The Strengthening of Prayer

This morning, as I try to do every Monday morning, I prayed in my morning prayers for people I know and love, and who have a variety of needs. Included in them today were four men I know who, having grown up in evangelical, gospel-centred Christian homes or churches, have made the decision to pursue homosexual relationships or lifestyles.

I pray for these four men quite frequently, moved in part I guess by the knowledge of the brokenness of my own sexuality. My prayers are not from a position of superiority. In fact, this morning as I came to prayer I was quite burdened by that sense of my own brokenness. When I came to the names of these four in my prayer diary, I thought "O Lord, how am I going to pray for them when I am so poor myself?" But I did pray for them, and in the prayer a wonderful strengthening happened to me.

The Spirit of God is for the weak and the broken. There is probably nothing weaker in the world than honest praying. I found in praying today that the Spirit of God came to me in a fresh way, lifting the despondancy and bleakness of the sense of my brokenness, and energising me with knowledge of the grace of the Lord Jesus that will guard me and keep me until the great final day of renovation, renewal, restoration. And with that came a renewed resolve to wait faithfully in weakness, not to let the brokenness be the last word, but to live in Jesus Christ, the Lord of grace.