me. I found strength in David’s words when he said: “Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.”

God answers prayer but not always in the way we want or expect. David fasted and prayed desperately that the child would live, even when he knew that God clearly had said that the child would die. David thought his prayer and fasting would change the outcome — but it did not. God did not heal David’s child or my husband, but God did remain present.

Losing a loved one is painful, but we can learn to move forward. We can take comfort in God’s promise to Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). When we draw on God’s grace day by day and allow God to heal our wounded soul, life will go on, and God will always be there for us.

Rhoda Gowarto Manzo (Nigeria)

Thought for the Day: Life goes on, and God goes with us.

Prayer: Dear Lord, comfort us when we grieve and give us grace to move forward, knowing you will be with us. Amen.

Prayer Focus: SOMEONE WHOSE SPOUSE HAS DIED

God’s Heart of Compassion

God’s heart beats with the pulse of compassion. God’s heart is not hardened toward the plight of the world; it is not callous and cold in the face of suffering. … God’s heart is moist. It is moved by the cries of those who suffer, and it delights in the beauty of creation’s flourishing. In stark contrast to the God espoused by the religious authorities – a God who is quick to condemn and whose purity is so severely holy it refuses to be stained by human imperfection – Jesus likens God to an extravagantly loving father who grieves a prodigal’s plunge through the pig sties of obscenity, who suffers with the pain of separation, and who rushes down the road, eyes wet with compassion, to embrace his beloved’s return, soiled clothing and all. (See Luke 15:11-32.)

Like the rain that falls on the unjust and the just, the sun that shines on the good and the evil, God’s compassion remains ever-present, abundant, and unequivocally extended to all without exception – the elder as well as the prodigal, the Republican as well as the Democrat, the Muslim as well as the Christian, the terrorist as well as the victim pulled from the wreckage.

Frank Rogers Jr.

From page 14 of Compassion in Practice: The Way of Jesus by Frank Rogers Jr. Copyright © 2016 by Frank Rogers Jr. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Upper Room Books. http://bookstore.upperroom.org/ Learn more about or purchase this book.