”Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.”
James 1:12
Last Monday I was having a hard time breathing, to the point of chest pain. Normally, with long Covid, when the breathing gets hard it’s because I worked out the day before, my exercise-intolerant immune system is fried and I’m physically crashing, but it had been two days since I last worked out and my breathing wasn’t worse on Sunday than usual (or at least, what is usual for me).
There have been many instances when I got hit hard with fatigue or breathing problems and it was warfare. I had been praying during the day on Monday, including warfare prayers, hadn’t gotten anywhere, and the breathing problems were intensifying. That afternoon I asked God what it was about. I heard “Endurance.” Okay, now I know what to shoot for. I kept praying, and my breathing opened up.
God allows us to go through long, tough battles because He has a purpose. We do well to ask Him what He wants to teach us in those moments. Perhaps our faith muscles are being stretched so tight that we’re forced to trust Him in a gut-level way like never before. He could be teaching us to dig in harder with prayer, learn to fight spiritual warfare God’s way, and keep going until we get the win. Brief, half-hearted weasel prayers don’t win battles. Maybe He’s working at strengthening our spiritual spine; perhaps we’ve been lukewarm or careless with our relationship with Him, or we’ve been entertainment and pleasure-driven.
Or maybe He’s training and equipping us for raw, brute-force perseverance and endurance.
“If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.”
Proverbs 24:10
“Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
James 1:2-4
When you’re in the middle of a scorching-hot furnace, ask God what He’s teaching you, what He wants you to know, what He wants you to do. One of the blessings of walking with Him is that He is always with us and there is a purpose to our pain.
If you’re weak, ask for strength.
“He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.”
Isaiah 40:29
And don’t miss the blessings He bestows on those who persevere in James 1:12:
Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.”
It’s easy to focus on grinding out the battles and miss God’s heart for those who go all the way with Him. I don’t know whether the crown of life is a literal crown, but I do know He offers abundant life to those who love Him.
“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
John 10:10
Who Killed the Prayer Meeting?
From July 2023-March 2024, Pew Research did a survey on prayer meeting attendance. You would think with so many churches talking and preaching about prayer, along with all the books, videos, and other resources on prayer that the numbers would be through the roof. They don’t make it out of the basement. The results, shown in the chart below, reveal a church that either doesn’t believe in the power of prayer, has abandoned it, or doesn’t think it needs it. We may talk about prayer, but we’re not praying. Mormons attend prayer meetings more than any other religious group. We have a long way to go before we dare call our churches houses of prayer as Jesus did. It’s not hard to see why so many Christians and churches are struggling. No prayer, no power.
“He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”
– Matthew 21:13
“Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving”
Colossians 4:2
How about you? Been to a prayer meeting lately?
How’s your prayer life?
We have prayer meetings every week. Contact us if you want to get plugged in.
